November 5, 1895

This train-express goes twenty and one-half miles an hour, schedule time; but it is fast enough, the outlook upon sea and land is so interesting, and the cars so comfortable. 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.

November 5 & 6, 1895
See Chapter 30, Following the Equator

November 6, 1895
Chapter 30, Following the Equator

November 6. A lovely summer morning; brilliant blue sky. A few miles out from Invercargill, passed through vast level green expanses snowed over with sheep. Fine to see. The green, deep and very vivid sometimes; at other times less so, but delicate and lovely. A passenger reminds me that I am in "the England of the Far South."

November 6 - 9, 1895
Chapter 30, Following the Equator

Dunedin, same date. The town justifies Michael Davitt's praises. The people are Scotch. They stopped here on their way from home to heaven—thinking they had arrived. The population is stated at 40,000, by Malcolm Ross, journalist; stated by an M. P. at 60,000. A journalist cannot lie.

November 9 - 11, 1895

Later in the morning the Clemens party left Dunedin to Timaru (pop.11,000; halfway to Christchurch), perhaps stopping for tea at the Oamaru station; Livy and Clara continued on to Christchurch, N.Z. (MTDBD)

November 9, 11 & 12, 1895

November 11 Monday – Sam backtracked from Timaru to Oamaru by train, arriving in the early afternoon, and was driven around Claremont by a local, W. Evans. He got a look at the steamer Flora, in which he would sail from Christchurch to Wellington a week later. (MTDBD)

November 9-11, 1895

November 10 Sunday – In Timaru Sam was driven around the town and down to the beach, where he viewed the Elginshire, shipwrecked on May 9, 1892. He wrote, “big flowering mills; wonderful opaline clouds...a pretty town & cosy pretty homes all around it. Plenty of greenery & flowers...broom & gorse.” (MTDBD)

November 12, 1895

November 12 Tuesday – Four miles outside of Oamaru, Sam lunched with John F. Miles, probably on his sheep ranch. Afterward Sam and Carlyle G. Smythe traveled the 150 miles to Christchurch, N.Z., “the city of the plains.” (MTDBD)

November 12-16, 1895

Chapter 32, Following the Equator

November 16-17, 1895

Chapter 32, Following the Equator

Sunday, 17th. Sailed last night in the Flora, from Lyttelton. So we did. I remember it yet. The people who sailed in the Flora that night may forget some other things if they live a good while, but they will not live long enough to forget that. The Flora is about the equivalent of a cattle-scow; but when the Union Company find it inconvenient to keep a contract and lucrative to break it, they smuggle her into passenger service, and "keep the change."

November 18, 1895

Chapter 33, Following the Equator

We soon reached the town of Nelson, and spent the most of the day there, visiting acquaintances and driving with them about the garden—the whole region is a garden, excepting the scene of the "Maungatapu Murders," of thirty years ago. That is a wild place—wild and lonely; an ideal place for a murder. It is at the base of a vast, rugged, densely timbered mountain.