The trip from San Francisco to Sacramento was made by river boat, Mark Twain choosing this type of transportation rather than stagecoach not only for nostalgic reasons, remembering his Mississippi steamboat days, but because it was more comfortable, more scenic, and because the boat had a bar.
Metropolitan Hall in Sacramento on October 11
From Paul Fatout, "'The City of Saloons,' as Mark Twain called it, was unpleasantly warm, and the place was torn up by mountainous piles of earth on the unfinished grade of the Central Pacific Railroad. Inhabitants scrambled up and down inclined ramps that, said he, gave 'infinite variety to a promenade.' ... For several days he trudged about disrupted streets, repeating a pattern of pre-lecture events similar to that of San Francisco."