Honolulu, Sandwich Islands,
June 21, 1866.
To
Jane Lampton Clemens and Pamela A. Moffett
21 June 1866 • Honolulu, Sandwich Islands
(MS: NPV, UCCL 00102)
Click to add citation to My Citations.
My Dear Mother & Sister—
I expect I have made Mollie Orion mad, but I don’t care a cent. He wrote me to go home & sell the Tenn. land & I wrote him to go to thunder & take care of it himself. I tried to sell it once & he broke up the trade.
I have just got back from a hard trip through the Island of Hawaii, begun on the 26th May & finished on the [ 2 18th ]of June—only 6 or 7 days at sea—all the balance [horseback], & the hardest mountain roads in the world. I staid at the Volcano 4 days & ‸about a week &‸ witnessed the greatest eruption that has occurred for years.1 I lived well there. They charge $4 a day—but the for board & a dollar or two extra for guides & horses. I had a pretty good time. They didn’t charge me anything. I have got back sick—went to bed as soon as I arrived here—shall not be strong again for several days yet. I rushed too fast. I ought to have taken five or six weeks on that trip.2
A week hence I start for the Island of [Kaui], to be gone 3 weeks—& then I go back to California.3
The Crown Princess is dead, & thousands of natives cry & wail & dance the dance for the dead around the King’s palace all night & every night. They will keep it up for a month, & then she will be buried.4
Hon. Anson Burlingame [ M U. S. ]Minister to China, & Gen. Van Valkenburgh, Minister to Japan, with their families & suits, have just arrived here en route.5 They were going to do me the honor to call on me this morning, & that accounts for my being out of bed now. You know what condition my room is always in when you are not around—so I climbed out of bed & dressed & shaved pretty quick & went up to the residence of the American Minister & called on them. Mr. Burlingame told me a good deal about Hon. Jere Clemens & that Virginia Clemens who was wounded in a duel. He was in Congress years together with both of them.6 Mr. B. sent for his son, to introduce him—said he could tell that frog story of mine as well as anybody.7 I told him I was glad to hear it, for I never tried to tell it myself, without making a botch of it. At his request I have loaned Mr Burlingame pretty much everything I ever wrote. I guess he will be an almighty wise man if ‸by the time‸ he wades through that lot.
If the new United States Minister to the Sandwich Islands (Hon Edwin McCook,) were only here, now, so that I could get his views on this new condition of Sandwich Islands politics, I would sail for California at once. But he will not arrive for two weeks yet, & so I am going to spend that interval on the island of [ Kauu Kauai].8
I stopped 3 days with Hon. Mr. [Cony], Deputy Marshal of the Kingdom, at Hilo, Hawaii, last week, & by a funny circumstance, he knew everybody that ever I knew in Hannibal & Palmyra. We used to sit up all night talking, & then sleep all day. He lives like a Prince.9 Confound that island, I had a streak of fat & a streak of lean all over it—got lost several times & had to sleep in huts with the natives & live like a dog.10 Of course I couldn’t speak fifty words of the language. Take it altogether, though, it was a mighty hard trip.
Yrs aff ℓy
Sam
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Volcano House, Island of Hawaii, 1866. Lyman House Memorial Museum, Hilo, Hawaii.
Click to add citation to My Citations. 1
Clemens had arrived at the Volcano House, the three-month-old hotel near Kilauea crater, on Sunday, 3 June, and remained until
Thursday, 7 June. The eruption he witnessed had begun on 22 May and continued throughout his stay in the Sandwich Islands. Clemens
described his visit to Kilauea in letters published in the Sacramento Union on 25 October and 16 November
(SLC 1866, 1, and SLC
1866, 1). Moreover, even before seeing the volcano, he had used it as the setting for “A Strange Dream,” written in April, a sketch about an imaginary search for the bones of
Kamehameha I (1737?–1819), the conqueror of the Hawaiian Islands (New York Saturday Press, 2 June
66). Later Clemens made a description of Kilauea a set piece in his Sandwich Islands lecture and redescribed his visit to it in
chapters 74 and 75 of Roughing It (MTH, 72–74, 117–22; Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser: “Volcano
Hotel,” 10 Mar 66, 2; “The Volcano in Eruption Again,” 9 June 66, 3; “Ho for the
Volcano!” 4 Aug 66, 3).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 3
The trip to Kauai was canceled; Clemens remained on Oahu until his departure from the Sandwich Islands on 19 July.
Click to add citation to My Citations. 4
Victoria Kaahumanu Kamamalu (b. 1838), heir presumptive to the Hawaiian throne, had died on 29 May (Korn, 302–3). In his notebook Clemens wrote, “Pr. V. died in forcing
abortion—kept half a dozen bucks to do her washing, & has suffered 7 abortions” (N&J1, 129). He attended her funeral in Honolulu on 30 June and described the month-long mourning period and the funeral procession
in his letters published in the Sacramento Union on 16 July, 30 July, and 1 August (SLC 1866 [MT00466], 1; SLC
1866 [MT00469], 1; and SLC 1866
[MT00472], 1). He later used some of this material in chapter 68 of Roughing
It.
