Honolulu, May 22.
My Dear Sister:
I have just got back [ fo from ]a sea voyage—from the beautiful island of Maui. I have spent 5 weeks there, riding backwards & forwards among the sugar plantations—looking up the splendid scenery & visiting the lofty crater of Haleakala. It has been a perfect jubilee to me in the way of pleasure. I have not written a single line, & have not once thought of business, or care, or human toil or trouble or sorrow or weariness. Few such months come in a lifetime.
I set sail again, a week hence, for the island of [ M Hawaii], to see the great active volcano of [Kileaua]. I shall not get back here for 4 or 5 weeks, & shall not reach San Francisco before the latter part of July. So it is no use to wait for me to go home. Go on yourselves.1 It is Orion’s duty to attend to that land, & after shutting me out of my attempt to sell it (for which I shall never entirely forgive him,) if he lets it be sold for taxes, all his religion will not wipe out the sin.2 It is no use to quote Scripture to me, Mollie, with—I am in poverty & exile now because of Orion’s religious scruples. Religion & poverty cannot go together. I am satisfied Orion will eventually save himself, but in doing it he will [ damm damn ]the balance of the family. I want no such religion. He has got a duty to perform by us—will he perform it?
I have crept into the old subject again, & opened the old sore afresh that cankers within me. It has got into many letters to you & I have burned them. But it is no use disguising it—I always feel bitter & malignant when I think of [ that Ma ]& Pamela grieving at our absence & the land going to the dogs when I could have sold it & been at home now, instead of drifting about the outskirts of the world, battling for bread. If I were in the east, now, I could stop the publication of a piratical book which has stolen some of my sketches.3
I saw the American Minister today & he says Edwin McCook, of Colorado Ter. has been appointed to fill his place—so there is an end to that project.4
It is late—good-bye, Mollie.
Yr Bro
Sam.
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
I came East in January, 1867. Orion remained in
Carson City perhaps a year longer. Then he sold his
twelve-thousand-dollar house and its furniture for thirty-five
hundred in greenbacks at about 30 per cent discount. He and his
wife took first-class passage in the steamer for New York. In
New York they stopped at an expensive hotel; explored the city
in an expensive way; then fled to Keokuk, and arrived there
about as nearly penniless as they were when they had migrated
thence in July, ’61. (AD, 5 Apr 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:322) In fact, Orion and Mollie left Carson City on 13 March 1866 and, after a
stopover in Virginia City, arrived at Heaton’s Station (in
Placer County, just inside the California border) on the seventeenth of
the month. There they separated, Mollie going on an extended excursion
to Sacramento, San Francisco, and other points, while Orion settled in
at Meadow Lake, in the Excelsior mining district of Nevada County,
California. When Mollie joined him on 16 June, he had still not been
able to sell their house in Carson City. Through most of that summer
Orion tried to raise money for their journey home. Under the pen names
“Noiro” and “Snow Shoe” he
wrote articles about local mines for the Meadow Lake Morning Sun and corresponded with the San Francisco Morning Flag (see OC 1866a–n), while simultaneously
attempting to practice law and prospect. He tried to liquidate part of
his holdings in the Mount Blanc Gold and Silver Consolidated Mining
Company, explaining that he intended to use the capital “to
go to the States on the next Steamer, with my wife, to attend to our
Tennessee land” (OC to J. A. Byers, 12 July 66, CU-MARK). He and Mollie finally
left for San Francisco on 26 July, presumably having disposed of the
Mount Blanc stock or the Carson City house, or both. They sailed from
San Francisco on 30 August aboard the steamer Golden
City, which made connections in Panama for New York (OC to JLC and
PAM, 19 and 20 Mar 66, ViU; MEC, 15–17; OC to MEC, 7 June 66, 12
June 66, and 13 June 66, CU-MARK; “Sailing of the
‘Golden City,’” San Francisco Evening Bulletin, 29 Aug 66, 5).
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L1, 341–343; MTL, 1:105–6, with omissions; MTBus, 87–88, with omissions; MTH, 42, excerpt.
Provenance:see McKinney Family Papers, pp. 459–61.
Emendations and textual notes:
fo from • forom [‘r’ over ‘o’]
M Hawaii • [‘H’ over ‘M’]
Kileaua • [sic]
damm damn • damn m [final ‘m’ mended to ‘n’]
that Ma • [‘Ma’ over ‘that’]
