Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
The famed Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson suffering from tuberculosis and looking for a warm climate to ease his respiratory distress, visited Hawaii in 1888 and befriended David Kalakaua, the Hawaiian King and his niece Princess Victoria Kaiulani. After a couple years, he and his family set sail for Tahiti, the Marquesas, and New Zealand. They finally settled in Samoa. He established his residence there around 1890. Stevenson purchased about four hundred acres of land and built his final home near the village of Vailima outside Apia in Western Samoa. He became embroiled in the politics, befriended the locals, helped them with their political problems, and wrote extensively. Stevenson died suddenly four years later in 1894 from an apparent cerebral hemorrhage. He was forty-four years old. This was less than fifty years before Tyree would come to Samoa as an US Marine.
Thought of the Day
“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.”
Robert Louis Stevenson, fellow South Pacific adventurer to Hawaii and Samoa