Second Trip: Sunday, May 20 to Thursday, May 24, 1877
This visit to the islands was the subject of a piece published in 1877, “Some Rambling Notes on an Idle Excursion”, written for the Atlantic magazine, Oct. to Jan. 1878
Its story began with a “very greate storme or hurricane,” as recorded by Sir George Somers, the admiral of a fleet of nine vessels dispatched from England in 1609 to relieve the famished colonists of Jamestown. The storm separated the ships. Most of them sailed on to Virginia, but the flagship Sea Venture took on nine feet of water before its crew discovered any leaks. Hope nearly vanished before Sir George spied land on July 28. Sir George lodged his sinking ship between two large rocks about a quarter of a mile off the East End. All 150 persons aboard survived.
The town of St. George, redolent of history, rapidly declined after the heady years of the blockade runners. It had long since lost the Royal Navy to Her Majesty’s Dockyard, at the West End, and the capital to Hamilton, which was centrally situated on the mainland by Crow Lane Harbor.
Bermuda comprises several hundred islands, islets, and barren rocks is the shape of a fishhook, tilted about forty degrees, and extended for twenty-two miles. The land mass is less than twenty square miles. Built upon the southeastern arc of a largely submerged plateau on top of an ancient volcano. It consists of windblown sand dunes, coral and limestone. Warmed by the Gulf Stream, the Islands were surrounded by the most northerly coral reefs in the Atlantic.
The prospectus had included visit with “our friends the Bermudians”. The pilgrims may have sensed a certain irony as most came from the North, and the British colony of Bermuda had openly sided with the South.
Mark Twain visited Bermuda on eight separate occasions of various durations. His first visit was from Monday, November 11 to Friday, November 15 of 1867, the final port of call of the Quaker City voyage, before returning to New York. According to Rasmussen, this was not in fact his first visit. He reports that the Quaker City stopped there on the way to the Azores in mid-June of 1867.
He was a wild young fellow, and was guilty of various kinds of misbehavior. He was several times reported to headquarters in England, and it was in each case expected that orders would come out to deal with him promptly and severely, but for some mysterious reason no orders of any kind ever came back—nothing came but just an impressive silence. This made him an imposing and uncanny wonder to the town.
I know quite well that whether Mr. Rhodes is the lofty and worshipful patriot and statesman that multitudes believe him to be, or Satan come again, as the rest of the world account him, he is still the most imposing figure in the British empire outside of England. When he stands on the Cape of Good Hope, his shadow falls to the Zambesi.
Next to Mr. Rhodes, to me the most interesting convulsion of nature in South Africa was the diamond-crater.
On Monday and Tuesday at sunrise we again had fair-to-middling views of the stupendous mountains; then, being well cooled off and refreshed, we were ready to chance the weather of the lower world once more.