Here follows the whole terrible narrative, which has since been published in more substantial form, and has been recognized as literature. It occupied three and a half columns on the front page of the Union, and, of course, constituted a great beat for that paper—a fact which they appreciated to the extent of one hundred dollars the column upon the writer’s return from the islands.
In letters Nos. 14. and 15. he gives further particulars of the month of mourning for the princess, and funeral ceremonials. He refers to Burlingame, who was still in the islands. The remaining letters are unimportant.
The Hawaiian episode in Mark Twain’s life was one of those spots that seemed to him always filled with sunlight. From beginning to end it had been a long luminous dream; in the next letter, written on the homeward-bound ship, becalmed under a cloudless sky, we realize the fitting end of the experience.
To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:
Onboard ship Smyrniote,
at sea,
July 30, 1866.
Dear mother and sister,—I
write, now, because I must go hard at work as soon
as I get to San Francisco, and then I shall have no
time for other things—though truth to say
I have nothing now to write which will be calculated
to interest you much. We left the, Sandwich Islands
eight or ten days—or twelve days ago—I
don’t know which, I have been so hard at work
until today (at least part of each day,) that the time
has slipped away almost unnoticed. The first
few days we came at a whooping gait being in the latitude
of the “North-east trades,” but we soon
ran out of them. We used them as long as they
lasted-hundred of miles—and came dead straight
north until exactly abreast of San Francisco precisely
straight west of the city in a bee-line—but
a long bee-line, as we were about two thousand miles
at sea-consequently, we are not a hundred yards nearer
San Francisco than you are. And here we lie becalmed
on a glassy sea—we do not move an inch-we
throw banana and orange peel overboard and it lies
still on the water by the vessel’s side.
Sometimes the ocean is as dead level as the Mississippi
river, and glitters glassily as if polished—but
usually, of course, no matter how calm the weather
is, we roll and surge over the grand ground-swell.
We amuse ourselves tying pieces of tin to the ship’s
log and sinking them to see how far we can distinguish
them under water—86 feet was the deepest
we could see a small piece of tin, but a white plate
would show about as far down as the steeple of Dr.
Bullard’s church would reach, I guess.
The sea is very dark and blue here.
Ever since we got becalmed—five days—I have been copying the diary of one of the young Fergusons (the two boys who starved and suffered, with thirteen others, in an open boat at sea for forty-three days, lately, after their ship, the “Hornet,” was burned on the equator.) Both these boys, and Captain Mitchell, are passengers with us. I am copying the diary to publish in Harper’s Magazine, if I have time to fix it up properly when I get to San Francisco.