Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson was a Victorian writer of such classics of the time as Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He moved to Samoa in the 1880s in an attempt to cure his health problems. He took the Samoan side in the colonial struggle between America, Britain and Germany for control of the islands and is generally held in high regard by current Samoans (although there have been some post-modern reassessment of him as another resource hungry European).

He was given the Samoan name Tusitala, the teller of tales. Vailima is his estate and residence he built on the hill above Apia.
The house is now a museum and contains many artefacts from the period he lived there.

After he died in 1894 he was buried on Mount Vaea above the estate. There is a track up that we managed to ascend just before it got dark on our last night in Samoa.

The tomb is much visited

and is inscribed with words from his poem Requiem

Under the wide and starry sky

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

The ashes of his American wife Fanny (called Aolele, Flying Cloud, by the Samoans) were buried here after she died in 1914.
Finally from Samoa, here are the four hot, tired but happy climbers resting on the grave. (Sam’s singlet is for Vailima the beer).