Robert Louis Stevenson and Western Samoa

by Thomas H. Booth
Western Samoa claims the largest proportion of full-blooded Polynesians in the world. At last count there were 162,000 of them, a collection of robust, often tattooed, sometimes obese, lava lava clad folks who live on the two main islands of Savai'i, and Upolu. Here too, for many of these people, the tempo, the style of life is much the same now as it was in 1889, when Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife Fanny first appeared, and for some of these folks, the conditions of island happiness remains the same. It's a happiness based on a healthy wife, plenty of children, a Fale ...