eft for England to bring back the
household treasures from Skerryvore, to make a real home, and Stevenson
and his wife lived gypsy fashion meanwhile in a four-room wooden house.

The new home was named Vailima, which is Samoan for "Five Waters," there
being five streams running through the property.

The house was built of wood, painted dark green with a red roof. When
finished its chief feature was the great hall within, sixty feet long,
lined and ceiled with California redwood. Here among the home
treasures--his own portrait, war dresses, corselets, fans, and mats
presented to him by island kings--the marble bust of grandfather
Stevenson smiled down with approval on many a motley gathering. Louis
often wondered if they reminded the old gentleman of some of the strange
people he had entertained years ago in Baxter Place.

All about was dense, tropical undergrowth, only paths led to the house,
and these must continually be cut out. All carrying was done by two big
New Zealand pack-horses.

A large garden was planted--Mrs. Stevenson's special hobby. Cocoanuts,
oranges, guavas, and mangoes already grew on the estate. The ground was
very fertile, and kava, the root of which is used for the Samoan
national drink, pineapples, sweet potatoes, and eggplants were soon
flourishing among other things. Limes were so plentiful that they formed
the hedge about the place; citrons were so common that they rotted on
the trees.

[Illustration: The house at Vailima]

All this ground-breaking, house-building, and gardening were new to
Stevenson, and he revelled in them to the neglect of his writing.

"This is a hard and interesting and beautiful life we lead now," he
wrote to Sidney Colvin. "Our place is in a deep cleft of Vaea Mountain;
some six hundred feet above the sea, embowered in forest, which is our
strangling enemy, and which we combat with axes and dollars. I am crazy
over outdoor work, and had at last to confine myself to the house, or
literature must have gone by the board. _Nothing_ is so interesting as
weeding, clearing, and pathmaking; the oversight of laborers becomes a
disease; it is quite an effort not to drop into the farmer; and it does
make you feel so well. To come down covered with mud and drenched with
sweat and rain after some hours in the bush, change, rub down, and take
a chair in the verandah, is to taste a quiet conscience."

Before his arrival in Apia, Stevenson's tale of "The Bottle Imp" had
been tr