SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA 



I may have dwelt too long upon these glimpses of 

 Samoa sixty years ago, and yet I have not done justice 

 to the interesting observations of the American visitors. 

 The word-pictures and the pencil-pictures by Wilkes and 

 his colleagues are well worth reading by those who have 

 learned through the Vailima letters and the tropical 

 sketches of Stevenson to take an interest in the enchant- 

 ing islands. As time goes on and the ocean is traversed 

 more and more by steamers, it will soon be an every-day 

 affair to meet with those who have called at Apia or 

 Pago-Pago, on the way from San Francisco to Auckland, 

 or from Honolulu to Sydney. The islanders will lose 

 their distinctive characteristics, but these early impres- 

 sions of Samoa, written when the continental world first 

 came prying into the affairs and habitations of the island 

 world, will retain their interest as long as Stevenson's 

 writings are read, and that will be as long as Sir Walter 

 Scott's.* 



From these glimpses of uncivilized life the Americans 

 turned to the British settlements of New South Wales, 

 preliminary to a second cruise in the Antarctic Ocean. 

 The squadron sailed on the loth of November from 

 Apia, bound to Sydney, where they arrived after twenty 

 days. The boldness, if not the rashness, of the com- 

 mander, and his skill or his good fortune as a navigator, 

 were shown by his running into the harbor without a pilot 

 and by night. The people on shore were astonished one 

 morning to find that two American men-of-war had en- 

 tered the port in safety, in spite of the difficulties of the 

 channel, without being reported and unknown to the 



* " Somewhere or other about these myriads Samoa is concealed, and 

 not discoverable on the map. Still, if you wish to go there, you will have 

 no trouble about finding it if you follow the directions given by Robert 

 Louis Stevenson to Dr. Conan Doyle and to Mr. J. M. Barrie. 



" You go to America, cross the continent to San Francisco, and then it 

 is the second turning to the left." Mark Twain, Following the Equator. 



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