Explanatory Notes
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Apparatus Notes
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CHAPTER 67
[begin page 457]

CHAPTER 67

I still quote from my journal:emendation

I found the nationalemendation Legislature to consist of half a dozen white men and some thirty or forty natives. It was a dark assemblage. The nobles and Ministers (about a dozen of them altogether) occupied the extreme left of the hall, with David Kalakaua (the King’s Chamberlain)explanatory note and Prince Williamexplanatory note at the head. The President of the Assembly, hisemendation Royal Highness M. Kekuanaoa,*emendation and the Vice President (the latter a white man,emendation)explanatory note sat in the pulpit, if I may so term it.

The President is the King’s fatherexplanatory note. He is an erect, strongly built, massive featured, white-haired, tawnyemendation old gentleman of eightyemendation years of age or thereabouts. He was simply but well dressed, in a blue cloth coat and white vest, and white pantaloons, without spot, dust or blemish upon them. He bears himself with a calm, stately dignity, and is a man of noble presence. He was a young man and a distinguished warrior under that terrific fighteremendation, Kamehameha I, more than half a century ago. A knowledge of his career suggested some such thought as this:emendation “This man, naked as the day he was born, and war-club and spear in hand, has charged at the head of a horde of savages against other hordes of savages more than a generation and a half agoemendation, and reveled in slaughter and carnage; has worshippedemendation wooden images on his devoutemendation knees; has seen hundreds of his race offered up in heathen temples as sacrifices to woodenemendation idols, at a time when no missionary’s foot had ever pressed this soil, and he had never heard of the white man’s God; has believed his enemy could secretly pray him to death; has seen the day, in his childhood, when it was a crime punishable by death for a man to eat with his wife, or for a plebeian to let his shadow fall upon the King—and now look at him: an educated Christian;


*Since dead.emendation [begin page 458] neatly and handsomely dressed; a high-mindedemendation, elegant gentleman; a traveler, in some degree, and one who has been the honored guest of royalty in Europeexplanatory note; a man practiced in holding the reins of an enlightened government, and well versed in the politics of his country and in general, practical information. Look at him, sitting there presiding over the deliberations of a legislative body, among whom are white men—a grave, dignified, statesmanlike personage, and as seemingly natural and fitted to the place as if he had been born in it and had never been out of it in his lifetime. Howemendation the experiences of this old man’s eventful lifeemendation shame the cheap inventions of romance!”

Kekuanaoa is not of the blood royal. He derives his princely rank from his wife, who was a daughter of Kamehameha the Greatexplanatory note. Under other monarchies the male line takes precedence of the female in tracing genealogies, but here the opposite is the case—the female line takes precedence. Their reason for this is exceedingly sensible, and I recommend it to the aristocracy of Europe: They say it is easy to know who a man’s mother was, but, etc., etc.explanatory note emendation

an enemy’s prayer.

The christianizing of the natives has hardly even weakened some of their barbarian superstitions, much less destroyed them. I have just referred to one of these. It is still a popular belief that if your enemy can get hold of any article belonging to you he can get down on his knees over it and pray you to death explanatory note. Therefore many a native gives up and dies merely because he imagines that some enemy is putting him through a course of damaging prayer. This praying an individual to death seems absurd enough at a first glance, but then when we call to mind some of the pulpit efforts of certain of our own ministers the thing looks plausible.

In former times, among the Islanders, not only a plurality of wives was customary, but a plurality of husbands likewise. Some native women of noble rank had as many as six husbands. A [begin page 459] woman thus supplied did not reside with all her husbands at once, but lived several months with each in turn. An understood sign hung at her door during these months. When the sign was taken down, it meant “Next.”

In those days woman was rigidly taught to “know her place.” Her place was to do all the work, take all the cuffs, provide all the food, and content herself with what was left after her lord had finished his dinner. She was not only forbidden, by ancient law, and under penalty of death, to eat with her husband or enter a canoe, but was debarred, under the same penalty, from eating bananas, pine-apples, oranges and other choice fruits at any time or in any place. She had to confine herself pretty strictly to “poi” and hard work. These poor ignorant heathen seem to have had a sort of groping idea of what came of woman eating fruit in the Gardenemendation of Eden, and they did not choose to take any more chances. But the missionaries broke up this satisfactory arrangement of things. They liberated woman and made her the equal of man.

The natives had a romantic fashion of burying some of their children alive when the family became larger than necessary. The missionaries interfered in this matter too, and stopped it.

To this day the natives are able to lie down and die whenever they want to explanatory note, whether there is anything the matter with them or not. If a Kanaka takes a notion to die, that is the end of him; nobody can persuade him to hold on; all the doctors in the world could not save him.

A luxury which they enjoy more than anything else, is a large funeral. If a person wants to get rid of a troublesome native, it is only necessary to promise him a fine funeral and name the hour and he will be on hand to the minute—at least his remains will.

