1888 and partly reprinted in ‘Across the Plains’). Some of these (‘Dreams,’ ‘Lantern Bearers,’ ‘Random Memories’) contain his best work in the mixed vein of autobiography and criticism; others (‘Pulvis et Umbra,’ ‘A Christmas Sermon’) his strongest, if not his most buoyant or inspiriting, in the ethical vein. For the same publishers he also wrote the ballad of ‘Ticonderoga’ and began the romance of ‘The Master of Ballantrae,’ of which the scene is partly laid in the country of his winter sojourn. This tragic story of fraternal hate is thought by many to take the first place among its author's romances, alike by vividness of presentment and by psychologic insight. In April Stevenson came to New York, but, soon wearying of the city, went for some weeks' boating to Manasquan on the New Jersey coast. At this time (March–May 1888), by way of ‘a little judicious levity,’ he revised and partly rewrote a farcical story drafted in the winter by his stepson, Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, ‘The Wrong Box,’ which was published in the course of the year under their joint names. The fact that the farce turns on the misadventures of a corpse caused most readers to think the levity more apparent than the judgment; but the book cannot be read without laughter.
In the meantime the family had entertained the idea of a yachting excursion in the South Seas. The romance of the Pacific had attracted Stevenson from a boy. The enterprise held out hopes of relief to his health; an American publisher (Mr. S. S. McClure) provided the means of undertaking it by an offer of 2,000l. for letters in which its course should be narrated. The result was that on 26 June 1888 the whole family set out from San Francisco on board the schooner yacht Casco (Captain Otis). They first sailed to the Marquesas, where they spent six weeks; thence to the Paumotus or Dangerous Archipelago; thence to the Tahitian group, where they again rested for several weeks, and whence they sailed northward for Hawaii. Arriving at Honolulu about the new year of 1889, they made a stay of nearly six months, during which Stevenson made several excursions, including one, which profoundly impressed him, to the leper settlement at Molokai. His journey so far having proved a source of infinite interest and enjoyment, as well as greatly improved health, Stevenson determined to prolong it. He and his party started afresh from Honolulu in June 1889 on a rough trading schooner, the Equator. Their destination was the Gilberts, a remote coral group in the western Pacific. At two of its petty capitals, Apemama and Butaritari, they made stays of about six weeks each, and at Christmas 1889 found their way again into semi-civilisation at Apia in the Samoan group. After a month or two's stay in Samoa, where the beauty of the scenery and the charm of the native population delighted them, the party went on to Sydney, where Stevenson immediately fell ill, the life of the city seeming to undo the good he had got at sea. This experience set him voyaging again, and determined him to make his home in the South Seas. In April 1890 a fresh start was made, this time on a trading steamer, the Janet Nicoll. Touching first at Samoa, where he had bought a property of about four hundred acres on the mountain above Apia, to which he gave the name Vailima (five rivers), he left instructions for clearing and building operations to be begun while he continued his voyage. The course of the Janet Nicoll took him during the summer to many remote islands, from Penhryn to the Marshalls, and landed him in September in New Caledonia. Returning the same month to Samoa, he found the small house already existing at Vailima to be roughly habitable, and installed himself there to superintend the further operations of clearing, planting, and building. The family belongings from Bournemouth were sent out, and his mother, who had left him at Honolulu, rejoined him at Vailima in the spring of 1891.
During these Pacific voyages he had finished the ‘Master of Ballantrae,’ besides writing many occasional verses, and two long, not very effective, ballads on themes of Polynesian legend, the ‘Song of Rahero’ and the ‘Feast of Famine.’ He had also planned and begun at sea, in collaboration with Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, his one attempt at a long and sustained story of modern life, ‘The Wrecker.’ At Samoa he had written the first of his Pacific stories in prose, ‘The Bottle Imp.’ This little tale of morals and of magic appealed strongly to the native readers to whom (in a missionary translation) it was first addressed (published in English in ‘Black and White,’ 1891, and reprinted in ‘Island Nights' Entertainments’). At Sydney he had written in a heat of indignation, and published in pamphlet form, the striking ‘Letter to Dr. Hyde’ in vindication of the memory of Father Damien. Lastly, on board the Janet Nicoll, ‘under the most ungodly circumstances,’ he had begun the work of composing the letters relating his travels, which were due under the original contract to the Messrs. McClure. This and ‘The Wrecker’ were the two tasks unfinished on his hands when he entered (November 1890) on the four years' residence
