Twain opines on Scottish pronunciation and invents a couplet he attributes to Robert Burns. The ship passes through the Horne or Futuna Islands, where many Islanders were "recruited" to work in Queensland. Twain finds William Wawn's book, (My video of a portion of the book)
This is a portion of The Morals Lectures. The lectures delivered during the Following the Equator tour. This is from a transcript published at http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/onstage/morals.html
At sea en route from Honolulu to Fiji: Lunar eclipse viewed on September 3; the ship crosses the equator near the International Date Line September 5 and the Date Line September 8. They skip September 9 and go on immediately to September 10. This has both physical and spiritual repercussions. The passengers and ship's officers play Horse Billiards (Shuffleboard or Shovel Board). The ship's crew has fun at the passengers expense with deck washing and surface painting.
This would probably be re-titled as Crossing the International Date Line but Equator sounds better and he crossed them both a just about the same time.
Sam Clemens is new to the American West and resolves to own a horse. He buys the wrong one.
On the seventh day, August 30, Mark Twain with wife, Livy, and daughter, Clara arrive at Honolulu but cannot leave the ship due to a cholera epidemic. He reminiscences about his earlier visit to the islands in 1866, writes of King Kamehameha I and his son Liholiho. He goes on about corpses in a sunken passenger ship, American missionaries and the leper colony on Molokai.
(I love that song) There has been an interesting and fundamental discussion on the Anthro-L listserv email list recently. Again, it is epistemology. Do you "believe in" evolution? Do you "believe in" gravity? What it comes down to is the willingness to "act as if" [evolution|gravity|etc] is true, just as it seems necessary to act as if you have faith to have faith. A good illustration is the electron. No one has actually seen an electron, you know, with their own eyes except perhaps with the help of some psychoactive substance.
Anecdotes and stories to fill the time at sea. The Boomerang - truth or a lie, A Brahman's memory, U.S. Grant's memory, and a story with no satisfactory conclusion. About four days out from Victoria we plunged into hot weather, and all the male passengers put on white linen clothes. One or two days later we crossed the 25th parallel of north latitude, and then, by order, the officers of the ship laid away their blue uniforms and came out in white linen ones. All the ladies were in white by this time.
A man may have no bad habits and have worse. --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
The Clemens family leaves Paris for New York and the onset of Twains' most extensive lecture tour ever. He "had grown to hate lecturing" but if he was to settle his debts, it was necessary. Livy and Clara would accompany him on this trip. Suzy and Jean would remain with their aunt at Quarry Farm, near Elmira, New York. He would never see Suzy again.