Click to add citation to My Citations. 5
Anson Burlingame and Robert B. Van Valkenburgh had arrived in Honolulu on 18 June. Van Valkenburgh (1821–88), former
Republican congressman from New York (1861–65) and commander of the 107th Regiment, New York Volunteer Infantry, at the
battle of Antietam (1862), was on his way to Japan to take up his duties as American minister resident there. He had been
commissioned on 18 January 1866 and served until 11 November 1869. Burlingame (1820–70), former American party and
Republican congressman from Massachusetts (1855–61) and minister resident to China since 1861, was returning to his post
after a leave of absence in the United States. He held his ministerial office until 21 November 1867. On 1 December of that year the
Chinese government appointed him its ambassador to negotiate treaties with foreign powers (Honolulu Pacific
Commercial Advertiser: “Passengers,” 23 June 66, 2; “Our Diplomatic Guests,” 30
June 66, 2; BDAC, 631, 1750; U.S. Department of State, 42, 47). Clemens was much
impressed by Burlingame and after his death on 22 February 1870 published a long tribute to him in the Buffalo Express (SLC 1870, 2). In 1906 he remembered Burlingame as a
“wise and just and humane and charming man and great citizen and diplomat” who had offered this advice,
“which I have never forgotten, and which I have lived by for forty years”: “‘Avoid
inferiors. Seek your comradeships among your superiors in intellect and character; always climb’” (AD, 20 Feb 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:123, 125).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 6
Jeremiah Clemens (1814–65), an Alabaman, was a lawyer, army officer, Democratic senator from Alabama
(1849–53), newspaper editor, and author of several historical romances. Sherrard Clemens (1820–80), a
Virginian, was a lawyer and a Democratic congressman from Virginia (1852–53, 1857–61). He was seriously wounded
in the thigh in a duel he fought on 17 September 1858 with O. Jennings Wise, one of the editors of the Richmond Enquirer, after Wise accused him in print of political trickery. Anson Burlingame served in Congress with Sherrard Clemens,
but not with Jeremiah. Both men were third cousins to Clemens (BDAC, 706; “Duel,” Richmond Dispatch, 18 Sept 58, 1; “The Late
Duel,” Richmond Dispatch, 28 Sept 58, 1; “Sherrard Clemens,” New York Times, 3 June 80, 5; Bell, 31, 34, 36, 37).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 7
Edward L. Burlingame (1848–1922) accompanied his father to China as his private secretary. He later became the first
editor of Scribner’s Magazine (1887–1914).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 8
In fact McCook did not arrive in Honolulu until 22 July, three days after Clemens left for San Francisco
(“Passengers,” Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser, 28 July 66, 2).
Click to add citation to My Citations. 9
Clemens’s host probably was John H. Coney, sheriff of the island of Hawaii (Parke, 95, 103). “A tall handsome man, who carried himself like a soldier,” he was
“titular executive head of government next to the Governess of Hawaii and her Lieut. Governor” (Austin, 203–4). Coney’s Missouri connection has not been
documented.
Before leaving the Volcano . . . I suggested that we have a guide. He
[Clemens] wouldn’t hear of it, said the trail was so plainly worn on the rocks that we
couldn’t miss it, but before noon we were lost in the forest, following goat and cattle trails in every direction, riding
around great cracks, some of which we nearly fell into. . .. When it came night, even he thought we had better
not go on for fear of falling into a lava crack. He pulled his saddle off his horse and made a pillow of it after scraping up some
leaves, as if he were used to this sort of thing, and put his raincoat over him. Even then the man wanted to tell me a story, that
he was reminded of, hungry as we were. This most improvident man had thrown our lunch away, that had been given us at the Volcano
House, early in the day; said we’d be at the Half Way House before noon. Next morning, fortunately, a native came along with a gun, hunting goats, and we persuaded him to lead us to
the Half Way House. It was only a few miles away. Here we got something to eat . . . roast pig and boiled taro
and some nasty paste he [the native] called “poi” which Sam seemed to relish. (Austin, 253)
Click to add citation to My Citations. 10
Edward Howard, an Englishman who met Clemens at the Volcano House at Kilauea, complained of one such “streak of
lean”:
Source text(s):MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV).
Previous publication:
L1, 343–346; MTL, 1:106–8, with omissions.
Provenance:see McKinney Family Papers, pp. 459–61.
Emendations and textual notes:
2 18th • [‘1’ over partly formed ‘2’]
horseback • horse-|back
Kaui • [sic]
M U. S. • [‘U’ over partly formed ‘M’]
Kauu Kauai • Kauuai [‘u’ mended to ‘a’]
Cony • [sic]
