Introductory note with envelope for Mr. Ori a Ori to the officer-in-charge of the yacht Casco, at Papeete, Tahiti. (Photo provided)

Sept. 9, 1888: “This is real pleasure–sailing, and the ocean has been truly Pacific. We sit all day on the top of the deckhouse, sheltered from the sun by the sails, reading, writing, working and talking. We have had splendid sunsets, too, almost as decidedly purple and gold as those we see in Edinburgh …We are very thankful for the fine weather, as we are now among the coral islands of the Low Archipelago. They lie close together, as well as very low in the water, and there are rapid currents between them, all of which make navigation difficult and dangerous.”

Sent from Saranac to the Marquesas are letters to Jane Balfour from her sister, Mrs. Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson, aka “Maggie.”

Maggie had sea legs as did her famous son, Robert Louis Stevenson. She was not prone to seasickness either, just like him. Mother and son had discovered their common trait the year before, when the steamship Ludgate Hill transported the Stevenson expedition from London, England to New York City. Upon reaching Saranac Lake, RLS mentioned it in his first letter from Baker’s, to cousin Bob:

“I have got one good thing of my voyage; it is proved the sea agrees heartily with me, and my mother likes it; so if I get any better or no worse, my mother will likely hire a yacht for a month or so in summer.” That was the plan on Oct. 3, 1887, the day Louis moved into Baker’s for the winter. When Samuel McClure made his first trip here from New York City, that plan began to mutate into something much more ambitious. “I think the South Seas must have been mentioned that evening,” McClure recalled many years later, “for I remember that after I returned to New York I sent him a number of books about the South Seas, including a South Pacific directory. The next time I came to Saranac, we actually planned out the South Seas cruise, talking late into the night.”

And so it was. The Stevenson expedition turned west to follow the Sun and had already been much at sea by Sept. 4, 1888. That was the day their yacht Casco weighed anchor to set sail for Tahiti, only 740 nautical miles away to the southwest. They left in their wake the Marquesas Islands, where they had mingled with reformed cannibals for a month. This new course would take the Casco and the 12 people aboard her through some dangerous coral atolls that are low in the water, so they are called the Dangerous or the Low Archipelago … or the Tuamotus or the Paumotus. Robert Louis Stevenson, the risk-taker, was daring Fate again by living the dream while taking someone else’s yacht through treacherous waters.

A stopover destination en route to Tahiti was Fakarava Atoll, said to be the largest of its kind in the world. Here’s how Maggie describes it to her sister: “The strip of land is so narrow that in two minutes we can walk from one side to the other; it is thickly wooded with coconut palms, for no other useful tree will grow in the hard coral. The lagoon inside is thirty miles long and ten wide; it looks like an inland sea–indeed in places the shore is entirely lost to sight. It is very strange to walk but a few steps across from the quiet lagoon, smooth as a lake, to where the great surf is breaking and thundering along a coral strand.”

Unfortunately, memories of carefree living on Fakarava Atoll would end with the arrival of “Bloody Jack,” Stevenson’s personification of the hemorrhaging aspect of his diseased lungs, commonly believed to have been tuberculosis though in fact it wasn’t. Jack had not come around since their departure from England, a full year ago, though he had threatened to more than once, the very reason the Stevenson expedition had detoured to Saranac Lake in the fall of 1887. Anytime Jack showed up he was potentially lethal and this encounter that began at Fakarava almost took Louis into the clutches of the Grim Reaper, who had never stopped stalking him since California in 1879.

Fakarava Atoll was not a good place to get sick. The nearest doctor was in Tahiti while bad weather delayed their departure. Upon reaching Papeete, capitol of Tahiti, the patient was critical. A French doctor predicted that one more hemorrhage would kill him. Stevenson summoned the Casco’s skipper, Captain Otis, to his cabin for a meeting. Therein, just in case, Louis calmly gave the captain instructions pertaining to the return of the Casco to its owner, in compliance with the terms in the contract.

The fatal hemorrhage never came so the invalid author from Scotland had dodged the bullet again, but his recovery would take five weeks before he was fit to return to life aboard a yacht. Convalescing in Papeete was a dismal prospect. The place was rampant with corruption which came with the advent in the Islands of the white man. The sleaze was palpable so the Stevenson expedition went in search of another temporary home that was far away from Papeete. That required sailing the Casco half way around the island, going ashore and renting a horse and wagon to find “the largest native village and the most wild” as RLS expressed it to Sidney Colvin. The next day a party journeyed up the coast until they found such a place, a village named Tautira, about as far away from Papeete as possible. When Maggie viewed Tautira from the Casco, at anchor, she described it to her sister:

“This is a very lovely place. High and beautifully-formed mountains sweep close down to the beach, and they are densely wooded to the very top; from the Casco’s deck we look up a beautiful, winding valley with a cataract tumbling down it, which I long to visit…We are quite at the world’s end here, in every way.”

Tautira is typically described as like a story-book kind of place where people live in “birdcage” houses with clean lawns shaded with cocopalms. It had a considerable population yet there were no shops. “The people get what they need from small schooners that came into the bay to trade,” writes Maggie. Tautira appealed to Louis and the air was good too. Fanny found a house to rent but before they moved in, they were diverted to the European style house of Teriitera, a local chief whose political name was “Chief Ori a Ori.” There they were invited to live rent free for as long as needed. The chief had granted this at the request of “Princess Mo,” a high priestess who seemed to know who this super thin guest was. The princess personally prepared for Louis a special South Seas dish of raw fish in “miti” sauce. It did wonders for his appetite while he finally came out of his stupor. This act immediately put the princess in a place of high esteem with her foreign guests.

In a letter to her sister dated Nov. 15, 1888, Maggie describes their new Polynesian host: “I must explain that the proprietor of this house is Ori, sub-chief of the village; he is a very fine and dignified man, over six feet three in height, and broad in proportion. He is a deacon of the Protestant Church here, and in the minister’s absence sometimes preaches himself.”

Maggie includes some bad news in her letter: “The captain discovered that there was something wrong with the main mast of the Casco, and after minute examination it turned out that there was dry rot in it…The Casco must return to Papeete either to get a new mast or to have this one patched up.”

This defective main mast provided the circumstances that gave us the solitary artifact from Tahiti that made its way into the Saranac Lake collection over a century ago. When Captain Otis took the Casco to Papeete for repairs, she still had on board supplies they would need at Tautira. Chief Ori a Ori wanted to help so Louis drew up a list of things to get along with a brief letter to show, if needed. It reads:

“Dear Sir,

“In case of the captain’s absence, please see that the bearer, Mr. Ori a Ori, is treated with every attention. He will mess in the cabin, and if the ship be in a fit state, sleep on board.

“Yours truly, Robert Louis Stevenson.”