HONOLULU, May 22, 1866.

MY DEAR SISTER,--I have just got back from a sea voyage--from the
beautiful island of Maui, I have spent five weeks there, riding
backwards and forwards among the sugar plantations--looking up the
splendid scenery and visiting the lofty crater of Haleakala. It has been
a perfect jubilee to me in the way of pleasure.

I have not written a single line, and have not once thought of business,
or care or human toil or trouble or sorrow or weariness. Few such months
come in a lifetime.

I set sail again, a week hence, for the island of Hawaii, to see the
great active volcano of Kilauea. I shall not get back here for four or
five weeks, and shall not reach San Francisco before the latter part of
July.

So it is no use to wait for me to go home. Go on yourselves.

If I were in the east now, I could stop the publication of a piratical
book which has stolen some of my sketches.

It is late-good-bye, Mollie,

Yr Bro
SAM.

To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis:

HONOLULU, SANDWICH ISLANDS, June 21,1866.

MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I have just got back from a hard trip
through the Island of Hawaii, begun on the 26th of May and finished
on the 18th of June--only six or seven days at sea--all the balance
horse-back, and the hardest mountain road in the world. I staid at
the volcano about a week and witnessed the greatest eruption that has
occurred for years. I lived well there. They charge $4 a day for board,
and a dollar or two extra for guides and horses. I had a pretty good
time. They didn't charge me anything. I have got back sick--went to bed
as soon as I arrived here--shall not be strong again for several days
yet. I rushed too fast. I ought to have taken five or six weeks on that
trip.

A week hence I start for the Island of Kauai, to be gone three weeks and
then I go back to California.

The Crown Princess is dead and thousands of natives cry and wail and
dance and dance for the dead, around the King's Palace all night and
every night. They will keep it up for a month and then she will be
buried.

Hon. Anson Burlingame, U. S. Minister to China, and Gen. Van
Valkenburgh, Minister to Japan, with their families and suites, have
just arrived here en route. They were going to do me the honor to call
on me this morning, and that accounts for my being out of bed no