Ill health gave occasion and direction to many voyages and experiments, some of which bettered him, while others made him worse. As a bachelor he roamed mountains afoot and travelled rivers in his own boat, explored the purlieus and sublittorals of Paris, London, and Edinburgh, lodged “on the seacoast of Bohemia,” crossed the ocean as an emigrant, and made himself vagrantly at home in California where he married the wife “the great Artificer made for him.” They passed their honeymoon in a deserted miner’s cabin, and then lived around, in Scotland, the Engadine, Southern France, Bournemouth, the Adirondacks, and on a schooner among the South Sea Islands, bringing up at last in the pleasant haven of Vailima. On all these distant roads Death pursued him, and, till the last ten years, Poverty was his companion. Yet he looked with keen and joyful eyes upon the changing face of the world and into its shadowy heart without trembling. He kept his spirit unbroken, his faith unquenched even when the lights burned low. He counted life “just a stuff To try the soul’s strength on and educe the man.” He may have stumbled and sometimes fallen, things may have looked black to him; but he never gave up, and in spite of frailties and burdens, he travelled a long way,—upward. Through all his travels and tribulations he kept on writing, writing, writing,—the very type of a migratory author. He made his first appearance in a canoe. The log of this journey, _An Inland Voyage on French Rivers_, published in 1878, was a modest, whimsical, charming début in literature. In 1879 he appeared again, and this time with a quaint companion. _Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes_ is one of the most delightful, uninstructive descriptions of a journey ever written in English. It contains no practical information but plenty of pleasure and profit. I do not envy the reader who can finish it without loving that obstinate little mouse-coloured Modestine, and feeling that she is one of the best-drawn female characters, of her race, in fiction. From this good, quiet beginning his books followed rapidly, and (after _Treasure Island_, that incomparable boys’ book for men,) with growing popularity among the judicious, the “gentle readers,” who choose books not because they are recommended by professors or advertised in department stores, but because they are really well written and worth reading. It is difficult to classify Stevenson’s books, perhaps just because they are migrants, borderers. Yet I think a rough grouping, at least of his significant works, may be made. There are five volumes of travels; six or seven volumes of short stories; nine longer novels or romances; three books of verse; three books of essays; one biography; and one study of South Sea politics. This long list lights up two vital points in the man: his industry and his versatility.