All the natives are Christians, now, but many of them still desert to the Great Shark Godexplanatory note for temporary succor in time of trouble. An eruptionemendation of the great volcano of Kilauea, or an earthquake, always brings a deal of latent loyalty to the Great Shark God to the surface. It is common report that the King, educated, cultivated and refined Christian gentleman as he undoubtedly is, still turns to the idols of his fathers for help when disaster threatens. A planter caught a shark, and one of his christianized natives testified his emancipation from the thrall of ancient superstition by assisting [begin page 460] to dissect the shark after a fashion forbidden by his abandoned creed. But remorse shortly began to torture him. He grew moody and sought solitude; brooded over his sin, refused food, and finally said he must die and ought to die, for he had sinned against the Great Shark God and could never know peace any more. He was proof against persuasion and ridicule, and in the course of a day or two took to his bed and died, although he showed no symptom of disease. His young daughter followed his lead and suffered a like fate within the week. Superstition is ingrained in the native blood and bone and it is only natural that it should crop out in time of distress. Wherever one goes in the Islands, he will find small piles of stones by the wayside, covered with leafy offerings, placed there by the natives to appease evil spirits or honor local deities belonging to the mythology of former days.

visiting the missionaries.

In the rural districts of any of the Islands, the traveler hourly comes upon parties of dusky maidens bathing in the streams or in the sea without any clothing on and exhibiting no very intemperate zeal in the matter of hiding their nakedness. When the missionaries first took up their residence in Honolulu, the native women would pay their families frequent friendly visits, day by day, not even clothed with a blush. It was found a hard matter to convince them that this was rather indelicate. Finally the missionaries [begin page 461] provided them with long, loose calico robes, and that ended the difficulty—for the women would troop through the town, stark naked, with their robes folded under their arms, march to the missionary houses and then proceed to dress!emendation The natives soon manifested a strong proclivity for clothing, but it was shortly apparent that they only wanted it for grandeur. The missionaries imported a quantity of hats, bonnets, and other male and female wearing apparel, instituted a general distribution, and begged the people not to come to church naked, next Sunday, as usual. And they did not; but the national spirit of unselfishness led them to divide up with neighbors who were not at the distribution, and next Sabbath the poor preachers could hardly keep countenance before their vast congregations. In the midst of the reading of a hymn a brown, stately dame would sweep up the aisle with a world of airs, with nothing in the world on but a “stove-pipeemendation” hat and a pair of cheap gloves; another dame would follow, tricked out in a man’s shirt, and nothing else; another one would enter with a flourish, with simply the sleeves of a bright calico dress tied around her waist and the rest of the garment dragging behind like a peacock’s tail off duty; a stately “buck” Kanaka would stalk in with a woman’s bonnet on, wrong side before—only this, and nothing more; after him would stride his fellow, with the legs of a pair of pantaloons tied around his neck, the rest of his person untrammeled; in his rear would come another gentleman simply gotten up in a fiery neck-tie and a striped vestexplanatory note. The poor creatures were beaming with complacency and wholly unconscious of any absurdity in their appearance. They gazed at each other with happy admiration, and it was plain to see that the young girls were taking note of what each other had on, as naturally as if they had always lived in a land of Bibles and knew what churches were made for; here was the evidence of a dawning civilization. The spectacle which the congregation presented was so extraordinary and withal so moving, that the missionaries found it difficult to keep to the text and go on with the services; and by and by when the simple children of the sun began a general swapping of garments in open meeting and produced some irresistibly grotesque effects in the course of redressing, there was nothing for it but to cut the thing short with the benediction and dismiss the fantastic assemblage.

[begin page 462]
full church dress.

In our country, children play “keep house;” and in the same high-sounding but miniature way the grown folk here, with the poor little material of slender territory and meagre population, play “empire.” There is his royal Majesty the Kingexplanatory note, with a New York detective’s income of thirty or thirty-five thousand dollars a year from the “royal civil list” and the “royal domain.”explanatory note He lives in a two-story frame “palace.”explanatory note

playing empire.
And there is the “royal family”—the customary hive of royal brothers, sisters, cousins and other noble drones and vagrants usual to monarchy,—all with a spoon in the national pap-dish, and all bearing such titles as his or her Royal Highness the Prince or Princess So-and-so. Few of them can carry their royal splendors far enough to ride [begin page 463] in carriages, however; they sport the economical Kanaka horse or “hoof it”* with the plebeians.

Then there is his Excellency the “royal Chamberlain”—a sinecure, for his Majestyemendation dresses himself with his own hands, except when he is ruralizing at Waikiki and then he requires no dressing.

royalty and its satellites.

Next we have his Excellency the Commander-in-chief of the Household Troops, whose forces consist of about the number of soldiers usually placed under a corporal in other landsexplanatory note.

Next comes the royal Steward and the Grand Equerry in Waiting—high dignitaries with modest salaries and little to do.

Then we have his Excellency the First Gentleman of the Bed-chamberexplanatory note—an office as easy as it is magnificent.

Next we come to his Excellency the Prime Minister, a renegade American from New Hampshire, all jaw, vanity, bombast and ignorance, a lawyer of “shyster” calibre, a fraud by nature, a humble worshipperemendation of the sceptre above him, a reptile never tired of sneering


*Missionary phrase. [begin page 464] at the land of his birth or glorifying the ten-acre kingdom that has adopted him—salary, four thousand dollarsemendation a year, vast consequence, and no perquisites.

