May 11 Monday – Durbin, Natal. Parsons writes,

On Monday the eleventh the man Twain was accompanied by David Hunter and A. Milligan to Trappist Mariannhill, where they “were vegetarians from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m.” On the two-hour drive over country roads, Mark reveled in lantern flowers, “spiky plants, plants like bunches of vegetable swords, plumy tall palms, the cactus tree, the flat-roof tree, and so on,” plantations of banana and pineapple, grass-thatched huts, familiar-looking darkies and “unmodified Zulus…shining with oil.” Among other things, Amandus Scholzig’s abbey was the center of a network of shops, chapels, and schools to civilize, educate, christianize, and confer trades on the Kaffirs or unbelievers. But this sophisiticating of the savage made far less impression on Twain than the sight of monks living in discomfort and silence (sub silentio), going to bed at eight, rising at two, laboring endlessly without the company of kinfolk or women or pets, forbidden to swear, smoke, bet, or lay hands on a cue stick. His human instincts suppressed, man was extinguished “as an individual.” Yet, “from what I could learn, all that a man gets for this is merely the saving of his soul” [“Traveler in S.A.” 7]. (Editorial emphasis added.)

FE, this dateline gives Sam’s direct reactions to the monastery:

There is a large Trappist monastery two hours from Durban, over the country roads, and in company with Mr. Milligan and Mr. Hunter, general manager of the Natal government railways, who knew the heads of it, we went out to see it.

There it all was, just as one reads about it in books and cannot believe that it is so — I mean the rough, hard work, the impossible hours, the scanty food, the coarse raiment, the Maryborough beds, the tabu of human speech, of social intercourse, of relaxation, of amusement, of entertainment, of the presence of woman in the men’s establishment. There it all was. It was not a dream, it was not a lie. And yet with the fact before one’s face it was still incredible. It is such a sweeping suppression of human instincts, such an extinction of the man as an individual [ch LXV 647-8].