August 30 Thursday – Sam’s twentieth letter to the Union from Kealakekua Bay:
GREAT BRITAIN’S QUEER MONUMENT TO CAPTAIN COOK
When I digressed from my personal narrative to write about Cook’s death I left myself, solitary, hungry and dreary, smoking in the little warehouse at Kealakekua Bay. Brown was out somewhere gathering up a fresh lot of specimens, having already discarded those he dug out of the old lava flow during the afternoon. I soon went to look for him. He had returned to the great slab of lava upon which Cook stood when he was murdered, and was absorbed in maturing a plan for blasting it out and removing it to his home as a specimen. Deeply pained at the bare thought of such a sacrilege, I reprimanded him severely and at once removed him from the scene of temptation. We took a walk then, the rain having moderated considerably. We clambered over the surrounding lava field, through masses of weeds, and stood for a moment upon the door step of an ancient ruin — the house once occupied by the aged King of Hawaii — and I reminded Brown that that very stone step was the one across which Captain Cook drew the reluctant old king when he turned his foot steps for the last time toward his ship [Day 222]. Orion and Mollie Clemens left for Panama, and connections to New York on the steamer Golden City [MTL 1: 342n1].