Then we have his Excellency the Imperial Minister of Finance, who handles a million dollars of public money a year, sends in his annual “budget” with great ceremony, talks prodigiously of “finance,” suggests imposing schemes for paying off the “national debt” (of a hundred and fifty thousand dollarsemendation,)explanatory note and does it all for four thousand dollarsemendation a year and unimaginable gloryexplanatory note.

Next we have his Excellency the Minister of War, who holds sway over the royal armiesexplanatory note—they consist of two hundred and thirty uniformed Kanakas, mostly Brigadier Generals, and if the country ever gets into trouble with a foreign power we shall probably hear from them. I knew an American whose copper-plate visiting card bore this impressive legend: “Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Infantry.”emendation To say that he was proud of this distinction is stating it but tamely. The Minister of War has also in his charge some venerable swivels on Punch-Bowl Hillexplanatory note wherewith royal salutes are fired when foreign vessels of war enter the port.

Next comes his Excellency the Minister of the Navy—a nabob who rules the “royal fleet,” (a steam-tug and a sixty-ton schooner.)explanatory note

And next comes his Grace the Lord Bishop of Honolulu, the chief dignitary of the “Established Church”—for when the American Presbyterian missionaries had completed the reduction of the nation to a compact condition of Christianity, native royalty stepped in and erected the grand dignity of an “Established (Episcopal) Church” over it, and imported a cheap ready-made Bishop from England to take chargeexplanatory note. The chagrin of the missionaries has never been comprehensively expressed, to this day, profanity not being admissible.

Next comes his Excellency the Minister of Public Instructionexplanatory note.

Next, their Excellencies the Governors of Oahu, Hawaii, etc.explanatory note, and after them a string of High Sheriffs and other small fry too numerous for computation.

Then there are their Excellencies the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of his Imperial Majesty the Emperor of the French; her British Majesty’s Minister; the Minister Resident, of the United Statesexplanatory note; and some six or eight representatives of other [begin page 465] foreign nations, all with sounding titles, imposing dignity and prodigious but economical state.

Imagine all this grandeur in a play-house “kingdom” whose population falls absolutely short of sixty thousand soulsexplanatory note!

The people are so accustomed to nine-jointed titles and colossal magnates that a foreign prince makes very little more stir in Honolulu than a westernemendation Congressman does in New York.

And let it be borne in mind that there is a strictly defined “court costume” of so “stunning” a nature that it would make the clown in a circus look tame and commonplace by comparison; and each Hawaiian official dignitary has a gorgeous vari-colored, gold-laced uniform peculiar to his office—no two of them are alike, and it is hard to tell which one is the “loudest.” The King hastextual note emendation a “drawing-room” at stated intervals, like other monarchs, and when these varied uniforms congregate there weak-eyed people have to contemplate the spectacle through smoked glass. Is there not a gratifying contrast between this latter-day exhibition and the one the ancestors of some of these magnates afforded the missionaries the Sunday after the old-time distribution of clothing? Behold what religion and civilization have wrought!

