Twain is in Christchurch, New Zealand. He learns of Maori migration legends and their artistry and puzzles over the extinction of the moa. Woman had achieved the right to vote just two years prior and he ponders their superiority over men. The American edition of his book includes a scathing expose' on the Union company that owned the ship, the Flora - a cattle scow, on which he sailed from Lyttleton to Wellington.
Mark Twain takes the train from Timaru to Oamaru, in New Zealand. He is impressed. “They are not English, and not American; they are the Swiss combination of the two. A narrow and railed porch along the side, where a person can walk up and down. A lavatory in each car. This is progress; this is nineteenth-century spirit.” This leads him into a satire on his train ride from Maryborough and the hotel in Maryborough. “The government chooses to do its railway business in its own way, and it doesn't know as much about it as the French.
This chapter touches several interesting points. The Clemens group takes ship from Tasmania to New Zealand, landing in Bluff. Twain notes that Bluff is the same distance south of the equator as Quebec is north, about 47 degrees, yet he is perplexed at the great difference in climate between the two places. Twain then comments on the rabbit infestation of New Zealand. Rabbits were first introduced for commercial purposes but it soon became apparent that they were/are destructive to the native habitat.
October 31 Thursday –
The Clemens party boarded the Union Co.’s 2,598-ton ship Mararoa, to sail down the eastern coast of Tasmania to Hobart, then to New Zealand. Malcom Ross, a journalist, was on board and gave Sam several books on Tasmanian aboriginal history. Other passengers included Irish nationalist Michael Davitt, and Sam’s agent Carlyle G. Smythe.
November 1 Friday – Sam’s notebook:
I received an email from someone that currently lives in this area, which prompted me to look further into its history. Of particular significance, especially in regards to current land grabs effecting Native Americans of today, and everyone else that needs to drink the water here, is the Horse Creek Treaty of 1851 - officially known as the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851.
Sam Clemens (Mark Twain) has spent two days in Salt Lake City, en route to Carson City, and now recognizes that he is, indeed, in a new land. He experiences a form of culture shock based on the economic realities of long distance freightage.. He discovers he is an emigrant in a foreign land.
These two explorers crossed the Great Plains of North America one year apart, Burton in 1860 and Clemens in 1861. I have clipped large sections of Burton's book, "The City of the Saints, and Across the Rocky Mountains to California" for my web site project "Mark Twain's Geography" as Burton visited the same Overland Coach stations as did Clemens. Mark Twain, in "Roughing It", is very sparse in his descriptions of the stations and mentions only a few by name.
Twain's party crossed the Cascades, on the switchbacks, in about two hours. It took six more hours to reach Seattle. Native Americans were pretty much gone from the area, the Treaty of Point Elliott was one of the major instruments in their removal and confinement in reservations. Some did, however, retain fishing rights. Seattle had become the western terminus of the Great Western railway, reaching the city in 1893. Four transcontinental railways jostled for position along the waterfront.
August 6th, Twain's party departs Missoula on the Northern Pacific railway. This particular train had two special cars attached carrying the newly appointed receiver for the bankrupt railroad and the Supreme Court judge who had appointed him. Twain did not join them. They traveled through the Bitterroot Valley, ancestral home of the Salish people. They passed the site of the "starvation winter" of 1883-1884, and on through the Flathead Indian Reservation.
Twain's party departed Great Falls at 7:35 am, Thursday, August 1st, 1895. They rode the Montana Central Railway, part of the Great Northern Railroad owned by J.J. Hill. Hill needed to connect his interests in Great Falls with the mining operations in Helena, Butte and the smelter in Anaconda. The railroad followed part of the old Mullan Military Road. Along the way we examine the fate of Egbert Malcolm Clarke and one of the most egregious actions taken by the U.S. Army against Native American peoples, the Marias massacre. Twain gave a lecture that evening in Butte.