These same swine became the torment of their lives, for some of the devils said to haunt Vailima seemed to have entered into them, and no sty could be made strong enough to restrain them.
In clearing away the dense growth on the site of their projected house they were careful to preserve the best of the native plants. "The trees that have been left standing in the clearing," says the diary, "are of immense size, really majestic, with creepers winding about their trunks and orchids growing in the forks of their branches. These great trees are alive with birds, which chatter at certain hours of the night and morning with rich, throaty voices. Though they do not exactly sing, the sound they make is very musical and pretty. Yesterday Ben [the man of all work] took his gun and went into the bush to shoot. He returned with some small birds like parrots, which were almost bursting with fat. I felt some compunction about eating birds that suggested cages and swings and stands, but as we had nothing else to eat was fain to cook them, and a very excellent dish they made. I have read somewhere that the dodo and a relative of his called the 'tooth-billed pigeon' are still to be found on this island. It would be delightful to possess a pet dodo."[37]
[Footnote 37: "The one surviving species of dodo, the manume'a, a bird about the size of a small moor-hen, exists in Samoa. It has only recovered its present feeble powers of flight since cats were introduced in the island. Its dark flesh is extremely delicious."--From Balfour's _Life of Robert Louis Stevenson_.]
Although their stay in the little lodge was to be but temporary, it was like her to set to work to make it a pleasant abode even for the short time that they were to be there. "What we most dislike about our house," she says, "is the chilly, death-like aspect of the colors in which it is painted--black and white and lead-color. So we unearthed from our boxes some pieces of _tapa_[38] in rich shades of brown and nailed them on the walls, using pieces of another pattern for bordering, and at once the whole appearance of the room was changed. Over the door connecting the two rooms we fastened a large flat piece of pink coral, a present given me by Captain Reid when we were on the _Equator_. We have had the carpenter put up shelves in one corner of the room and on two sides of one of the windows. I also had him nail some boards together in the form of a couch, upon which I have laid a mattress covered by a shawl. On the table an old pink cloth is spread, and when we light the lamp and set the little Japanese burner to smoking buhach--for, alas, there are mosquitoes--we feel quite snug and homelike.