Editorial Emendations CHAPTER 67
  CHAPTER 67 . . . journal: (C)  ●  CHAPTER LXVII. . . . journal: (A)  indented from right Honolulu, May 23, 1866. centered Hawaiian Legislature. [¶] I have been reporting the Hawaiian Legislature all day. This is my first visit to the Capitol. I expected to be present on the 25th of April and see the King open his Parliament in state and hear his speech, but I was in Maui then and Legislatures had no charms for me. [¶] The Government of the Hawaiian Kingdom is composed of three estates, viz: The King, the Nobles and the Commons or Representatives. The Nobles are members of the Legislature by right of their nobility—by blood, if you please—and hold the position for life. They hold the right to sit, at any rate, though that right is not complete until they are formally commissioned as Legislators by the King. Prince William, who is thirty-one years of age, was only so commissioned two years ago, and is now occupying a seat in the Parliament for the first time. The King’s Ministers belong to the Legislature by virtue of their office. Formerly the Legislative Assembly consisted of a House of Nobles and a House of Representatives, and worked separately, but now both estates sit and vote together. The object of the change was to strengthen the hands of the Nobles by giving them a chance to overawe the Commons (the latter being able to outvote the former by about three to one), and it works well. The handful of Nobles and Ministers, being backed by the King and acting as his mouthpieces, outweigh the common multitude on the other side of the House, and carry things pretty much their own way. It is well enough, for even if the Representatives were to assert their strength and override the Nobles and pass a law which did not suit the King, his Majesty would veto the measure and that would be the end of it, for there is no passing a bill over his veto. [¶] Once, when the legislative bodies were separate and the Representatives did not act to suit the late King (Kamehameha IV), he took Cromwell’s course—prorogued the Parliament instanter and sent the members about their business. When the present King called a Convention, a year or two ago, to frame a new Constitution, he wanted a property qualification to vote incorporated (universal suffrage was the rule before) and desired other amendments, which the Convention refused to sanction. He dismissed them at once, and fixed the Constitution up to suit himself, ratified it, and it is now the fundamental law of the land, although it has never been formally ratified and accepted by the people or the Legislature. He took back a good deal of power which his predecessors had surrendered to the people, abolished the universal suffrage clause and denied the privilege of voting to all save such as were possessed of a hundred dollars worth of real estate or had an income of seventy-five dollars a year. And, if my opinion were asked, I would say he did a wise thing in this last named matter. [¶] The King is invested with very great power. But he is a man of good sense and excellent education, and has an extended knowledge of business, which he acquired through long and arduous training as Minister of the Interior under the late King, and therefore he uses his vast authority wisely and well. centered The Capitol—An American Sovereign Snubbed. [¶] The Legislature meets in the Supreme Court-  |  room, an apartment which is larger, lighter and better fitted and furnished than any Court-room in San Francisco. A railing across the center separates the legislators from the visitors. [¶] When I got to the main entrance of the building, and was about to march boldly in, I found myself confronted by a large placard, upon which was printed: centeredNo Admittance by this Entrance Except to Members  |  of the Legislature and Foreign Officials.” [¶] It shocked my republican notions somewhat, but I pocketed the insinuation that I was not high-toned enough to go in at the front door, and went around and entered meekly at the back one. If ever I come to these islands again I will come as the Duke of San Jose, and put on as many frills as the best of them. centered The King’s Father.  (SU) 
  national (A)  ●  not in  (SU) 
  his (C)  ●  His (SU) 
  Kekuanaoa,* (A)  ●  Kekuanaoa, (SU) 
  the latter a white man, (A)  ●  Rhodes (SU) 
  tawny (A)  ●  swarthy (SU) 
  eighty (A)  ●  80 (SU) 
  fighter (A)  ●  old fighter (SU) 
  ago . . . this: (A)  ●  ago, and I could not help saying to myself, (SU) 
  more . . . ago (A)  ●  far back in the past (SU) 
  worshipped (A)  ●  worshiped (SU) 
  devout (A)  ●  bended (SU) 
  wooden (A)  ●  hideous (SU) 
  Since dead. (A)  ●  not in  (SU) 
  high-minded (C)  ●  high-  |  minded (SU) 
  How (A)  ●  Lord! how (SU) 
  eventful life (A)  ●  strange, eventful life must (SU) 
  etc. (A)  ●  etc. centered A Comprehensive Slur. [¶] The mental caliber of the Legislative Assembly is up to the average of such bodies the world over—and I wish it were a compliment to say it, but it is hardly so. I have seen a number of Legislatures, and there was a comfortable majority in each of them that knew just about enough to come in when it rained, and that was all. Few men of first class ability can afford to let their affairs go to ruin while they fool away their time in Legislatures for months on a stretch. Few such men care a straw for the small-beer distinction one is able to achieve in such a place. But your chattering, one-horse village lawyer likes it, and your solemn ass from the cow counties, who don’t know the Constitution from the Lord’s Prayer, enjoys it, and these you will always find in the Assembly; the one gabble, gabble, gabbling threadbare platitudes and “give-me-liberty-or-give-me-death” buncombe from morning till night, and the other asleep, with his slab-soled brogans set up like a couple of grave-stones on the top of his desk. [¶] Among the Commons in this Legislature are a number of Kanakas, with shrewd, intelligent faces, and a “gift of gab” that is appalling. The Nobles are able, educated, fine-looking men, who do not talk often, but when they do they generally say something—a remark which will not apply to all their white associates in the same house. If I were not ashamed to digress so often I would like to expatiate a little upon the noticeable fact that the nobility of this land, as a general thing, are