If anyone has visited this site in a while you will probably notice a change. For several years it has been running on a cpanel site that favors Wordpress over Drupal. I've finally been able to port it to Upsun. Also, the Drupal version has been kicked up a couple of notches. Granted I've been spending most of my computer time on Twain's Geography and not this "vanity" site.
Sometime in May or June of 1853 seventeen year old Sam Clemens left home for the first time. He departed the small Mississippi River town of Hannibal, Missouri, later reflected in stories of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, boarded a packet steamer bound for St. Louis, and began a life of travel. Packet steamers were vessels that transported both freight and passengers. Some packets were faster but not so reliable; some were larger but also slower; some were more luxurious, but carried less freight.
Mark Twain and his friend, the reverend Joseph Twichell, visited Bermuda fro May 17 to 21 of 1877. They spend a good deal of time walking along the roads, viewing the countryside. At one point they stopped at a cottage for a drink of water and conversation with a man whose name was not Mr. Smith. He had a sorry tale to tell of his neighbors and their dead cats and the litigation caused by the cats demise.
The illustration is actually from "A Tramp Abroad" but I thought it an appropriate caricature of the two men.
Mark Twain travels through the dark streets of Bombay after night fall. The streets are full of sleeping figures stretched out on the ground, wrapped in blankets with barely enough room for the carriage. He attends a betrothal celebration featuring Nautch dancers and musicians. This occurs before the plague hits the city but at the time of his writing this chapter the city is decimated with the plague. Twain includes a passage from "Eothen" by Alexander William Kinglake, imagining the onset of the plague. He writes "Kinglake was in Cairo many years ago dur
From Daniel Morley McKeithan’s book, “Traveling with the Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain’s Original Reports from Europe and the Holy Land”, 1958, I’ve abstracted the letters and provided pdf clips from the archived newspapers. My copy of McKeithan’s book is a used copy found on Amazon. From a signature on the front cover page I can see that it was a Christmas gift (1958) from Frances. I am unable to discern the recipients name. The Innocents Abroad was published in 1869.
Twain attends the awarding of Knight Commander of the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India to Thakor Sahib Shri Sir Mansinhji Sursinhji. He is impressed with the pageantry and color of the event then goes into a long exposition of the superiority of a dark complexion over sallow white complexions.
Mark Twain visits the seat of English governance in Bombay; the palace of and Indian Royal; and the place of Parsee funerals, the Tower of Silence.
The seven islands that constitute Mumbai were originally home to communities of Koli people, who originated in Gujarat in prehistoric times. For centuries, the islands were under the control of successive indigenous empires before being ceded to the
Subscribe to
© 2025 B Scott Holmes, All rights reserved.
