Another class of nocturnal demons are the incubi and succubi, who are said to consort with human beings in their sleep; in the Antilles these were the ghosts of the dead; in New Zealand likewise ancestral deities formed liaisons with females; in the Samoan Islands the inferior gods were regarded as the fathers of children otherwise unaccounted for; the Hindus have rites prescribed by which a companion nymph may be secured.
Whenever the cultivation 'of his estate and the vigorous championship of his Samoan retainers gave him the leisure, Stevenson was during these years almost wholly occupied in writing romances of Scottish life.
The whole family at Vailima became ill, and the final subjugation of his protege Mataafa, and the destruction of his party in Samoan politics, deeply distressed and discouraged Stevenson.
Leaving Hampton Roads on the 18th of August 1838, it Mopped at Madeira and Rio de Janeiro; visited Tierra del Fuego, Chile, Peru, the Paumotu group of the Low Archipelago, the Samoan islands and New South Wales; from Sydney sailed into the Antarctic Ocean in December 1839 and reported the discovery of an Antarctic continent west of the Balleny islands; visited the Fiji and the Hawaiian islands in 1840, explored the west coast of the United States, including the Columbia river, San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento river, in 1841, and returned by way of the Philippine islands, the Sulu archipelago, Borneo, Singapore, Polynesia and the Cape of Good Hope, reaching New York on the 10th of June 1842.
The natives, a mixed Polynesian and Melanesian people of Samoan speech, are the most industrious in the Pacific, and many of the young men go as labourers to other islands.