April 16 Thursday – The best account of the Clemens party reaching Mauritius and traveling to the village of Curepipe, which Parsons calls a “mountain health resort,” where they would rest twelve days, is in FE:

Thursday, April 16. Went ashore in the forenoon at Port Louis, a little town, but with the largest variety of nationalities and complexions we have encountered yet. French, English, Chinese, Arabs, African with wool, blacks with straight hair, East Indians, half-whites, quadroons — and great varieties in costume and colors.

Took the train for Curepipe at 1.30 — two hours’ run, gradually uphill. What a contrast, this frantic luxuriance of vegetation, with the arid plains of India; these architecturally picturesque crags and knobs and miniature mountains, with the monotony of the Indian dead-levels. …

Curepipe (means Pincushion or Pegtown, probably). Sixteen miles (two hours) by rail from Port Louis. At each end of every roof and on the apex of every dormer window a wooden peg two feet high stands up; in some cases its top is blunt, in others the peg is sharp and looks like a toothpick. The passion for this humble ornament is universal [FE ch LXII 617-8].

Parsons offers a somewhat different view:

In two hours he was borne by train the sixteen miles from the hot Mauritian port to the cool health resort of Curepipe, where it rained “all the time…the wettest place in the world except the ocean” …he was repelled by the “ugliness & savage discomfort of an Indian hotel.” Noting that the island’s chief produce was “sugar, molasses, and mongrels,” he visited an English plantation where he was breakfasted by the efficient French manager and rushed “8 miles through the cane in 40 m.” by a mule. A later notebook entry on introductions, “(Bombay.) — saved! Curepipe. Pretoria. Maritzburg. (Great!) Johannesburg — saved!…Other occasions commonplace,” suggests that, after dining at British barracks, he gave a talk. It seems unlikely that one of his money-snaring “At Homes” was delivered in a mostly French-speaking community. Anyway, the Curepipe Casino was booked to the Marionettes d’Arc et Fantoches Francais, soon to accompany the American on the Arundel Castle to Durban. For Twain Mauritius yielded a charmed “resting spell” from “platform work,” and he left it with regret…[“Clubman in S.A.” 235].

As to why Sam did not lecture in Mauritius, Lorch offers that it was not, at least, due to his health:

Mark Twain spent twelve delightful days which were marred only by the fact that his daughter Clara was still suffering from the ague [malaria fever] which she had contracted in India. As for Mark Twain himself, he had completely recovered from his prolonged siege of carbuncles and was in the best of health. Much to the disappointment of both the English and French inhabitants of the island, however, he did not lecture, despite the fact that a public performance seemed promised and was anticipated by news reporters. The French inhabitants were especially unhappy not to have the opportunity to hear the celebrated American, surmising that his failure to lecture indicated his scorn of them or that Mark Twain might have been offended by critical comments the French journalist Edmond About had made about him after one of About’s visits to the United States [195].