February 4 Tuesday – In Allahabad, India, Sam was up at dawn. When Livy and Clara were ready, they took a drive.

In the early brightness we made a long drive out to the Fort [built by Akbar, the Mogul emperor in the 16th C.]. Part of the way was beautiful. It led under stately trees and through groups of native houses and by the usual village well, where the picturesque gangs are always flocking to and fro and laughing and chattering….

Then we struck into the hot plain, and found the roads crowded with pilgrims of both sexes, for one of the great religious fairs of India was being held, just beyond the Fort, at the junction of the sacred rivers, the Ganges and the Jumna [FE ch XLIX 468-9].

Parsons writes of Sam at the Fort, where the Great Mutiny took place in 1857, with the defense of the fort by English and loyal Sikhs:

From the ramparts of the Fort he gazed at the confluence of the pale blue Jumna and the mud-yellow Ganges. But he failed to make out the third sacred stream, the Saraswati, although he seemed to have entered subterranean shrines where the hidden river is said to ooze out of the rocky walls [“MT India” 82].

In the afternoon the Clemens party started for Benares, some 90 miles from Allahabad. Sam wrote:

The journey to Benares was all in daylight, and occupied but a few hours. It was admirably dusty. The dust settled upon you in a thick ashy layer and turned you into a faker, with nothing lacking to the role but the cow manure and the sense of holiness. There was a change of cars about mid-afternoon at Moghul-serai — if that was the name — and a wait of two hours there for the Benares train [FE ch L 475].

Parsons:

The day of the carriage excursion to the Fort, Mark Twain also covered the 72 miles to Benares by the East Indian and the Oudh and Rohilkhand Railways. Although there was a two-hour wait in the mid-afternoon (probably at Mirzapur), with a change to the Benares train, and a 45 minute wait at Moghi Serai, a junction outside the holy city, there was so much to engage his eye that Twain thought the journey took only a few hours, being too short if anything. From the Kasi Station there was a long drive to the hotel in the western outskirts of Benares and then a mile beyond to the bungalow annex which the Clemenses were to have entirely to themselves [“MT India” 82]. Note: Parsons gives 72 miles to Benares, while Ahluwalia estimates “about” 90 miles.

Sam’s notebook:

Feb. 4, 2.10 p.m. Station 9 m W of Benares. Change cars. There 2 hours. Wonderful crowd of natives — hundreds and hundreds. / Thought this would all become commonplace in a week: 3 weeks of it have only enhanced its fascinations. I think I shd always like to wait an hour for my train in India… [NB 36 TS 37].