🇺🇸 Hawaii (April 2026 Postcard)

Mark Twain’s Love Affair With Hawaiʻi: Yesterday, Today, Forever

When Mark Twain stepped off the steamer Ajax in December of 1866, he wasn’t yet the literary giant we know today. He was a 31‑year‑old newspaper correspondent under contract to write a series of travel dispatches about the “Sandwich Islands,” as Hawaiʻi was then known. What he found was more than material for a few columns – it was a place that captured his imagination for the rest of his life.

Twain spent four months exploring Oʻahu, Maui, and Hawaiʻi Island. He rode horseback across volcanic landscapes, wandered through sugar plantations, swam in warm turquoise waters, and met the people who shaped the islands’ culture. He later said that those months were “the happiest days of my life.”

What’s remarkable is how much of Twain’s Hawaiʻi still exists today. Sure, the islands have grown, modernized, and welcomed millions of visitors since his time. But the essence – the lush valleys, the volcanic drama, the ocean’s impossible shades of blue, and the aloha spirit – remains deeply recognizable.

Below is one of Twain’s most vivid passages about Hawaiʻi. It captures the islands’ beauty, their cultural richness, and the sense of awe that still hits travelers the moment they step off the plane.

“No alien land in all the world has any deep, strong charm for me but that one; no other land could so longingly and so beseechingly haunt me, sleeping and waking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done. Other things leave me, but it abides; other things change, but it remains the same.

The skies of Hawaiʻi are the fairest I have ever seen. The air is soft, warm, and balmy, and laden with the fragrance of flowers. The sea is of the richest blue, flecked with whitecaps that sparkle like diamonds in the sun. The mountains rise abruptly from the shore, clothed in green to their very summits, and cleft by deep valleys where waterfalls leap from precipice to precipice in snowy cascades.

I have seen the sunrise on Haleakalā, when the great crater was filled with rolling billows of cloud, and the sun came up behind them like a king from his palace. I have seen the moonlight on Waikīkī, when the surf was breaking gently on the reef, and the palm trees were whispering together in the night wind. I have seen the volcano of Kīlauea, when the lava was boiling and spouting like a mighty fountain of fire, and the red glare lit up the heavens for miles around.

But it is not the beauty of the islands alone that wins the heart. It is the people. They are the kindest, gentlest, most hospitable folk that ever lived. Their welcome is warm, their laughter is ready, and their hearts are open. They have a word — ‘aloha’ — which means love, affection, kindness, compassion, and more besides. It is the very soul of their life.

I left Hawaiʻi long ago, but I have never forgotten it. It is a place where one may rest from the cares of the world, where the days glide by in peace and contentment, and where nature is always at her loveliest. If I could live anywhere in the world, I would choose Hawaiʻi; and if I could return there once more, I would count it the greatest happiness of my life.”

Mark Twain (From “Letters From the Sandwich Islands,” 1866–67)

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