July 5 Sunday – At 7 a.m. Sam, Livy, Clara and Carlyle G. Smythe arrived at Cape Town, S. Africa and took rooms at the Grand Hotel. They’d missed the Fourth of July banquet there [Philippon 23]. Parsons notes, “Twain found that the Adderley Street Railway Station was directly opposite his last Grand Hotel” [“Traveler in S.A.” 35]. Parsons continues, describing the hotel:

The travelers went round the corner to the entrance on Strand Street, through the swinging glass doors, across the mosaic floor to the handsome staircase and up to the lounge. For the hotel proper started on the first floor and rose, leaving the arcaded ground floor to an ostrich feather shop and establishments of food, alcohol, clothes, and general commerce. The first floor was enclosed by a “splendid balcony promenade” twelve feet wide and 350 feet long. Inside were a commodious billiard room with two Thurston tables, a Moorish bar, and a 16½-foot-high dining room whose walls — dado and paper — were mahogany, salmon and gold color and whose walnut furniture was upholstered in crimson plush. The second floor, devoted to bedrooms and private sitting rooms, was the Clemens party’s destination….On his first evening in town Mark undoubtedly wanted the privacy of his sitting room. But when his order went up, “6 slices of tough mutton” came down, and just the looks of the stuff deadened his appetite [“Traveler in S.A” 35-6].