personality of Anson Burlingame undoubtedly aided in that discovery.  Burlingame pointed out his faults to him, and directed him to a better way.  No more than that was needed at such a time to bring about a transformation.

The Sandwich Islands letters, however, must have been precisely adapted to their audience—­a little more refined than the log Comstock, a little less subtle than the Atlantic public—­and they added materially to his Coast prestige.  But let us consider a sample extract from the first Sandwich Islands letter: 

Our little band of passengers were as well and thoughtfully cared for by the friends they left weeping upon the wharf, as ever were any similar body of pilgrims.  The traveling outfit conferred upon me began with a naval uniform, continued with a case of wine, a small assortment of medicinal liquors and brandy, several boxes of cigars, a bunch of matches, a fine-toothed comb, and a cake of soap, and ended with a pair of socks. (N.  B. I gave the soap to Brown, who bit into it, and then. shook his head and said that, as a general thing, he liked to prospect curious, foreign dishes, and find out what they were made of, but he couldn’t go that, and threw it overboard.)

     It is nearly impossible to imagine humor in this extract, yet it is
     a fair sample of the entire letter.

He improves in his next, at least, in description, and gives us a picture of the crater.  In this letter, also, he writes well and seriously, in a prophetic strain, of the great trade that is to be established between San Francisco and Hawaii, and argues for a line of steamers between the ports, in order that the islands might be populated by Americans, by which course European trade in that direction could be superseded.  But the humor in this letter, such as it is, would scarcely provoke a smile to-day.

As the letters continue, he still urges the fostering of the island trade by the United States, finds himself impressed by the work of the missionaries, who have converted cannibals to Christians, and gives picturesque bits of the life and scenery.

     Hawaii was then dominated chiefly by French and English; though the
     American interests were by no means small.

     Extract from letter No. 4: 

Cap.  Fitch said “There’s the king.  That’s him in the buggy.  I know him as far as I can see him.”

I had never seen a king, and I naturally took out a note-book and put him down:  “Tall, slender, dark, full-bearded; green frock-coat, with lapels and collar bordered with gold band an inch wide; plug hat, broad gold band around it; royal costume looks too much like livery; this man is not as fleshy as I thought he was.”

I had just got these notes when Cap.  Fitch discovered that he’d got hold of the wrong king, or rather, that he’d got hold of the king’s driver, or a carriage driver of one of the nobility.  The king wasn’t present at all.  It was a great disappointment to me.  I heard afterwards that the comfortable, easy-going king, Kamehameha V., had been seen sitting on a barrel on the wharf, the day before, fishing.  But there was no consolation in that.  That did not restore me my lost king.