ADDRESS OF R. L. STEVENSON TO THE
CHIEFS ON THE OPENING OF THE ROAD OF GRATITUDE, OCTOBER
1894
Mr. Stevenson said, “We are
met together to-day to celebrate an event and to do
honour to certain chiefs, my friends, Lelei,
Mataafa, Salevao, Poè, Teleso, Tupuola Lotofaga,
Tupuola Amaile, Muliaiga, Ifopo, and Fatialofa.
You are all aware in some degree of what has happened.
You know these chiefs to have been prisoners; you perhaps
know that during the term of their confinement I had
it in my power to do them certain favours. One
thing some of you cannot know, that they were immediately
repaid by answering attentions. They were liberated
by the new administration; by the King, and the Chief
Justice, and the Ta’its’ifono, who are
here amongst us to-day, and to whom we all desire
to tender our renewed and perpetual gratitude for that
favour. As soon as they were free men owing
no man anything instead of going home to
their own places and families, they came to me; they
offered to do this work for me as a free gift, without
hire, without supplies, and I was tempted at first
to refuse their offer. I knew the country to be
poor, I knew famine threatening; I knew their families
long disorganised for want of supervision. Yet
I accepted, because I thought the lesson of that road
might be more useful to Samoa than a thousand breadfruit
trees; and because to myself it was an exquisite pleasure
to receive that which was so handsomely offered.
It is now done; you have trod it to-day in coming
hither. It has been made for me by chiefs; some
of them old, some sick, all newly delivered from a
harassing confinement, and in spite of weather unusually
hot and insalubrious. I have seen these chiefs
labour valiantly with their own hands upon the work,
and I have set up over it, now that it is finished,
the name of ’The Road of Gratitude’ (the
road of loving hearts) and the names of those that
built it. ‘In perpetuam memoriam,’
we say, and speak idly. At least so long as my
own life shall be spared, it shall be here perpetuated;
partly for my pleasure and in my gratitude; partly
for others; to continually publish the lesson of this
road.”
Addressing himself to the chiefs,
Mr. Stevenson then said:
“I will tell you, Chiefs, that,
when I saw you working on that road, my heart grew
warm; not with gratitude only, but with hope.
It seemed to me that I read the promise of something
good for Samoa: it seemed to me, as I looked
at you, that you were a company of warriors in a battle,
fighting for the defence of our common country against
all aggression. For there is a time to fight,
and a time to dig. You Samoans may fight, you
may conquer twenty times, and thirty times, and all
will be in vain. There is but one way to defend
Samoa. Hear it before it is too late. It
is to make roads, and gardens, and care for your trees,
and sell their produce wisely, and, in one word, to
occupy and use your country. If you do not, others
will.”
The speaker then referred to the Parable
of the Talents, Matt. xx-30, and continuing,
impressively asked: “What are you doing
with your talent, Samoa? Your three talents,
Savaii, Upolu, and Tutuila? Have you buried it
in a napkin? Not Upolu at least. You have
rather given it out to be trodden under feet of swine:
and the swine cut down food trees and burn houses,
according to the nature of swine, or of that much worse
animal, foolish man, acting according to his folly.
’Thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not,
and gather where I have not strawed.’ But
God has both sown and strawed for you here in Samoa;
He has given you a rich soil, a splendid sun, copious
rain; all is ready to your hand, half done. And
I repeat to you that thing which is sure: if you
do not occupy and use your country, others will.
It will not continue to be yours or your children’s,
if you occupy it for nothing. You and your children
will in that case be cast out into outer darkness,
where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth; for
that is the law of God which passeth not away.
I who speak to you have seen these things. I have
seen them with my eyes these judgments
of God. I have seen them in Ireland, and I have
seen them in the mountains of my own country Scotland and
my heart was sad. These were a fine people in
the past brave, gay, faithful, and very
much like Samoans, except in one particular, that
they were much wiser and better at that business of
fighting of which you think so much. But the
time came to them as it now comes to you, and it did
not find them ready. The messenger came into their
villages, and they did not know him; they were told,
as you are told, to use and occupy their country,
and they would not hear. And now you may go through
great tracts of the land and scarce meet a man or a
smoking house, and see nothing but sheep feeding.
