At Waikiki, Hawaii. Front row, left to right: Ah Foo the cook, R.L.S., Mrs. R.L. Stevenson, Lloyd Osbourne. Standing: Maggie and Belle. (Photo provided)

“It turned out that no mast large enough for the yacht was to be found in Papeete, so the old one is to be patched up. The captain (Otis) declares that it can be made quite safe by the help of iron rings and bolts. He expects to have everything ready and in order by the end of the week, when he will return here to pick us up, and we shall start at once for Honolulu … It is fortunate, however, that we are in a place that we like so much, and where the people are so kind to us; where, in spite of so much that is strange about us, we still have learnt to feel at home.”

­– Tautira, Tahiti, November 1888

So wrote Mrs. Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson, the mother of Robert Louis Stevenson, the invalid author from Scotland. If you knew Margaret, you would call her “Maggie.” The passage above is in one of many letters Maggie wrote to her sister in Scotland, Jane White Balfour, crippled in childhood by an accident.

By now Maggie had traveled far and her letter writing was getting done in tropical conditions, exactly one year after settling into Baker’s in Saranac Lake, for the anti-tropical winter of 1887-88.

This backwoods hamlet was the birthplace of this strange waterworld odyssey in which she found herself. It had begun as an idea in front of Andrew Baker’s flaming fireplace. That’s where Samuel McClure, a New York City publisher, planted the seed in the mind of the author of “Treasure Island,” an idea that grew and matured all winter. Lloyd Osbourne, Stevenson’s stepson, described RLS in those days during a talk he gave at the Saranac Lake Free Library in February 1917:

“Mr. McClure had suggested the great South Seas trip, and it appealed most urgently to Mr. Stevenson’s love of wandering and adventure. I remember he was so full of it, that he promptly sent for all sorts of directories, maps, and books on the subject of harbors, soundings, strange islands and their archorage. It amuses me while it touches me still, to think of him in those days, loaded up with directories, living in a dream as it were–a dream of the coming great adventure. That’s why the departure from Saranac Lake is such a pleasant, exciting recollection.”

That great adventure had so far taken all five of them across the North American continent by rail from New Jersey to San Francisco in only nine days. From there they chartered a yacht to take them south across the Equator and then some, to finally make landfall in the Marquesas Islands, where they lived among reformed cannibals for a month; then onward through treacherous waters to visit Fakarava Atoll; then onto Tahiti while their leader, RLS, was under attack from his nemesis, “Bloody Jack,” the author’s pet name for his bleeding lungs.

Stevenson would survive this most vicious attack from Jack since Hyeres, France in 1883. He had been much weakened by the ordeal so they were all pleased with their discovery of the oceanside village of Tautira, which seemed ideal for recovery and just plain living as though Louis had finally arrived “where the golden apples grow.” As Maggie put it: “We are quite at the world’s end here, in every way.”

Maggie seems to have been infected with a scientific spirit that pops up frequently in the large Balfour family. At least she was a naturalist at heart who enjoyed botany. Here she is still describing Tautira: “I think the most beautiful feature of the place, however, is the forest that surrounds it. There are many lovely ferns both here and at Taravao. I found two climbing ones, the most graceful plants I ever saw; and the bark of many of the trees is covered with innumerable ferns of all kinds, right up to the very top. Some of them, in spite of their position, grow to great size …” This kind of talk is pervasive in Maggie’s letters.

A new member of the Stevenson expedition had come aboard the Casco when she was still anchored in Nuka-hiva’s turquoise harbor in the Marquesas Islands. The situation which brought about the employment of a new ship’s cook was, and still is, commonplace. As Maggie tells it: “Our Japanese cook went ashore without leave on Saturday evening, got drunk, and stayed away all night. Yesterday morning, it appears he was taken up and put in the calaboose (police office) till this morning when he was brought on board and was most insolent to the captain.” And he was fired.

In her next letter, Maggie says, “The new cook has come on board. He is half Chinese.”

Meet Ah Fou, a Chinese man. He had an interesting background. To begin, the American Civil War had set the stage for the fate of Ah Fou, born on the far side of the world, in the Orient, in China. The War Between the States had cut off the world’s main supply of cotton so new cotton plantations were started in places like Nuka-hiva to compensate. To work these plantations, Chinese laborers were trafficked into the Islands. Ah Fou was just a child when he was kidnapped at random to fill the quota of one such consignment. Upon reaching the workplace, Ah Fou was thrown out by the contractor as useless. After Lee’s surrender, the cotton fields were abandoned and the coolies returned to China. As for Ah Fou, he was raised by the locals, the hopefully reformed cannibals of Nuka-hiva.

Ah Fou was a young man when he hooked up with the Stevensons in August 1888, remaining with them even as they settled down in Samoa, practically family. He was amazingly versatile and inventive in a jack-of-all-trades kind of way, bringing improvements into daily living at Vailima, Stevenson’s island jungle estate. In December 1889, Ah Fou was worth his weight in gold when a sudden squall enveloped their schooner, the Equator, en route to Upolu from the Gilbert Islands. A violent gust of wind had knocked her on the lee side, causing the mainsail boom to dip in the waves which began filling the sail like a bathtub with enough volume to drag the Equator and all aboard down to Davy Jones’ locker and quick. Ah Fou was the hero who kept his wits and used his athletic prowess and sharp knife to cut the ropes that allowed the Equator to right itself.

But this example of Ah Fou’s heroics in the squall was still far away in space and time for the members of the Stevenson expedition, Ah Fou included, as they passed time in the post card pretty village of Tautira, awaiting the day of departure, still unknown, to begin the long voyage north to Hawaii. There they were to meet Mrs. “Belle” Strong and her husband, Joe, both artists. Belle is Stevenson’s stepdaughter who has been featured elsewhere in this series in her own book “This Life I’ve Loved,” 1930. This would make for a veritable reunion of The Silverado Squatters, that gang of bohemian vagabonds who took over an abandoned silver mine in California in 1880. But first the southern contingent of this gang, living in style as guests of the high priestess in Tautira, would have to negotiate thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean in a sailboat during hurricane season, to finally round Diamondhead, with Honolulu’s harbor dead ahead.

That day did finally arrive, Jan. 25, 1889. Their yacht, the Casco, Captain Otis, had weighed anchor on Christmas day and the voyage north had not been pleasant. On the 13th, Maggie wrote that “For several days we have had nothing but alternate squalls and calms, and have made no progress.”

With the Casco finally at anchor, Belle rowed out to it with her son Austin, age 8, to be the first to greet them with the news that they all were reported lost at sea and presumed dead. Maggie’s published letters in Mary Baker’s book conclude when she describes their dinner that night as special guests at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. “We realize that our happy cruise in the South Seas has come to an end. Thank God, the end is a happy one…But it is the end, nevertheless.”

Stevenson was famous out there too, and one of his new friends offered them a house to use on Waikiki Beach which they occupied for five months. After Maggie got settled in, she got her scrapbooks out, the same ones that are in Saranac Lake today. Belle and her family spent every weekend at the beachfront home of her mother and she got to know Maggie well. Belle mentioned Maggie’s scrapbooks in her book:

“Once I saw Louis turning over the pages of her latest one and leaning over his shoulder, I asked: ‘Is fame all it’s cracked up to be?’ He thought a moment, then said, smiling– ‘Yes, when I see my mother’s face.'”