August 14 Wednesday – QC arrived at Piraeus, Greece at noon. The ship was quarantined again, but Sam, Dr. George Birch, William Denny, and Dr. Jackson snuck off the ship and visited Athens that night.
August 13 Tuesday – From Sam’s notebook:
“Been skirting along the Isles of Greece all day—western side—very mountainous—prevailing tints gray & brown approaching to red” [MTNJ 1: 385].
August 12 Monday – From Sam’s notebook:
“Passed through Straits of Messina between Southern Italy & Sicily—2 miles wide in narrowest places. Passed close to city of Messina—mass of gas lights” [MTNJ 1: 384].
August 11 Sunday – QC left Naples at 8 AM. From Sam’s notebook:
7 PM, with the western horizon all golden from the sunken sun, & specked with distant ships, the bright full moon shining like a silver shield high over head, & the deep dark blue of the Mediterranean under foot & a strange sort of twilight affected by all these different lights & colors, all around us & about us, we sighted old Stromboli [MTNJ 1: 383].
Alta California printed Sam’s article “NEW YORK,” dated June 5 [Schmidt]. Camfield lists this as “Letter from Mark Twain” No. 25 [bibliog.].
August 10 Saturday – Sam and friends visited Capri by chartered steamer.
August 9 Friday – Sam and friends returned to Naples in the morning. At midnight Sam, Jackson, Nesbit, Newell, and 4 others unidentified, left for Mt. Vesuvius. Sam wrote from Naples to his mother and family. Sam wrote to William Morris Stewart (1827-1909) accepting a secretary position:
August 7 Wednesday – Sam and friends left Naples in the morning for two days on the island of Ischia. Sam wrote from Naples to Frank Fuller, the man who had acted as his agent to secure the Cooper Union hall in New York for Sam’s lecture. Sam declined to agree to anything in writing about a lecture circuit offer that Fuller had relayed from Edwin Lee Brown of the Young Men’s Library Association of Chicago [MTL 2: 75-6 n2].
August 4 Sunday – Alta California printed Sam’s article “THE DOMES OF YOSEMITE,” dated June 2 [Schmidt]. Camfield lists this as “Letter from Mark Twain” No. 24 [bibliog.].
August 3 Saturday – Sam’s article, dated Aug. 2, “Mark Twain in Quarantine” ran in the Naples Observer; it ran Sept. 16 in the Alta California [McKeithan 74-6].
August 2 Friday – Sam’s “Holy Land Excursion. Letter from Mark Twain Number One” dated June 19 ran in the Alta California [McKeithan 3-10]. Note 2nd edition: McKeithan reported Mark Twain’s “Number One” letter from the Holy Land excursion as Aug. 2 (p. 10), but the newspaper has been examined online and the correct date is Aug. 25, 1867. Evidently McKeithan dropped the “5”.