September 11 Wednesday – Sept. 11. We are moving steadily southward — getting further and further down under the projecting paunch of the globe. Yesterday evening we saw the Big Dipper and the north star sink below the horizon and disappear from our world. No, not “we,” but they. They saw it — somebody saw it — and told me about it. …My interest was all in the Southern Cross. I had never seen that….We saw the Cross to-night, and it is not large. Not large but strikingly bright.

For a day or two we have been plowing among an invisible vast wilderness of islands….We are moving among the Fijis now — 224 islands and islets in the group….Yesterday we passed close to an island or so, and recognized the published Fiji characteristics: a broad belt of clean white coral sand around the island; back of it a graceful fringe of leaning palms, with native huts nestling cosily among the shrubbery at their bases; back of these a stretch of level land clothed in tropic vegetation; back of that, rugged and picturesque mountains. …In the afternoon we sighted Suva, the capital of the group, and threaded our way into the secluded little harbor…Row-boats began to flock from the shore; their crews were the first natives we had seen. These men carried no overplus of clothing, and this was wise, for the weather was hot. …

Everybody went ashore to look around, and spy out the land, and have that luxury of luxuries to sea-voyagers — a land-dinner. …After dinner I found in the billiard-room a resident whom I had known somewhere else in the world, and presently made some new friends and drove with them out into the country to visit his Excellency the head of the State… / We sailed again, refreshed [FE Ch. V p.78; Ch VII, p.91-5, 100].

Note: In his Sept. 13 to Rogers, Sam wrote:

Found a letter in Fiji from my agent [R.S. Smythe] notifying me I was advertised to lecture in Sydney Sept.8 — five days ago. I can’t do it [MTP].

Sam’s notebook entry about Louis Becke quoted by Gribben: “Mark Twain was at first uncertain about [Louis] Becke’s name. Reaching the Fiji islands in September 1895, Twain resolved to ‘quote from X’s (Beake?) two books about island life’ (NB 35 TS 48). Soon thereafter he reminded himself to ‘read Philip Beake’s delightful stories ‘Palm — forget the name’” (NB 35, TS 49) [55]. See Sept. 18 and Sept. 24 entries.