May 26 Saturday – Sam left Honolulu for a three-week visit to the big island Hawaii and Kilauea volcano aboard the little schooner Boomerang [MTL 1: 335n5; Sanborn 285]. Sam’s article, “Mark Twain on His Travels,” (two by this title) ran in the Californian [Schmidt].
May 24 Thursday – Sam’s eleventh letter dated “Honolulu, April, 1866: PARADISE AND THE PARI (JOKE)” ran in the Union:
THE KING’S PALACE
May 23 Wednesday – Sam’s tenth letter dated “Honolulu, April, 1866: WHALING TRADE” ran in the Union:
May 21 Monday – Sam’s eighth letter, dated “Honolulu (S.I), April, 1866: OFF” ran in the Union: At night they feasted and the girls danced the lascivious hula hula—a dance that is said to exhibit the very perfection of educated motion of limb and arm, hand, head and body, and the exactest uniformity of movement and accuracy of “time.” It was performed by a circle of girls with no raiment on them to speak of, who went through with an infinite variety of motions and figures without prompting, and yet so true was their “time,” and in such perfect concert did they move that when they were place
May 7 Monday – Sam wrote from Wailuku Sugar Plantation, Maui to Will Bowen. He wrote about being mad at Will for so long that his anger had “about spent itself & I begin to feel friendly again.” Will had owed Sam money and they’d had a disagreement in the early 60s. Will was still a steamboat captain on the Mississippi. Sam also wrote about seeing Daniel Martin, an old Hannibal resident and saloon owner Sam had met in Como, Nevada, near Carson City. Martin billed himself as “Martin the Wizard” and did sleight of hand poorly.
May 3 Thursday – Sam returned to Waikapu Sugar Plantation, owned by Henry Cornwell, where he spent the night. The Hornet sank in the Pacific, 108 days out and a little above the equator [Frear 103].
May 1 Tuesday ca. – Sam visited Ulapalakua Plantation. Sam wrote about sugar production on the islands in his twenty-third Union letter published Sept. 26, “The High Chief of Sugardom,” and so visited several plantations.
April 28 Saturday – Sam’s article, “Mark Twain on His Travels,” was printed in the Californian [Schmidt].
April 26 Thursday – Sam wrote from Wailuku, Maui, to the Kimball brothers who had been fellow passengers on the Ajax.
Messrs Kimball—
April 24 Tuesday – Sam’s seventh letter, dated “Honolulu, March, 1866: THE EQUESTRIAN EXCURSION CONCLUDED” ran in the Union: