Late September, 1866

September, mid to late – Although they’d traveled in the same regions, from the Mediterranean to the Mississippi to Washoe mining camps, there is no record before this month that Sam and J. Ross Browne ever met. Browne was a humorist in the Western vein of John Phoenix, Bret Harte, and Mark Twain. He was also an excellent travel writer, currently collecting mining statistics in the West for the U.S. Treasury Department. He was living with his family in Oakland.

September 29, 1866

September 29 Saturday – Sam’s article, “Origin of Illustrious Men,” ran in the Californian:
You have done fair enough about Franklin and Shakespeare, and several parties not so well known—parties some of us never heard of, in fact—but you have shirked the fellows named below. Why this mean partiality?

September 26, 1866

September 26 Wednesday – Sam’s 23 rd letter to the Union “HONOLULU, SEPTEMBER 10 1866
THE HIGH CHIEF OF SUGARDOM”: This letter was dated Sept. 10, even though Sam left the islands on July 19. It describes the “principal labor used on plantations…that of Kanaka men and women—six dollars to eight dollars a month and find them, or eight to ten dollars and let them find themselves” [Day 270].

August 20, 1866

August 20 Monday – Sam, in San Francisco, completed the multi-dated letter to his mother, and sister Pamela he began on July 30.
“I have been up to Sacramento & squared accounts with the Union. They paid me a great deal more than they promised me. I suppose that means that I gave satisfaction, but they did not say so….Orion & Mollie are here. They leave for Santa Cruz tomorrow” [MTL 1: 353].

August 14-19, 1866

August 14–19 Sunday – In his letter completed Aug. 20 to his mother, Sam wrote that he’d been to Sacramento to square accounts [MTL 1: 353]. The exact date of his return took place within this five-day period. He was paid a bonus for his scoop of the Hornet disaster [MTL 1: 355n6]. Sam came down from Sacramento on the steamboat Capital, where he found a pamphlet issued by an insurance company about various insurable risks.

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