April 24 Tuesday – Sam’s seventh letter, dated “Honolulu, March, 1866: THE EQUESTRIAN EXCURSION CONCLUDED” ran in the Union:
The popular-song nuisance follows us here. In San Francisco it used to be “Just Before the Battle Mother,’’ every night and all night long. Then it was “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” After that it was “Wearin’ of the Green.” And last and most dreadful of all, came that calamity of “When We Were Marching Through Georgia.” It was the last thing I heard when the ship sailed, and it gratified me to think I should hear it no more for months. And now, here at dead of night, at the very outpost and fag-end of the world on a little rock in the middle of a limitless ocean, a pack of dark-skinned savages are tramping down the street singing it with a vim and an energy that make my hair rise! – singing it in their own barbarous tongue! They have got the tune to perfection — otherwise I never would have suspected that “Waikiki lantani oe Kaa hooly hooly wawhoo”
means, “When We Were Marching Through Georgia.” If it would have been all the same to General Sherman, I wish he had gone around by the way of the Gulf of Mexico, instead of marching through Georgia [Day 65].