September 28 Monday ­– In Bourg St. Andéol, the rest of Sam’s letter to Livy concerning this day:

I got up at 7 this morning [Sept 28] to see the poor devils cook their poor breakfast & pack up their sordid fineries.

This is a 9 k-m. current & the wind is with us; we shall make Avignon before 4 o’clock. I saw watermelons & pomegranates for sale at St. Andéol.

With a power of love, Sweetheart, SAML.

Sam’s party left the village and continued down the Rhone to Avignon, in the south of France. In the evening Sam wrote again to Livy from the Hotel D’Europe.

Monday, 6 p.m., Sept. 28.

Well, Livy darling, I have been having a perfect feast of letters for an hour, & I thank you & dear Clara with all my heart. It’s like hearing from home after a long absence.

It is early to be in bed, but I’m always abed before 9, on this voyage; & up at 7 or a trifle later, every morning. If I ever take such a trip again, I will have myself called at the first tinge of dawn & get to sea as soon after as possible. The early dawn on the water — nothing can be finer, as I know by old Mississippi experience. I did so long for you & Sue yesterday morning — the most superb sunrise! — the most marvelous sunrise! & I saw it all — from the very faintest suspicion of the coming dawn all the way through to the final explosion of glory. But it had interest private to itself & not to be found elsewhere in the world; for between me & it, in the far distant-eastward, was a silhouetted mountainrange in which I had discovered, the previous afternoon, a most noble face upturned to the sky, & mighty form out stretched, which I had named Napoleon Dreaming of Universal Empire — & now, this prodigious face, soft, rich, blue, spirituelle, asleep, tranquil, reposeful, lay against that giant conflagration of ruddy & golden splendors all rayed like a wheel with the upstreaming & far-reaching lances of the sun. It made one want to cry for delight, it was so supreme in its unimaginable majesty & beauty.

We had a curious experience today. A little after I had sealed & directed my letter to you, in which I said we should make Avignon before 4, we got lost. We ceased to encounter any village or ruin mentioned in our “particularizes” & detailed Guide of the Rhone — went drifting along by the hour in a wholly unknown land & on an uncharted river! Confound it, we stopped talking & did nothing but stand up in the boat & search the horizons with the glass & wonder what in the devil had happened. And at last, away yonder at 5 o’clock when some east towers & fortresses hove in sight we couldn’t recognize them for Avignon — yet we knew by the broken bridge that it was Avignon.

Then we saw what the trouble was — at some time or other we had drifted down the wrong side of an island & followed a sluggish branch of the Rhone not frequented in modern times. We lost an hour & a half by it & missed one of the most picturesque & gigantic & history-sodden masses of castellated medieval ruin that Europe can show.

It was dark by the time we had wandered through the town & got the letters & found the hotel — so I went to bed.

We shall leave here at noon tomorrow & float down to Arles, arriving about dark, & there bid good bye to the boat, the river-trip finished. Between Arles & Nimes (& Avignon again,) we shall be till Saturday morning — then rail it through on that day to Ouchy, reaching the hotel at 11 at night if the train isn’t late.

Next day (Sunday) if you like, go to Basel, & Monday to Berlin. But I shall be at your disposal, to do exactly as you desire & prefer.

With no end of love to all of you & twice as much to you, sweetheart, SAML.

I believe my arm is a trifle better than it was when I started [MTLP 2: 554-6 w/punctuation restored from MTP copy].

After a long illness, Herman Melville died at his home in New York City. He was 72. His New York Times obituary called him “Henry Melville.” He was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx.