CHAPTER -II

The Sandwich Islands

IT WAS about this time that a new passenger
steamer, the Ajax, built for the San Francisco-
Sandwich Island trade, made its initial trip.
Mark Twain was invited to go, as guest of the
line, but, because of the daily letter which he
contributed to his old paper, the Enterprise, of
Virginia City, declined. By the time the Ajax
was ready to sail again te had arranged to go
on it, as special correspondent for the Union, of
Sacramento, "to ransack the islands, the cata-
racts and volcanoes completely, and write twenty
or thirty letters," as he joyously announced in a
letter to his mother, then in St. Louis. He began
a new notebook and wrote in it:

From San Francisco to the Hawaiian Islands
per Steamer Ajax, Nov. yth 1866.

At sea, Mar. 9,

Just read letters from home which should have been
read before leaving San Francisco. Accounts of oil on the
Tenn. land, and that brother of mine [Orion Clemens]
with his eternal cant about law and religion getting ready,
in his slow stupid way, to go to Excelsior instead of
the States; he sent me some prayers as usual.

Mar. 10. We are making about 200 miles a day. Got
some sail on, yesterday morning, for first time, and in
afternoon crowded everything on. Sea gulls chase, but no
catch.