The Complete Letters. Mark Twain

when the moon don’t shine; I stumbled and fell over my horse’s lariat a minute ago and hurt my leg, so I must stay here tonight.

      I got the same leg hurt last week; I said I hadn’t got hold of a spirited horse since I had been on the island, and one of the proprietors loaned me a big vicious colt; he was altogether too spirited; I went to tighten the cinch before mounting him, when he let out with his left leg (?) and kicked me across a ten-acre lot. A native rubbed and doctored me so well that I was able to stand on my feet in half an hour. It was then half after four and I had an appointment to go seven miles and get a girl and take her to a card party at five.

      I have been clattering around among the plantations for three weeks, now, and next week I am going to visit the extinct crater of Mount Haleakala — the largest in the world; it is ten miles to the foot of the mountain; it rises 10,000 feet above the valley; the crater is 29 miles in circumference and 1,000 feet deep. Seen from the summit, the city of St. Louis would look like a picture in the bottom of it.

      As soon as I get back from Haleakala (pronounced Hally-ekka-lah) I will sail for Honolulu again and thence to the Island of Hawaii (pronounced Hah-wy-ye,) to see the greatest active volcano in the world — that of Kilauea (pronounced Kee-low-way-ah) — and from thence back to San Francisco — and then, doubtless, to the States. I have been on this trip two months, and it will probably be two more before I get back to California.

      Yrs affy SAM. He was having a glorious time — one of the most happy, carefree adventures of his career. No form of travel or undertaking could discountenance Mark Twain at thirty.

      To Mrs. Orion Clemens, in Carson City:

      HONOLULU, May 22, 1866. MY DEAR SISTER, — I have just got back from a sea voyage — from the beautiful island of Maui, I have spent five weeks there, riding backwards and forwards among the sugar plantations — looking up the splendid scenery and 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, and 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 Hawaii, to see the great active volcano of Kilauea. I shall not get back here for four or five weeks, and 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.

      If I were in the east now, I could stop the publication of a piratical book which has stolen some of my sketches.

      It is late-good-bye, Mollie,

      Yr Bro SAM.

      To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

      HONOLULU, SANDWICH ISLANDS, June 21,1866. MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER, — I have just got back from a hard trip through the Island of Hawaii, begun on the 26th of May and finished on the 18th of June — only six or seven days at sea — all the balance horseback, and the hardest mountain road in the world. I staid at the volcano about a week and witnessed the greatest eruption that has occurred for years. I lived well there. They charge $4 a day for board, and a dollar or two extra for guides and 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.

      A week hence I start for the Island of Kauai, to be gone three weeks and then I go back to California.

      The Crown Princess is dead and thousands of natives cry and wail and dance and dance for the dead, around the King’s Palace all night and every night. They will keep it up for a month and then she will be buried.

      Hon. Anson Burlingame, U. S. Minister to China, and Gen. Van Valkenburgh, Minister to Japan, with their families and suites, have just arrived here en route. They were going to do me the honor to call on me this morning, and 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 and dressed and shaved pretty quick and went up to the residence of the American Minister and called on them. Mr. Burlingame told me a good deal about Hon. Jere Clemens and that Virginia Clemens who was wounded in a duel. He was in Congress years with both of them. Mr. B. sent for his son, to introduce him — said he could tell that frog story of mine as well as anybody. 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 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 Island politics, I would sail for California at once. But he will not arrive for two weeks yet and so I am going to spend that interval on the island of Kauai.

      I stopped three days with Hon. Mr. Cony, Deputy Marshal of the Kingdom, at Hilo, Hawaii, last week and by a funny circumstance he knew everybody that I ever knew in Hannibal and Palmyra. We used to sit up all night talking and then sleep all day. He lives like a Prince. Confound that Island! I had a streak of fat and a streak of lean all over it — got lost several times and had to sleep in huts with the natives and live like a dog.

      Of course I couldn’t speak fifty words of the language. Take it altogether, though, it was a mighty hard trip.

      Yours Affect. SAM. Burlingame and Van Valkenburgh were on their way to their posts, and their coming to the islands just at this time proved a most important circumstance to Mark Twain. We shall come to this presently, in a summary of the newspaper letters written to the Union. June 27th he wrote to his mother and sister a letter, only a fragment of which survives, in which he tells of the arrival in Honolulu of the survivors of the ship Hornet, burned on the line, and of his securing the first news report of the lost vessel. Part of a letter to Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

      HONOLULU, June 27, 1866 … with a gill of water a day to each man. I got the whole story from the third mate and two of the sailors. If my account gets to the Sacramento Union first, it will be published first all over the United States, France, England, Russia and Germany — all over the world; I may say. You will see it. Mr. Burlingame went with me all the time, and helped me question the men — throwing away invitations to dinner with the princes and foreign dignitaries, and neglecting all sorts of things to accommodate me. You know how I appreciate that kind of thing — especially from such a man, who is acknowledged to have no superior in the diplomatic circles of the world, and obtained from China concessions in favor of America which were refused to Sir Frederick Bruce and Envoys of France and Russia until procured for them by Burlingame himself — which service was duly acknowledged by those dignitaries. He hunted me up as soon as he came here, and has done me a hundred favors since, and says if I will come to China in the first trip of the great mail steamer next January and make his house in Pekin my home, he will afford me facilities that few men can have there for seeing and learning. He will give me letters to the chiefs of the great Mail Steamship Company which will be of service to me in this matter. I expect to do all this, but I expect to go to the States first — and from China to the Paris World’s Fair.

      Don’t show this letter.

      Yours affly SAM. P. S. The crown Princess of this Kingdom will be buried tomorrow with great ceremony — after that I sail in two weeks for California.

      This concludes Mark Twain’s personal letters from the islands. Of his descriptive news letters there were about twenty, and they were regarded by the readers of the Union as distinctly notable. Rereading those old letters to-day it is not altogether easy to understand why. They were set in fine nonpareil type, for one thing, which present-day eyes simply refuse at any price, and the reward, by present-day standards, is not especially tempting.

      The letters began in the Union with the issue of April the 16th, 1866. The first — of date March 18th — tells of the writer’s arrival at Honolulu. The humor in it is not always of a high order; it would hardly pass for humor today at all. That