June 7 Thursday – Sam left the Volcano House Hotel [MTL 1: 344 n1]. Frear writes, “They didn’t charge him anything at the Volcano House—perhaps another evidence of his ingratiating himself wherever he went. Scenically and spectacularly the Volcano was of course the highlight of his Hawaiian visit” [74]. Frear also writes of a new traveling companion, Ned Howard:
“At the Volcano Stoddard dropped out of the picture and one [Ned] Howard was persuaded to accompany him the rest of the trip around the island. On Howard, the ride to Hilo, the visit there and at the next stop, Onomea, we again quote from Franklin H. Austin, eldest son of the proprietor of the sugar plantation at the latter place.…Sam insisted on calling [Ned] Howard, ‘Brown’ because ‘…it’s easier to remember’” [74-5].
Howard described by Austin as: “…a tall, immaculately dressed Englishman.” Sam as: “…evidently an American, of medium height, rather slouchily dressed in a brown linen suit and a native lauhala straw hat pulled over his eyes. He had a flowing silky brown moustache, rather dark tanned complexion and bushy dark brown hair with bright hazel eyes. [Sam was wearing] sheepskin leggings…and jingling Mexican spurs, which were all in vogue at the time” [75].
At Onomea Sam again entertained for his supper, keeping a long table of overseers and mechanics in stitches until 2 a.m. (See Frear 53-54). Austin observed that Sam seemed somewhat frustrated that he could not make Howard laugh.
Frear on the continued journey:
After lunch the host showed the strangers over the mill and then urged them to remain another night owing to the lateness of the hour and the hardness of the journey. Howard wanted to stay over. “We will surely get lost in those dreadful gulches,” he objected; but the traveling companion insisted that they go on. This was indeed the hardest part of this hard trip, —which laid Twain up for some time and which he long “remembered painfully” …This being the rainy side of the island, there was an almost uninterrupted succession of canyons or gulches, down and up whose jungly sides the trail zigzagged, with the torrent to be forded at the bottom. A guide accompanied them as far as Honomu that day [79].