food and water for the dogs, who
howled disconsolately as we went off.

At the swamp we had a glorious day's sport, although there were
altogether too many black snakes about for my taste. We camped there
that night, and returned to the port next day with a heavy load of black
duck, some "whistlers," and a few brace of pigeons.

I bade farewell to my good-natured host with a feeling of regret Some
years later, on my next visit to Australia, I heard that he had returned
to his boyhood's home--Gippsland in Victoria--and had married and
settled down. He was one of the most contented men I ever met, and a
good sportsman.

CHAPTER XIX ~ TE-BARI, THE OUTLAW

The Island of Upolu, in the Samoan group, averages less than fifteen
miles in width, and it is a delightful experience to cross from Apia, or
any other town on the north, to the south side. The view to be obtained
from the summit of the range that traverses the island from east to
west is incomparably beautiful--I have never seen anything to equal it
anywhere in the Pacific Isles.

A few years after the Germans had begun cotton planting in Samoa, I
brought to Apia ninety native labourers from the Solomon Islands to work
on the big plantation at Mulifanua. I also brought with me something I
would gladly have left behind--the effects of a very severe attack of
malarial fever.

A week or so after I had reached Apia I gave myself a few days' leave,
intending to walk across the island to the town of Siumu, where I had
many native friends, and try and work some of the fever poison out of my
system.

Starting long before sunrise, I was well past Vailima Mountain--the
destined future home of Stevenson--by six o'clock. After resting for an
hour at each of the bush villages of Magiagi and Tanumamanono--soon to
be the scene of a cruel massacre in the civil war then raging--I began
the long, gradual ascent from the littoral to the main range, inhaling
deeply of the cool morning air, and listening to the melodious
_croo! croo!_ of the great blue pigeons, and the plaintive cry of
the ringdoves, so well termed manu-tagi (the weeping bird) by the
imaginative Samoans.

Walking but slowly, for I was not strong enough for rapid exercise, I
reached the summit of the first spur, and again spelled, resting upon a
thick carpet of cool, dead leaves. With me was a boy from Tanumamanono
named Suisuega-le-moni (The Seeker after Truth), who carried a basket
containing some cooked f