November 20 Wednesday – The Mahinapua sailed through the Taranaki Bight on the west coast of North Island. Passengers were unable to see Mt. Egmont due to heavy mist. The ship arrived in Auckland around 6 p.m. and the Clemens party took rooms at the Star Hotel on Albert St., Auckland’s “leading hotel.” Sam met an Englishman, “a fine large Briton a little frosted with age,” who had fought in the West during the American Civil War and was now working at the hotel as a porter. An interview was conducted by a reporter with the New Zealand Herald on scenery, impressions, and linguistic “Americanisms,” while Sam paced the floor. Other reporters were possibly present; the interview in the Herald ran on Nov. 21 [Shillingsburg, “Down Under” 25; At Home 154-5].

Sam’s notebook: contains the title of Olive Schreiner’s best-selling book, The Story of an African Farm [Gribben 608; NB 34 TS 40]. See also June 28, 1896 entry. Parsons gives Schreiner credit for greatly influencing Sam’s view of the S. African Boers [“Traveler in S.A.” 32]. Other books noted on this date, George McCall Theal’s South Africa: The Cape Colony, Natal, Orange Free State, South African Republic, and All Other Territories South of the Zambesi (1894) [Gribben 699: TS 34 NB 40]; Alfred Russel Wallace’s Australasia (1878) [Gribben 733] (see also Nov. 1896 entry).