distinguishable from the common herd by their large stature and commanding presence, and also set forth the theories in vogue for accounting for it, but for the present I will pass the subject by. centered In Session—Bill Ragsdale. [¶] At 11 a. m. His Royal Highness the President called the House to order. The roll-call was dispensed with for some reason or other, and the Chaplain, a venerable looking white man, offered up a prayer in the native tongue; and I must say that this curious language, with its numerous vowels and its entire absence of hissing sounds, fell very softly and musically from his lips. A white Chief Clerk read the Journal of the preceding day’s proceedings in English, and then handed the document to Bill Ragsdale, a “half white” (half white and half Kanaka), who translated and clattered it off in Kanaka with a volubility that was calculated to make a slow-spoken man like me distressingly nervous. [¶] Bill Ragsdale stands up in front of the Speaker’s pulpit, with his back against it, and fastens his quick black eye upon any member who rises, lets him say half a dozen sentences and then interrupts him, and repeats his speech in a loud, rapid voice, turning every Kanaka speech into English and every English speech into Kanaka, with a readiness and felicity of language that are remarkable—waits for another installment of talk from the member’s lips and goes on with his translation as before. His tongue is in constant motion from 11 in the forenoon till four in the afternoon, and why it does not wear out is the affair of Providence, not mine. There is a spice of deviltry in the fellow’s nature, and it crops out every now and then when he is translating the speeches of slow old Kanakas who do not understand English. Without departing from the spirit of a member’s remarks, he will, with apparent unconsciousness, drop in a little voluntary contribution occasionally in the way of a word or two that will make the gravest speech utterly ridiculous. He is careful not to venture upon such experiments, though, with the remarks of persons able to detect him. I noticed when he translated for His Excellency David Kalakaua, who is an accomplished English scholar, he asked, “Did I translate you correctly, your Excellency?” or something to that effect. The rascal. centered Familiar Characteristics. [¶] This Legislature is like all other Legislatures. A wooden-head gets up and proposes an utterly absurd something or other, and he and half a dozen other wooden-heads discuss it with windy vehemence for an hour, the remainder of the house sitting in silent patience the while, and then a sensible man—a man of weight—a big gun—gets up and shows the foolishness of the matter in five sentences; a vote is taken and the thing is tabled. Now, on one occasion, a Kanaka member, who paddled over here from some barren rock or other out yonder in the ocean—some scalliwag who wears nothing but a pair of socks and a plug hat when he is at home, or possibly is even more scantily arrayed in the popular malo—got up and gravely gave notice of a bill to authorize the construction of a suspension bridge from Oahu to Hawaii, a matter of a hundred and fifty miles! He said the natives would prefer it to the inter-island schooners, and they wouldn’t suffer from sea-  |  sickness on it. Up came Honorables Ku and Kulaui, and Kowkow and Kiwawhoo and a lot of other clacking geese, and harried and worried this notable internal improvement until some sensible person rose and choked them off by moving the previous question. Do not do an unjust thing now, and imagine Kanaka Legislatures do stupider things than other similar bodies. Rather blush to remember that once, when a Wisconsin Legislature had the affixing of a penalty for the crime of arson under consideration, a member got up and seriously suggested that when a man committed the damning crime of arson they ought either to hang him or make him marry the girl! To my mind the suspension bridge man was a Solomon compared to this idiot. [¶] [I shall have to stop at this point and finish this subject to-morrow. There is a villain over the way, yonder, who has been playing “Get out of the Wilderness” on a flute ever since I sat down here to-night—sometimes fast, sometimes slow, and always skipping the first note in the second bar—skipping it so uniformly that I have got to waiting and painfully looking out for it latterly. Human nature cannot stand this sort of torture. I wish his funeral was to come off at half-past eleven o’-clock to-morrow and I had nothing to do. I would attend it.] centered Explanatory. [¶] It has been six weeks since I touched a pen. In explanation and excuse I offer the fact that I spent that time (with the exception of one week) on the island of Maui. I only got back yesterday. I never spent so pleasant a month before, or bade any place good-bye so regretfully. I doubt if there is a mean person there, from the homeliest man on the island (Lewers) down to the oldest (Tallant). I went to Maui to stay a week and remained five. I had a jolly time. I would not have fooled away any of it writing letters under any consideration whatever. It will be five or six weeks before I write again. I sail for the island of Hawaii to-morrow, and my Maui notes will not be written up until I come back. indented from right Mark Twain. (SU) 
  Garden (C)  ●  garden (A) 
  eruption (C)  ●  irruption (A) 
  dress! (C)  ●  dress!— (A) 
  stove-pipe (C)  ●  stovepipe (A) 
  Majesty (C)  ●  majesty (A) 
  worshipper (C)  ●  worshiper (A) 
  four thousand dollars (C)  ●  $4,000 (A) 
  a hundred and fifty thousand dollars (C)  ●  $150,000 (A) 
  four thousand dollars (C)  ●  $4,000 (A) 
  Infantry.” (C)  ●  Infantry.  (A) 
  western (C)  ●  Western (A) 
  has (C)  ●  had (A) 
Textual Notes CHAPTER 67
 has] The emendation of the A reading, “had,” is a necessary correction of tense to make the verb conform with the others in the paragraph. The error was almost certainly compositorial.
Explanatory Notes CHAPTER 67
 I still quote from my journal . . . etc., etc.] Mark Twain based this portion of the text on his letter in the Sacramento Union of 20 June 1866, revising it for inclusion in Roughing It. This material is not found in either of Clemens’s extant Hawaiian notebooks, but it may derive from a missing notebook that he used from mid-April to mid-June 1866 (SLC 1866v; N&J1 , 100–101).
 

