ed a piece of land to
bring me back for sure.[32]

[Footnote 32: Mr. Hoeflich returned to Samoa a year or
two later to remain, and was always a valued friend of
the Stevensons.]

"As I look back now I cannot help admiring Mrs. Stevenson for her
bravery and endurance in her resolution to remain with her husband.
For us men this life was right enough, but for a refined woman it
meant great hardship. When Mr. Stevenson, in his birthday speech on
board, said with moist eyes that he had never enjoyed a voyage and
company so well as ours, Mrs. Stevenson deserved the largest share of
that praise. I remember how she took care of him. A doctor in Tahiti,
who apprehended his early end, gave his wife a vial of medicine, which
she carried sewn in her dress for three years to have it handy. I have
a much-prized photograph of her on which she wrote 'Dear Paul. This is
to remind you of the days when we were so happy on board of the old
_Equator_.' This gives me a sad pleasure in recalling the old times
when the South Seas seemed to us so much brighter than now.
Civilization is coming to the natives at the rate of geometrical
progression, and soon their good qualities will be swept away by greed
and false education.

"I have the honor to remain,

Yours faithfully,

P. Hoeflich."

That the voyage was a rough one is clear from Mr. Stevenson's
description in a letter to Sir Sidney Colvin:

"On board the _Equator_, 190 miles off Samoa. We are just nearing the
end of our long cruise. Rain, calms, squalls, bang--there's the
fore-topmast gone; rain, calms, squalls--away with the staysail; more
rain, more calms, more squalls; a prodigious heavy sea all the time,
and the _Equator_ staggering and hovering like a swallow in a storm;
and the cabin, a great square, crowded with wet human beings, and the
rain avalanching on the deck, and the leaks dripping everywhere;
Fanny, in the midst of fifteen males, bearing up wonderfully." She
rejoiced, nevertheless, that her mother-in-law had not accompanied
them on this voyage, with its extreme discomfort and hardship, but
adds, "and yet I would do it all over again."

In the early part of December, 1889, they arrived at the Navigator
Islands--so called by Bougainville because of the skill with which the
natives managed their canoes and sailed them far out to sea--and, as
related above by Paul Ho