I've been reading, and mapping locations from a book about the Queensland/Kanaka trade, written by the captain of one of the ships used to "recruit" Kanakas to work the sugar cane fields of Queensland, Australia, _The South Sea islanders and the Queensland labour trade_ by William T. Wawn.
Twain writes about the "recruiting" of islanders as agricultural workers in Queensland, Australia. He references Captain Wawn's book The South Sea Islanders and the Queensland Labour Trade: A Record of Voyages and Experiences in the Western Pacific, from 1875 to 1891 but suggests reading it along a pamphlet written by the missionary William Gray.
Wednesday, September 11, 1895. Made port at Suva, the capital of the Fiji Islands.. After dinner I found in the billiard-room a resident whom I had known somewhere else in the world, and presently made some new friends and drove with them out into the country to visit his Excellency the head of the State. Fiji's last king ceded the islands to Britain, 10 October 1874, in order to prevent an American occupation.
On the Following the Equator tour, Twain made port here on Wednesday September 11, 1895. They spent had a dinner on land and visited with "the head of the state" then made sail again.
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)
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 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
International Date Line at 180 deg
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.
Honolulu means "sheltered harbor" or "calm port." The old name is said to be Kou, a district roughly encompassing the area from Nuuanu Avenue to Alakea Street and from Hotel Street to Queen Street which is the heart of the present downtown district. The city has been the capital of the Hawaiian Islands since 1845 and gained historical recognition following the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan near the city on December 7, 1941. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honolulu
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.
