April 14 Tuesday – The Clemens family was at sea on the S.S. Wardha, bound for Port Louis, Mauritius. Sam wrote in FE:

April 14. It turns out that the astronomical apprentice worked off a section of the Milky Way on me for the Magellan Clouds. A man of more experience in the business showed one of them to me last night. It was small and faint and delicate, and looked like the ghost of a bunch of white smoke left floating in the sky by an exploded bombshell [nebula] [ch LXII 617].