Nothing much about the tour, Mark Twain recalls a fox hunt and the master of hounds he had meet some two decades earlier while in England. He also recounts an experience with the customs officer while entering Italy to take up residence in Florence. He had a letter from the Consul General that eased his passage, and allowed his tobacco through.

On a train, Twain met a man that came from England when he was 20 hoping to earn £200 within 5 years.  Twain then lears the man helped discover copper mines and is "rich enough to buy a city".  Twain also meets a man trying to corner the kangaroo leather crop for American shoes.  In regards to religions in Australia:  About 64 roads to the other world. You see how healthy the religious atmosphere is. Anything can live in it. Agnostics, Atheists, Freethinkers, Infidels, Mormons, Pagans, Indefinites they are all there.

Australia is responsible for a tenth of all British trade yet its population counts for four million of the emoire's 400 million people.  Twain takes a 17 hour train ride from Melbourne to Adelaide.  He meets a judge traveling from Sydney to Broken Hill, both in New South Wales. Although the towns are but 700 miles apart, the judge travels 2000 miles, through Victoria and South Australia, to get there.  Mark Twain is amazed at the tracking skills of the Australian aborigines.

Mark Twain is welcome in Melbourne even though there is a problem between the US and Britain, Venezuela's border with British Guiana.  The Melbourne Cup, a horse race run on Guy Fawkes' Day, is reportedly Australia's biggest annual event.

Twain is in the town of Wagga-Wagga and tells the story of the Sir Roger Tichborne impostor, a local butcher by the name of Arthur Orton.  In Melbourne Twain tries to identify an impostor of himself, reported dead  while on a lecture tour of Australia.  The resolution of this mystery occurs in chapter 25.

Twain is too ill to visit Queensland, rather he takes the train to Melbourne.  Because of differences in railway track gauges passengers and freight need to be transferred to different trains.  Twain was required to do this at Albury.