March 18 Sunday – The Ajax arrived at Honolulu at 11:30 AM, to the peals of “six different church bells” [Frear 5, 18]. A crowd of four or five hundred colorfully dressed natives and tourists met the boat. Sam was duly impressed [Sanborn 277].
From Sam’s first letter to the Union On Board Steamer AJAX, HONOLULU (H. I.), MARCH 18 — ran in the Union April 16 1866:
CLIMATIC
We arrived here to-day at noon, and while I spent an hour or so talking, the other passengers exhausted all the lodging accommodations of Honolulu. So I must remain on board the ship to-night. It is Very warm in the stateroom, no air enters the ports. Therefore, have dressed in a way which seems best calculated to suit the exigencies of the case. A description of this dress is not necessary. I may observe, however, that I bought the chief article of it at ‘Ward’s. There are a good many mosquitoes around to-night and they are rather troublesome; but it is a source of unalloyed satisfaction to me to know that the two millions I sat down on a minute ago will never sing again.
Note: Sam’s letters from Hawaii are referenced from [Mark Twain’s Letters from Hawaii, ed. A. Grove Day 1966]. Print dates for the Sacramento Union are taken from [Schmidt, www.twainquotes.com]. Frear notes that mosquitoes were introduced into Hawaii in 1828 “in water casks by the ship Wellington from San Blas, Mexico—in retaliation, it was said, for refusal to repeal the laws against vice” [19n3].
Frear writes:

However, that first quiet day, before writing his first letter to the Union in the evening, he eagerly made his first reconnaissance. “The further I traveled through the town the better I liked it. Every step revealed a new contrast—disclosed something I was unaccustomed to,” and he went on at length to contrast Honolulu with San Francisco, much to the disadvantage of the latter [19]. The Golden Era first ran Sam’s article, “Reflections on the Sabbath” [Walker 115].