March 5 Monday – Sam wrote a short letter from San Francisco to his mother, Jane Clemens and sister Pamela:
I start to the Sandwich Islands day after to-morrow…I am to remain there a month & ransack the islands, the great cataracts & the volcanoes completely, & write twenty or thirty letters to the Sacramento Union—for which they pay me as much money as I would get if I staid at home [MTL 1: 333].
Sam was an excellent speller, but always wrote “staid” for “stayed” (as did others); spelling conventions evolve. Sam briefly mentioned plans upon return from Hawaii, to start straight across the continent by way of the Columbia River, the Pen d’Oreille Lakes, through Montana and down the Missouri River—only 200 miles of land travel from San Francisco to New Orleans [MTL 1: 333-4].