y quick and went up
to the residence of the American Minister and called on them. Mr.
Burlingame told me a good deal about Hon. Jere Clemens and that Virginia
Clemens who was wounded in a duel. He was in Congress years with both of
them. Mr. B. sent for his son, to introduce him--said he could tell that
frog story of mine as well as anybody. I told him I was glad to hear it
for I never tried to tell it myself without making a botch of it. At
his request I have loaned Mr. Burlingame pretty much everything I ever
wrote. I guess he will be an almighty wise man by the time he wades
through that lot.

If the New United States Minister to the Sandwich Islands (Hon. Edwin
McCook,) were only here now, so that I could get his views on this new
condition of Sandwich Island politics, I would sail for California at
once. But he will not arrive for two weeks yet and so I am going to
spend that interval on the island of Kauai.

I stopped three days with Hon. Mr. Cony, Deputy Marshal of the Kingdom,
at Hilo, Hawaii, last week and by a funny circumstance he knew everybody
that I ever knew in Hannibal and Palmyra. We used to sit up all night
talking and then sleep all day. He lives like a Prince. Confound that
Island! I had a streak of fat and a streak of lean all over it--got lost
several times and had to sleep in huts with the natives and live like a
dog.

Of course I couldn't speak fifty words of the language. Take it
altogether, though, it was a mighty hard trip.

Yours Affect.
SAM.

Burlingame and Van Valkenburgh were on their way to their posts,
and their coming to the islands just at this time proved a most
important circumstance to Mark Twain. We shall come to this
presently, in a summary of the newspaper letters written to the
Union. June 27th he wrote to his mother and sister a letter, only a
fragment of which survives, in which he tells of the arrival in
Honolulu of the survivors of the ship Hornet, burned on the line,
and of his securing the first news report of the lost vessel.

Part of a letter to Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

HONOLULU, June 27, 1866

... with a gill of water a day to each man. I got the whole story
from the third mate and two of the sailors. If my account gets to the
Sacramento Union first,