May 6 Wednesday – The Arundel Castle arrived in Durban, S. Africa. Sam wrote in FE:

At 3 P.M., May 6th, the ship slowed down, off the land, and thoughtfully and cautiously picked her way into the snug harbor of Durban, South Africa [ch LXIV 643]. Note: The Natal Mercury reported a 2 p.m. arrival.

David Hunter of the Durban Savage Club and A. Milligan, secretary pro tempore of the Club, met the Clemens family and Carlyle G. Smythe [Parsons, “Traveler in S.A.” 5; Philippon 14]. The group went to the Royal Hotel, where the Clemens party took rooms. Parsons writes,

Later, at the Royal Hotel, when young Smythe was fending off lion-hunters, a third Savage, the Scots physician Samuel George Campbell, presented his card with an offer of any needed service and was received by Mark into a friendship that embraced their families. The doctor and his wife, Margaret Dunnachie, with their daughter Ethel, opened their home to the Clemenses, took them on carriage drives [probably after this day], and set a chair among the orange trees of their garden so that Mark might be screened from his curious public. This is the account of Dr. Campbell, whose unpublished “Story about Mark Twain” is in the Killie Campbell Library of Africana in Durban [“Clubman” 236].

Sam described the hotel and his first night in Durban:

Royal Hotel. Comfortable, good table, good service of natives and Madrasis. Curious jumble of modern and ancient city and village, primitiveness and the other thing. Electric bells, but they don’t ring. Ask why they didn’t; the watchman in the office said he thought they must be out of order; he thought so because some of them rang, but most of them didn’t. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to put them in order? He hesitated — like one who isn’t quite sure — then conceded the point [FE ch LXV 644].

During the night “crowing roosters heartlessly serenaded” Sam [Parsons, “Traveler in S.A.” 6].