The other people that I tell you of have come upon
them like a foe in the night, and these are the other
people’s sheep who browse upon the foundation
of their houses. To come nearer; and I have seen
this judgment in Oahu also. I have ridden there
the whole day along the coast of an island. Hour
after hour went by and I saw the face of no living
man except that of the guide who rode with me.
All along that desolate coast, in one bay after another,
we saw, still standing, the churches that have been
built by the Hawaiians of old. There must have
been many hundreds, many thousands, dwelling there
in old times, and worshipping God in these now empty
churches. For to-day they were empty; the doors
were closed, the villages had disappeared, the people
were dead and gone; only the church stood on like
a tombstone over a grave, in the midst of the white
men’s sugar fields. The other people had
come and used that country, and the Hawaiians who
occupied it for nothing had been swept away, ’where
is weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
“I do not speak of this lightly,
because I love Samoa and her people. I love the
land, I have chosen it to be my home while I live,
and my grave after I am dead; and I love the people,
and have chosen them to be my people to live and die
with. And I see that the day is come now of the
great battle; of the great and the last opportunity
by which it shall be decided whether you are to pass
away like these other races of which I have been speaking,
or to stand fast and have your children living on
and honouring your memory in the land you received
of your fathers.
“The Land Commission and the
Chief Justice will soon have ended their labours.
Much of your land will be restored to you, to do what
you can with. Now is the time the messenger is
come into your villages to summon you; the man is
come with the measuring rod; the fire is lighted in
which you shall be tried, whether you are gold or dross.
Now is the time for the true champions of Samoa to
stand forth. And who is the true champion of
Samoa? It is not the man who blackens his face,
and cuts down trees, and kills pigs and wounded men.
It is the man who makes roads, who plants food trees,
who gathers harvests, and is a profitable servant
before the Lord, using and improving that great talent
that has been given him in trust. That is the
brave soldier; that is the true champion; because
all things in a country hang together like the links
of the anchor cable, one by another: but the anchor
itself is industry.
“There is a friend of most of
us, who is far away; not to be forgotten where I am,
where Tupuola is, where Poè Lelei, Mataafa, Solevao,
Poè Teleso, Tupuola Lotofaga, Tupuolo Amaile, Muliaiga,
Ifopo, Fatialofa, Lemusu are. He knew what I
am telling you; no man better. He saw the day
was come when Samoa had to walk in a new path, and
to be defended not only with guns and blackened faces,
and the noise of men shouting, but by digging and
planting, reaping and sowing. When he was still
here amongst us, he busied himself planting cacao;
he was anxious and eager about agriculture and commerce,
and spoke and wrote continually; so that when we turn
our minds to the same matters, we may tell ourselves
that we are still obeying Mataafa. Ua tautala
mai pea o ia ua mamao.
“I know that I do not speak
to idle or foolish hearers. I speak to those
who are not too proud to work for gratitude. Chiefs!
You have worked for Tusitala, and he thanks you from
his heart. In this, I could wish you could be
an example to all Samoa I wish every chief
in these islands would turn to, and work, and build
roads, and sow fields, and plant food trees, and educate
his children and improve his talents not
for love of Tusitala, but for the love of his brothers,
and his children, and the whole body of generations
yet unborn.
“Chiefs! On this road that
you have made many feet shall follow. The Romans
were the bravest and greatest of people! mighty men
of their hands, glorious fighters and conquerors.
To this day in Europe you may go through parts of
the country where all is marsh and bush, and perhaps
after struggling through a thicket, you shall come
forth upon an ancient road, solid and useful as the
day it was made. You shall see men and women
bearing their burdens along that even way, and you
may tell yourself that it was built for them perhaps
fifteen hundred years before, perhaps before
the coming of Christ, by the Romans.
And the people still remember and bless them for that
convenience, and say to one another, that as the Romans
were the bravest men to fight, so they were the best
at building roads.
“Chiefs! Our road is not
built to last a thousand years, yet in a sense it
is. When a road is once built, it is a strange
thing how it collects traffic, how every year, as
it goes on, more and more people are found to walk
thereon and others are raised up to repair and perpetuate
it and keep it alive; so that perhaps even this road
of ours may, from reparation to reparation, continue
to exist and be useful hundreds and hundreds of years
after we are mingled in the dust. And it is my
hope that our far-away descendants may remember and
bless those who laboured for them to-day.”