Danger is,
therefore, on all hands. The entrance gapes three cables wide at the
narrowest, and the formidable surf of the Pacific thunders both outside
and in. There are days when speech is difficult in the chambers of shore-
side houses; days when no boat can land, and when men are broken by
stroke of sea against the wharves. As I write these words, three miles
in the mountains, and with the land-breeze still blowing from the island
summit, the sound of that vexed harbour hums in my ears. Such a creek in
my native coast of Scotland would scarce be dignified with the mark of an
anchor in the chart; but in the favoured climate of Samoa, and with the
mechanical regularity of the winds in the Pacific, it forms, for ten or
eleven months out of the twelve, a safe if hardly a commodious port. The
ill-found island traders ride there with their insufficient moorings the
year through, and discharge, and are loaded, without apprehension. Of
danger, when it comes, the glass gives timely warning; and that any
modern war-ship, furnished with the power of steam, should have been lost
in Apia, belongs not so much to nautical as to political history.
The weather throughout all that winter (the turbulent summer of the
islands) was unusually fine, and the circumstance had been commented on
as providential, when so many Samoans were lying on their weapons in the
bush.
Pages:
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219