November 16 Saturday – In Christchurch, N.Z., Sam lunched with the Canterbury Club. Joseph Kinsey and daughter May went with the Clemens party to Lyttelton, 12 miles on the train. The Clemenses carried 35 gifts including Maori artifacts. Kinsey also gave Sam a stuffed platypus (ornithorhyncus). Kinsey took photographs in Christchurch and would send them to the Clemenses in Wellington. At midnight they sailed in the Union Company’s Flora for Wellington. The ship was crowded due to “Anniversary Day” in Canterbury. Sam called it “the foulest I was ever in,” which included a lot of decrepit or spartan vessels [Shillingsburg, “Down Under” 25; At Home 150-1].

The Flora is about the equivalent of a cattle-scow…The passengers bore with meekness the cheat which had been put upon them, and made no complaint….The first officer told me that the Flora was privileged to carry 125 passengers. She must have had all of 200 on board…If the Flora had gone down that night, half the people on board would have been wholly without means of escape….I had a cattle-stall in the main stable….The place was as dark as the soul of the Union Company, and smelt like a kennel [FE ch XXXII 301-2].

Sam inscribed a copy of P&P to Dorothy Fisher: To Dorothy Fisher in pleasant remembrance of hours spent in her father’s house — / from / Mark Twain / Nov. 16/95 [MTP].