September 6 Thursday – Sam’s 21 st letter to the Union dated “KEALAKEKUA BAY, JULY, 1866 A FUNNY SCRAP OF HISTORY” ran:
(Sam arrived back in Honolulu on June 18, so this was one of several post-dated letters) In my last I spoke of the old cocoanut stump, all covered with copper plates bearing inscriptions commemorating the visits of various British naval commanders to Captain Cook’s death-place at Kealakekua Bay. The most magniloquent of these is that left by “the Right Hon. Lord George Paulet, to whom, as the representative of Her Britannic Majesty Queen Victoria, the Sandwich Islands were ceded, February 25, 1843.” Lord George, if he is alive yet, would like to tear off that plate and destroy it, no doubt. He was fearfully snubbed by his Government, shortly afterward, for his acts as Her Majesty’s representative upon the occasion to which he refers with such manifest satisfaction.

A pestilent fellow by the name of [Richard] Charlton had been Great Britain’s Consul at Honolulu for many years. He seems to have employed his time in sweating, fuming and growling about everything and everybody; in acquiring property by devious and inscrutable ways; in blackguarding the Hawaiian Government and the missionaries; in scheming for the transfer of the islands to the British crown; in getting the King drunk and laboring diligently to keep him so; in working to secure a foothold for the Catholic religion when its priests had been repeatedly forbidden by the King to settle in the country; in promptly raising thunder every time an opportunity offered, and in making himself prominently disagreeable and a shining nuisance at all times [Day 231].