November 2 Saturday – At 5:30 a.m. the Mararoa arrived in Hobart, Tasmania. R.S. Smythe had initially planned for lectures in Launceston and Hobart, but Sam’s carbuncle attacks had resulted in a shorter schedule. All that was allowed for was a morning shore leave. A little after 7 a.m. the young Mr. Dobson arrived at the ship and invited Clemenses to breakfast in Hobart with his parents, Mr. & Mrs. Henry Dobson, a former Premier. The young Dobson was “a great friend of” John and Alice Day, who were currently renting the Clemens’ Hartford house. After breakfast Sam rode around Hobart with the elder Dobsons while Clara and Livy went with young Dobson and neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Walker. Livy’s group drove part way up Mount Wellington, then had wine and cake at the Walkers.

Shillingsburg writes of Sam’s adventure with the elder Dobsons:

…Twain rode around Hobart … hoping to “to get a glimpse of any convicts that might still remain on the island.” He went to the Refuge for the Indigent which housed 223 convicts, “a crowd, there, of the oldest people I have ever seen,” Twain wrote in More Tramps Abroad (p.1960 [Chatto & Windus’ name for FE]. After Mrs. Dobson gave him a “leg-iron (broken) found in the bush — ages of rust on it,” the horrors of the convict system seemed to come alive for Twain and, for the remainder of his voyage to New Zealand, he made notes about convicts and the evils of transportation [Shillingsburg, At Home 125].

Sam also visited Alexander Morton (1854-1907) from New Orleans and the curator of Hobart’s museum. Morton displayed aboriginal artifacts and samples of native fauna, including the Tasmanian devil. Back on board the ship, Sam gave interviews with the Mercury and the Tasmanian News, the former published on Nov. 4 and the latter this same day [Shillingsburg, “Down Under” 21]. Sam’s NB 34 contains comments on natural history, museum items and information about Hobart as a convict colony.

Sam’s notebook entry:

The spirit of the old brutalities remains in England, where they still punish poaching heavier than brutal wife-beating. (Insert from “Pillory.”) [Gribben 716; NB 34 TS 25].

Michael Davitt, Irish nationalist who was on board with Sam, recalled this day in his 1898 travel book:

“As the Mararoa glided down the enchanting lake-like Derwent, with all its lovely panorama of natural beauty inviting a longer stay at ‘Sullivan’s Cove,’ Storm Bay and Tasman’s Peninsula recalled the convict days of Port Arthur, and Marcus Clarke’s For the Term of His Natural Life came up for discussion. Mark had read that truly great book, and had visited the asylum at Hobart that very morning, when there are a few score human remnants of the old convict period still living….Mark Twain grew indignant at the thought of doctors having looked on and sanctioned the savage punishments which could leave such evidence of their force and ferocity after so many years on the bent backs of the human wrecks at the asylum in Hobart.

“Unlike some celebrities, Mark Twain is not parsimonius with his talent. He entertained us in the smoke-room of the Mararoa with some capital anecdotes, which, however, cannot be done justice to in the retelling” [Life and Progress in Australasia 338]. Note: Davitt would continue on to New Zealand with Sam.