David Kalakaua (the King’s Chamberlain)] Kalakaua (1836–91) held the office of chamberlain and secretary to Kamehameha V at a salary of $2,500 per year. Clemens met Kalakaua early in his stay in the islands, when, on 3 April, he was among Kalakaua’s guests at a dinner in honor of James McBride, the American minister. Kalakaua was also [begin page 715] scheduled to accompany Clemens on a visit to Iolani Palace on 4 April (see the note at 462.4). Mark Twain described Kalakaua in a Union letter:

[He] is a man of fine presence, is an educated gentleman and a man of good abilities. He is approaching forty, I should judge—is thirty-five, at any rate. He is conservative, politic and calculating, makes little display, and does not talk much in the Legislature. He is a quiet, dignified, sensible man, and would do no discredit to the kingly office. (SLC 1866x)

Kalakaua, a descendant of ancient Hawaiian chiefs, became king in February 1874 after an abortive attempt to secure the throne in 1873. He reigned until his death in January 1891 in San Francisco (Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser: “The Budget,” 5 May 66, 1; “Audience at the Palace,” 28 July 66, 3; MTH , 31; L1 , 334; Withington, 229–34, 249, 275).

 

Prince William] As Kamehameha V’s cousin and the grandson of a half-brother of Kamehameha I, the popular William Charles Lunalilo (1835–74) was widely recognized as the likely successor to the throne. Mark Twain noted in a Union letter that Lunalilo was

of the highest blood in the kingdom—higher than the King himself, it is said. . . . Prince William is a man of fine, large build; is thirty-one years of age; is affable, gentlemanly, open, frank, manly; is as independent as a lord and has a spirit and a will like the old Conqueror himself. He is intelligent, shrewd, sensible—is a man of first rate abilities, in fact. . . . I like this man, and I like his bold independence, and his friendship for and appreciation of the American residents. (SLC 1866x)

In two articles entitled “The Sandwich Islands,” published in the New York Tribune on 6 and 9 January 1873, Mark Twain, although acknowledging Lunalilo’s excessive fondness for whiskey, urged that he be chosen as the next king. Lunalilo was elected—by popular and legislative vote—to succeed Kamehameha V in January 1873, but he reigned only briefly, until his death in February 1874 (SLC 1873b—c; N&J1 , 124; Kuykendall 1953, 240, 242–44; Withington, 229–39).

 The President of the Assembly, his Royal Highness M. Kekuanaoa,* . . . the King’s father] Mataio Kekuanaoa (1794–1868) and his wife, the high chiefess Kinau (see the note at 458.13), were the parents of Kamehameha IV, Kamehameha V, and Princess Victoria. Kekuanaoa served as governor of Oahu from his wife’s death in 1839 until 1864. In the administration of Kamehameha V, Kekuanaoa served as president of the legislature and of the Board of Education, and as kuhina nui (preeminent adviser and chief administrator) to the king, until the abolition of that office in 1864. Mark Twain may not have learned of Kekuanaoa’s death until the fall of 1871, after this chapter had already been set in type and it was too late to insert the words “Since dead” (457n.1) into the body of the text (“Death of His Highness Mataio Kekuanaoa,” Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser, 28 Nov 68, 2; Bailey, 225–26; [begin page 716] Kuykendall 1938, 64; Kuykendall 1953, 107, 126; Varigny, 138, 168; W. D. Alexander, 289).
 the Vice President (the latter a white man,)] The vice-president of the legislature was Honolulu merchant Godfrey Rhodes (1815–97), an Englishman resident in the islands since the 1840s who was known for his anti-American sentiments (Varigny, 252; Kuykendall 1953, 255; “Opening of the Legislature,” Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser, 28 Apr 66, 2).
 the honored guest of royalty in Europe] Kekuanaoa had been one of the party that accompanied Kamehameha II on an ill-fated voyage to England in 1823–24. Both Kamehameha and his favorite queen, Kamamalu, died of the measles before they could be received by King George IV, but others of the party, including Kekuanaoa, met with him in September 1824 (Kuykendall 1938, 76–79).
 his wife, who was a daughter of Kamehameha the Great] Kinau (d. 1839), whom Kekuanaoa married in October 1827, was a daughter of Kamehameha I. From June 1832 until her death she served as kuhina nui to Kamehameha III (Kuykendall 1938, 133–36; Bennett, 68–69).
 a popular belief that . . . your enemy can . . . pray you to death] This phenomenon—and the related ability to “die whenever they want to” (459.21–22)—was frequently reported by early visitors to the islands (Archibald Campbell, 172–73; Charles Samuel Stewart, 202–3; Dibble 1839, 61–62, 77–78; Jarves 1847, 24–25, 99; Bates, 396–97). Clemens’s interest in the subject is evidenced by an entry in one of his Hawaiian notebooks, as well as references in his Sandwich Islands lecture and in the fragments of a Sandwich Islands novel that he began in 1884 ( N&J1 , 117; SLC 1866kk, 1884a).
 the natives are able to lie down and die whenever they want to] Clemens witnessed what he thought was an instance of this phenomenon while staying with Samuel G. Wilder and his family on Oahu. When the family’s nursemaid died, he noted in his journal: “Her father died last week—nothing matter with the girl—just thought she was going to die” ( N&J1 , 128).
 the Great Shark God] Mark Twain identified the Great Shark God as “Kauhuhu” in his 1866 piece “A Strange Dream.” Kauhuhu was one of many powerful shark gods worshiped by the Hawaiians, a “fierce king shark of Maui who lives in a cave in Kipahulu and also has a home . . . on the windward side of Molokai” (SLC 1866t; Beckwith, 129).
 

a brown, stately dame . . . with nothing . . . but a “stove-pipe” hat . . . a fiery neck-tie and a striped vest] A similar description in Bates’s Sandwich Island Notes may have inspired Mark Twain:

