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 In May, 1880, he married Mrs. Osbourne. They went at once up into the mountains, to a deserted mining camp; and out of this experience Stevenson made The Silverado Squatters. In August they sailed for Scotland to visit his parents.

A few months later he was sent by his physicians for a winter in Switzerland. For the next seven or eight years the story of the life of the Stevensons is mainly an account of their wanderings in search of a climate that would help him in his fight against consumption, of the mutual love and devotion of husband and wife, of his persistent work upon his books in spite of ill health, and of his growing reputation as an author. During these years he lived in the Adirondack Mountains, in Switzerland, at Hyéres, near Paris, at Bournemouth, England, and for a short period or two, in Edinburgh.

His literary reputation was perhaps most securely established by Treasure Island, Kidnapped and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. All of these were widely read and highly praised not only by the ordinary reader of novels but by men of distinction in letters.

In the spring of 1888 he conceived the plan of cruising in the South Seas. He chartered a schooner in San Francisco, and the next three years were spent in cruising among the islands of the Pacific. He sojourned for shorter or longer periods here and there, always making friends of the natives, perhaps because he appealed to the best in them, and gathering many pictures and impressions. Few books of travel are so interesting, and perhaps none so charming, as his book, In The South Seas. His story, The Beach of Falesa, is also filled with the spirit of the region.

In 1891, he settled definitely in Samoa. He bought land, built a house, and established a plantation there; and there he spent three busy, helpful and, on the whole, happy years, until his death in August, 1894, He called his home Vailima, a Samoan word meaning "five waters," from the five streams upon the estate.

He was buried on a hill on his estate overlooking the sea. On