six o'clock
A few years after the Germans had begun cotton planting in Samoa , I brought to Apia ninety native labourers from the Solomon Islands to work on the big plantation at Mulifanua . I also brought with me something I would gladly have left behind -- the effects of a very severe attack of malarial fever . A week or so after I had reached Apia I gave myself a few days ' leave , intending to walk across the island to the town of Siumu , where I had many native friends , and try and work some of the fever poison out of my system . Starting long before sunrise , I was well past Vailima Mountain -- the destined future home of Stevenson -- by six o'clock . After resting for an hour at each of the bush villages of Magiagi and Tanumamanono -- soon to be the scene of a cruel massacre in the civil war then raging -- I began the long , gradual ascent from the littoral to the main range , inhaling deeply of the cool morning air , and listening to the melodious _ croo ! croo ! _ of the great blue pigeons , and the plaintive cry of the ringdoves , so well termed manu-tagi -LRB- the weeping bird -RRB- by the imaginative Samoans .