When civilized habits first dawned upon them, their personal appearance was the most eccentric that can well be imagined. In coming to church on a Sunday, [begin page 717] one man would come clad in nothing but a coat buttoned up on his back instead of in front. The entire wardrobe of a second would be a ragged cravat, and a single strip of native cloth crossed over his loins, called a malo; that of a third, the malo, and a pair of high boots; that of a fourth, the malo, and a tattered palm-leaf hat that might have served some foreigner nearly a score of years; that of a fifth, a shirt, with a collar reaching his eyes and half way up the back of his head, and the malo. (Bates, 262)

 his royal Majesty the King] Kamehameha V (1830–72), known as Lot Kamehameha, reigned from 1863 until his death. Said to resemble his grandfather Kamehameha I, he was a capable and forceful administrator. Clemens was impressed with his abilities; in his 9 January 1873 Tribune article he described him as a “wise sovereign” who “tried hard to do well by his people, and succeeded. There was no trivial royal nonsense about him” (SLC 1873c). Clemens intended to meet Kamehameha V at Iolani Palace on 4 April 1866. Although he visited the palace, he apparently did not see the king, since he mentioned in 1873 that he only saw him “but once, . . . attending the funeral of his sister,” Princess Victoria Kamamalu (SLC 1873c; Bennett, 7; Kuykendall 1938, 27–28; Jarves 1844a, 59; Kuykendall 1953, 125–26; L1 , 334–35).
 with a New York detective’s income of thirty . . . thousand dollars a year from the . . . “royal domain.”] As Clemens correctly states, Kamehameha V had two sources of income for the period of 1866 through 1868: an annual salary of $17,500, and income from the Crown Lands amounting to about $20,000 a year (Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser: “Hawaiian Legislature,” 5 May 66, 3; “Report of the Minister of Finance to the Legislature of 1866,” 5 May 66, 4).
 two-story frame “palace.”] Iolani Palace, built in 1844–45, was a large square building with wide verandas on all sides. It was set in grounds “extensive enough to accommodate a village,” according to Mark Twain, and afforded a panoramic view of Honolulu (SLC 1866s). The original palace was replaced in 1879 by a much grander structure (Scott, 113).
 his Excellency the “royal Chamberlain” . . . the Commander-in-chief of the Household Troops, whose forces . . . under a corporal in other lands] Both of these titles belonged to the same man. David Kalakaua, the king’s chamberlain (see the note at 457.5–6), was also—as Mark Twain mentioned in his 6 January 1873 article in the New York Tribune—commander-in-chief of the Household Troops. Kalakaua, who held the rank of colonel, reportedly “took a special interest in military matters, and was fond of appearing in elaborate military uniforms. Being tall and well built, he modeled such uniforms with great distinction” (Kuykendall 1967, 13). The Household Troops, comprising one hundred native soldiers, constituted the standing army and were charged with guarding the palace, the prison, and the treasury (SLC 1873c; Zambucka 1983, 10; Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser: [begin page 718] “Audience at the Palace,” 28 July 66, 3; “Majority Report of the Military Committee,” 23 May 68, 4; “The Mutiny at the Barracks,” 13 Sept 73, 2).
 the royal Steward and the Grand Equerry in Waiting . . . the First Gentleman of the Bed-chamber] These positions were not listed in the official government budget, and may have been invented by Mark Twain to add color to his description of how the “grown folk . . . play ‘empire’ ” (462.2–4).
 his Excellency the Prime Minister, a renegade American . . . his Excellency the Imperial Minister of Finance . . . all for four thousand dollars a year and unimaginable glory] There was at this time no official position of prime minister in the Hawaiian government. The “renegade American from New Hampshire” and the “Imperial Minister of Finance” were in fact the same person—Charles Coffin Harris (1821–81), the minister of finance and Kamehameha V’s closest adviser. Harris was a native of New Hampshire who settled in the Sandwich Islands in 1850, practiced law, engaged in business, and, in 1862, began an association with the government that culminated in his becoming chief justice in 1877. His salary was $4,000 in 1866. As a member of the Hawaiian Reformed Catholic Church, he was considered an enemy of the American Protestant mission. Mark Twain first expressed his violent antipathy toward Harris—after observing him during a visit to the Hawaiian legislature—in a Union letter published on 21 June 1866; he continued his ridicule in several subsequent newspaper letters (SLC 1866w, 1866z–aa; see also the remark about Harris’s vanity at 469.20–25). In a letter of 20 December 1870 to Albert Francis Judd of Honolulu, Clemens mentioned his plan to “do up the Islands & Harris” in some form in “2 or 3” years (PH in CtY-BR, in MTH , 467). Beyond his scathing remarks in Roughing It, however, plus similar comments in his 9 January 1873 Tribune article, Mark Twain is not known to have written anything further about Harris (“The Late Justice Harris of Hawaii,” New York Times, 27 July 81, 3; Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser: “ ‘the Budget,’ ” 5 May 66, 1; “Estimated Expenditures for the Two Years Ending March 31, 1870,” 25 Apr 68, 3; “Death of the Chief Justice,” 9 July 81, 2; “Death of the Late Chancellor,” Friend 30 [1 Aug 81]: 69; Kuykendall 1953, 36, 96–98, 126–28, 218; MTH , 27–28; SLC 1867i, 1873c).
