Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/24

chief of a village. Sometimes the villages are not half a mile apart, but every one has a chief. Three native villages were in sight from the deck of the ship when we landed. The best building in Pago Pago is the house of the governor, which occupies a sightly position on top of a hill overlooking the sea and harbor. There are perhaps a dozen houses for the officers and men, and these, with a cold storage and electric-light plant, coal bunkers, and a small custom-house, make up the naval station. In addition to the "Princeton," we found two or three smaller boats in the harbor. These had come from the other islands after freight and mail from the "Sonoma." The "Dawn" I shall long remember as the dirtiest boat I have ever seen. It runs to Apia, fifty miles away. Apia is controlled by the Germans, and is much larger than Pago Pago. You may recall that a good many years ago several gunboats were loafing in Apia harbor when a great storm came up. Two gunboats belonging to the United States and two belonging to Germany went ashore, and a good many sailors were drowned. The incident was one of the big sensations at the time. Robert Louis Stevenson is buried near Apia, and he wrote that the Samoa islands furnish the finest climate in the world. . . . We spent five hours at Pago Pago, walking about and visiting with the naval officers and their families. Most of them came to the islands on the "Sonoma," and a dozen or more of them dined with us. The government has built a reservoir in the hills back of the town, and water is piped to all of the houses occupied by the officers. The naval people were so glad to see us that they permitted us to fill the ship's water tanks without