March 22 Sunday – Sam’s “Holy Land Excursion. Letter from Mark Twain Number Forty-seven” dated Sept. 1867 at “Jerusalem” ran in the Alta California [McKeithan 277-81].

March 20–April 1 Wednesday – Sam made a speech on board sometime between these dates, entitled “Charade” [Fatout, MT Speaking 649].

March 19 Thursday – The Henry Chauncey reached Aspinwall, Panama. Sam traveled across the Isthmus by train and boarded the Sacramento at Panama City at night [MTL 2: 205n1].

March 18 Wednesday – Sam wrote at sea to Mary Mason Fairbanks.

“Dear Mother—We shall reach the Isthmus tomorrow morning. It is getting very hot. Cuba was such a vision!—a perfect garden!” [MTL 2: 204-5].

March 15 Sunday – Sam wrote from the Henry Chauncey en route from New York to Aspinwall, Panama to his mother and family.

March 13 Friday – Sam’s MARK TWAIN’S LETTERS FROM WASHINGTON, NUMBER X dated Feb. 22 ran in the Enterprise. Sections included: “The Grand Coup d’Etat,” and “How the Delegations” [MTP].

March 11 Wednesday – Sam left New York on the steamer Henry Chauncey, bound for San Francisco [Sanborn 391].

Sam’s undated letter to the editor, “The Chinese Mission” ran in the New York Tribune [Camfield, bibliog.].

March 10 Tuesday – Sam traveled to New York, where he wrote Mary Mason Fairbanks:

“I am so glad of an excuse to go to sea again, even for three weeks. My mother will be grieved—but I must go. If the Alta’s book were to come out with those wretched, slangy letters unrevised, I should be utterly ruined” [MTL 2: 202].

March 9 Monday – The Washington Evening Star announced:

“Mark Twain”—Clemens—has left Washington for California to make arrangements for the publication of his work [Muller 137].

March 8–10 Tuesday – Sam wrote from Washington, D.C. to his mother and family. Paine paraphrases this letter, evidently not extant, about Sam’s decision to travel to San Francisco and talk to “those Alta thieves face to face” [MTB 361]. He knew Colonel John McComb and Frederick MacCrellish well.