 a million dollars of public money a year . . . the “national debt” (of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars,)] Mark Twain’s figure is more than double the Sandwich Islands’ actual budget. The two-year budget for 1866 to 1868 was $826,823, and for the following two years, $997,680. His figure for the national debt, however, is more accurate: in April 1866 it stood at $166,649, and in March 1870 at $112,000 (Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser: “ ‘the Budget,’ ” 5 May 66, 1; [begin page 719] “Report of the Minister of Finance to the Legislature of 1866,” 5 May 66, 4; “Our National Finances,” 21 May 70, 2).
 his Excellency the Minister of War, who holds sway over the royal armies] This title was Mark Twain’s invention: although there was a Department of War, it had no minister. Charles de Varigny (1829–99), as minister of foreign affairs, had overall charge of the Hawaiian military, which consisted of the Household Troops and various volunteer companies. Varigny was born at Versailles, settled in the Sandwich Islands in 1855, and received his first government appointment in 1864. Mark Twain described him as a “sensible, unpretentious” man, but added: “If Varigny were as hopelessly bad as his English pronunciation, nothing but a special intervention of Providence could save him from perdition hereafter” (SLC 1866w; Varigny, 255, 258, 261; Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser: “ ‘the Budget,’ ” 5 May 66, 1; “Estimated Expenditures for the Two Years Ending March 31, 1870,” 25 Apr 68, 3).
 some venerable swivels on Punch-Bowl Hill] Puahi, or Punch-Bowl Hill, was an extinct crater half a mile behind Honolulu. According to Jarves, it “obtained its soubriquet in times not quite as temperate as the present; its shape internally is much like a bowl, being a gradual and uniform hollow” (Jarves 1844a, 23). Bates described the battery on its summit as consisting of “eleven guns, pointing different ways, at irregular distances from each other. . . . They rest on carriages in a state of rapid decay” (Bates, 100).
 his Excellency the Minister of the Navy—a nabob who rules the “royal fleet,” (a steam-tug and a sixty-ton schooner.)] There was no naval ministry; responsibility for a tugboat in Honolulu harbor, the Pele, fell to the minister of the interior—F. W. Hutchinson, an Englishman. The Pele, launched in 1856, was in service at Honolulu for thirty years. In June 1866, during Clemens’s visit, it was fitted with a “small rifle of suitable caliber” so that it could be classed as a gunboat (Mifflin Thomas, 41, 221 n. 30). Nothing is known about the “sixty-ton schooner” (“ ‘the Budget,’ ” Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser, 5 May 66, 1; Varigny, 195; W. D. Alexander, 329).
 his Grace the Lord Bishop of Honolulu . . . a cheap readymade Bishop from England to take charge] In 1860 Kamehameha IV, motivated in part by a desire to reinforce the Hawaiian monarchy, petitioned Queen Victoria to establish a branch of the Anglican (Episcopal) church in the Sandwich Islands. Despite protests from the American missionary community, the “Hawaiian Reformed Catholic Church” was created. Thomas Nettleship Staley (1823–98), a recently consecrated English bishop, arrived in Honolulu in October 1862 to serve as its head. Within a few weeks, Staley had confirmed as members [begin page 720] of his church Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma, as well as other high chiefs and government figures, including Robert C. Wyllie, then the minister of foreign affairs, and Charles Harris, the attorney general. Despite some initial success, Staley and his bishopric proved unpopular, rousing antagonism from the already well-established Protestant and Roman Catholic missions. He resigned in 1870. In his Union letters Mark Twain sided with the American Protestant missionaries against Staley, condemning his dismissal of the missionary effort and his support of “barbarous” native rituals. He described the bishop as “a weak, trivial-minded man,” spiteful, pretentious, and vain (SLC 1866z, 1866x, 1866aa; Korn, 333; N&J1 , 134–35).
 his Excellency the Minister of Public Instruction] There had been no such minister since 1855. At the time of Clemens’s visit, educational matters were handled by a five-member Board of Education, whose president was Mataio Kekuanaoa (see the note at 457.6–9), and an inspector general of schools, Abraham Fornander (Kuykendall 1953, 106–8).
 their Excellencies the Governors of Oahu, Hawaii, etc.] The governor of Oahu was John Owen Dominis (1832–91), son of an American sea captain who had settled in the Sandwich Islands in 1837. The island of Hawaii had been governed since 1855 by the high chiefess Ruth Keelikolani (1826–83) (Gasinski, 23, 26; Scott, 60; Korn, 303).
 their Excellencies the Envoy Extraordinary . . . of the French; her British Majesty’s Minister; the Minister Resident, of the United States] The French minister was M. Desnoyers. The acting British commissioner was William L. Green, a prominent Honolulu businessman. The American minister, James McBride, was awaiting the arrival of his successor, General Edward M. McCook, appointed in March 1866. McCook did not arrive in Honolulu until 22 July, three days after Clemens’s departure for San Francisco (Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser: “Programme of the Funeral,” 30 June 66, 2; “Presentation at the Palace” and “British Commissioner,” 8 Sept 66, 3; “H. B. M. Acting Commissioner,” 6 May 65, 2; “Passengers,” 1 Dec 66, 2; Kuykendall 1953, 206, 209, 291 n. 40; L1 , 335 n. 2, 343 n. 4).
 whose population falls absolutely short of sixty thousand souls] The 1866 census reported a population of 62,959, of whom 58,765 were native Hawaiians (Bennett, 59; see also the note at 454.11–13).