Sandwich Islands Tours: Day By Day

August 24 Friday – Sam’s nineteenth letter to the Union dated “KONA, JULY, 1866: STILL IN KONA - CONCERNING MATTERS AND THINGS”:

August 25 Saturday – Sam was probably staying at the Occidental Hotel [MTL 1: 359n2; Sanborn 295]. Sam received and answered a letter from his old Hannibal and pilot friend, Will Bowen. You write me of the boats, thinking I may yet feel an interest in the old business. You bet your life I do. It is about the only thing I do feel any interest in & yet I can hear least about it. If I were two years younger, I would come back & learn the river over again. But it is too late now.

August 30 Thursday – Sam’s twentieth letter to the Union from Kealakekua Bay:
GREAT BRITAIN’S QUEER MONUMENT TO CAPTAIN COOK

Key West – New York – Charles Webb Published The Jumping Frog
52 hours to St. Louis – Artemus Ward Dead – Lectures in Hannibal, Keokuk & Quincy
Back in New York – A Night in Jail – Three Lectures in the Big Apple
Quaker City Five-month Excursion– Miniature Portrait in the Bay of Smyrna
A Post in Washington – Elisha Bliss – Sam Met Livy

December 1 Saturday – The Santa Rosa Sonora Democrat ridiculed the editors of the Petaluma Argus and the Petaluma Journal for their unexplained criticisms of Sam’s Petaluma lecture [Lorch 338n33].

December 10 Monday – Sam gave the “Sandwich Islands” lecture at Congress Hall in San Francisco as “Mark Twain’s Farewell” [Benson 165]. Lorch say the “lecture was well attended and well received” [48].

December 11 Tuesday – The Alta California reported that the Dec. 10 audience paid:
…rapt attention to his gorgeous imagery, in describing scenes at the Sandwich Islands, or convulsed with laughter at the humorous sallies interspersed through lecture, he seemed to come reluctantly to the promised “good-bye,” and then his whole manner changed—the words were evidently the language of the heart, and the convictions of his judgment [Fatout, MT Speaking 16; Lorch 48].

December 12 Wednesday – Sam received a telegraph from a fan: “Go to Nudd, Lord & Co., Front street, collect amount of money equal to what highwaymen took from you. (signed) A.D.N.” [MTL 1: 374n1]. The signator was Asa D. Nudd, principal of the firm.

December 14 Friday – Alta California printed Sam’s impromptu farewell address of Dec. 10, “So Long” [Camfield bibliog.]. Lorch and Sanborn report the verbatim article as Dec. 15 [49; 309].
S. Purmoil wrote from Honolulu to “Affluent Mark…/ I write you in sorrow and tribulation. Since you left here, everything has gone wrong.” He proceeded to write of many shortcomings and anecdotes. Printed in the Daily Hawaiian Herald [MTP].

December 15 Saturday – The San Francisco Morning Call reported that Sam collected $100 from Nudd, Lord & Co [MTL 1: 374n1]. Sam’s article, “Depart, Ye Accursed!” was published in the New York Weekly Review [MTL 1: 330n5]. It was reprinted in the Californian, Jan.19, 1867 as “Mark Twain on Chambermaids” [Camfield bibliog.].

December 16 Sunday – From Sam’s letter to the Alta of Dec. 18: 

December 18 Tuesday – From Sam’s notebook:
“The young runaway couple, after co-habiting a night or two, were married last night by the Capt’s peremptory order, in presence of 5 witnesses” [MTNJ 1: 249].

December – Sam’s write up of the Hornet disaster, “Forty-three Days in an Open Boat” was printed in the prestigious Harper’s Monthly, but the piece was indexed to “Mark Swain” [MTL 1: 355n8]. Sam’s notebook labeled such songs as, “Marching through Georgia,” and “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” and “Old Dog Tray,” and “Just Before the Battle, Mother,” as the “d—dest, oldest, vilest songs” performed by the ship’s choir” [MTNJ 1: 262].

December 19 Wednesday – From Sam’s letter to the Alta printed January 18, 1867:
SEQUEL TO THE ELOPEMENT / NOON, 19 th

December 20 Thursday – From Sam’s notebook:
"At noon, 5 days out from San Francisco, abreast high stretch of land at foot of Magdalena Bay, Capt came & said, ‘Come out here…I want to show you something’ –took the marine glass— (2 whaling ships with a catch)” [MTNJ 1: 250].
The Brooklyn Eagle ran a short note on page 4 about Sam’s “Lecture among Highwaymen,” and ended with “Mark failed to see the point” of the practical joke. [The Eagle is available online].

December 21 Friday – From Sam’s notebook:
“Crossed tropic of Capricorn—Cape St Lucas—now abreast Gulf of California….Geniuses are people who dash off weird, wild, incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility, & then go & get booming drunk & sleep in the gutter…people who have genius do not pay their board, as a general thing” [MTNJ 1: 250].

December 22 Saturday – From Sam’s notebook:
“Passengers have been singing several days—now the men have come down to leap-frog, boyish gymnastics & tricks of equilibrium—& sitting on a bottle with legs extended & X d , & threading a good sized needle” [MTNJ 1: 251-2].

December 23 Sunday – From Sam’s notebook:
Morning service on Prom deck by Fackler—organ & choir. I had rather travel with that old portly, hearty, jolly, boisterous, good-natured old sailor, Capt. Ned Wakeman than with any other man I ever came across. He never drinks, & never plays cards; he never swears, except in the privacy of his own quarters, with a friend or so, & then his feats of fancy blasphemy are calculated to fill the hearer with awe & the liveliest admiration [MTNJ 1: 253].

December 24 Monday – From Sam’s notebook:
Christmas Eve—9 P.M. Me & the Capt & Kingman out forward. Capt. Said—Don’t like the looks of that point with the mist outside of it—hold her a point free. Quartermaster (touching his hat)—“The child is dead sir (been sick 2 days.—) What are yr orders” [MTNJ 1: 257].
The death of a child onboard made for a solemn Christmas Eve.

December 25 Tuesday – Christmas – From Sam’s Mar. 15 Alta letter [Schmidt]:

December 27 Thursday – Sam wrote of a raffle for a dead wife’s jewelry (Mar. 15 Alta):

December 29 Saturday – From Sam’s letter to the Alta printed Mar. 15, 1867:
SAN JUAN AND CHOLERA

December 3 Monday – Sam called on Rev. Dr. Charles Wadsworth (1814-1882) of Calvary Presbyterian Church, but he was not at home [MTL 1: 368].

December 30 Sunday – The America completed the first leg of the trip, reaching San Juan del Sur. Cholera had claimed 35 passengers there awaiting transportation to San Francisco, so the passengers of America were not allowed ashore until later in the morning [Sanborn 312]. It was a three-hour trip by horses, mules, and mud wagons to Virgin Bay on Lake Nicaragua. Sam was impressed by the roadside stands of fruits and food, and especially by the pretty young women there.

December 31 Monday – Sam and passengers arrived at San Carlos, Nicaragua. From Sam’s notebook:
“Native thatched houses—coffee, eggs, bread, cigars & fruit for sale—delicious—10 cents buy pretty much anything & in great quantity. Californians can’t understand how 10 or 25 cents can buy a sumptuous lunch of coffee, eggs & bread….Saw at San Carlos the first osage trees of the trip—my favorite tree above all others” [MTNJ 1: 261-2].