Television news reports this week of lava bubbling in Halemaumau crater on the Big Island reminded me of a famous person who came to the volcano in 1866 and wrote eloquently about it for a mainland newspaper. The writer was Mark Twain.

I’m sure most of my readers know he visited the Sandwich Isles, as he called them, but they might not know Hawaii played a pivotal role in his career and earned an enduring place in his heart.

When Samuel Langhorne Clemens came to Hawaii in 1866, he was just a lad of 30. He was still years from publishing "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (1876) and "Huckleberry Finn" (1885).

Those two books brought him international acclaim, but his writing about Hawaii for The Sacramento Union and the 100 talks he later gave about Hawaii made him famous.

I was surprised to learn, in the course of researching this article, that Twain applied for a job at the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, the predecessor of this paper. He met with the founder and editor, Henry Whitney, but Whitney already had a writer. It was a small staff then.

Twain climbed the slopes of Diamond Head, tried surfing, traveled to Haleakala and then to the volcano on the Big Island, Hawaii’s original tourist attraction, which was drawing crowds as early as the 1820s.

Twain stayed at the Volcano House on June 3.

"The surprise of finding a good hotel in such an outlandish spot startled me considerably more than the volcano did," Twain wrote. "The house is neat, roomy, well furnished and well kept.

"After a hearty supper, we waited until it was thoroughly dark and then started to the crater.

"We arrived at the little thatched lookout house," Twain continued. "We rested our elbows on the railing in front and looked over the wide crater and down over the sheer precipice at the seething fires beneath us.

"The first glance revealed a scene of wild beauty. There was a heavy fog over the crater and it was splendidly illuminated by the glare from the fires below.

"We arrived just at the right moment to see it under full blast. The illumination was two miles wide and a mile high. The floor of the abyss was ringed and streaked and striped with a thousand branching streams of liquid and gorgeously brilliant fire!

"Here and there were gleaming holes twenty feet in diameter, broken in the dark crust, and in them the melted lava — the color a dazzling white just tinged with yellow — was boiling and surging furiously.

"From these holes branched numberless bright torrents in many directions, like the spokes of a lady’s fan, and kept a tolerably straight course for a while and then swept round in huge rainbow curves, or made a long succession of sharp angles, which looked precisely like the fiercest jagged lightning.

"Every now and then masses of the dark crust broke away and floated slowly down these streams like rafts down a river.

"Little fountains boiled and coughed and sputtered, and discharged sprays of stringy red fire ten to fifteen feet into the air, along with a shower of brilliant white sparks."

It’s the most eloquent description of the volcano I’ve ever read.

After four months in the islands, Twain left for California. His 25 articles in The Sacramento Union fascinated readers there, and he decided to embark on the lecture circuit to earn money.

He booked San Francisco’s largest theater for the night of Oct. 2, 1866. His handbills and newspaper ads, said:

A SPLENDID ORCHESTRA
Is in town, but has not been engaged.

ALSO, A DEN OF FEROCIOUS WILD BEASTS
Will be on exhibition in the next block.

MAGNIFICENT FIREWORKS
Were in contemplation for this occasion, but the idea has been abandoned.

Admission one dollar. The doors open at seven. The Trouble to begin at 8 o’clock.

For more than 75 minutes, Twain brought the faraway islands to life. The audience listened, laughed and cheered. It was a "brilliant success," said the Evening Bulletin the next day.

He earned the equivalent of more than $6,000 in today’s dollars. In the next few months, Twain gave more than 100 talks about Hawaii. It was great publicity for the kingdom, but more important for Twain, it got his career on track. He had found his voice.

Once the beauty of the islands and its people had embedded itself in his heart, he was never able to forget it.

"No alien land in all the world has any deep strong charm for me but that one," Twain said. "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. For me the balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing of its surfbeat is in my ear.

"I can see its garlanded crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits floating like islands above the cloud rack. I can feel the spirit of its woodland solitudes. I can hear the splash of its brooks. In my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that perished twenty years ago."

In 1908 the forerunner of the Hawaii Visitors Bureau sent Twain a koa mantlepiece for his new home in Connecticut, to show its appreciation for all he had done for Hawaii. It arrived for his 73rd birthday.

Mark Twain wrote a letter of thanks, saying "it will be a great pleasure to me, daily to have, under my eyes, this lovely reminder of the loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored in any ocean, and I beg to thank the committee for providing me that pleasure."

Bob Sigall, author of the "Companies We Keep" books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories each Friday of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@Yahoo.com.