January 30. What a spectacle the railway station was, at train-time! It was a very large station, yet when we arrived it seemed as if the whole world was present—half of it inside, the other half outside, and both halves, bearing mountainous head-loads of bedding and other freight, trying simultaneously to pass each other, in opposing floods, in one narrow door.
During his talking tour of the world in 1895-1896, Mark Twain twice visited Ceylon. He had crossed the Pacific in the Warrimoo just before it was laid up for repairs, had floated across the Tasman Sea. to New Zealand in the Mararoa, and had then, been tossed from island port to port in the execrably kept Flora, the Mahinapua, and the 183-ton, 40-horsepower Rotomahana. His reward was at last to relax for thirteen halcyon days on the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company’s “luxuriously appointed” Oceana, sailing from Adelaide, South Australia, to Colombo, Ceylon.
December 13-17, 1895
December 9, 1895
December 5, 1895
Mark Twain was in Whanganui December 3-5 and December 7-9, 1895. On December 8, a Sunday, he took a river boat excursion that included a visit to Moutoa Gardens and saw a monument dedicated to those killed in the Battle of Moutoa Island, which took place in 1864. This visit prompted him to write a rather powerful and poignant statement about patriotism. He was misinformed or at least mis-remembered the visit. The monument morphed into two separate monuments, in his mind.
December 2, 1895
Chapter 34, Following the Equator
November 27, 1895
The family celebrated Livy’s birthday aboard the Rotomahana, which arrived in Hawke’s Bay a mile from Gisborne, and, some 20 hours from Auckland, three hours ahead of schedule. Sam described the ship as “roomy, comfortable, well-ordered, and satisfactory” [FE ch XXXIV 315]. Due to high seas the ship could not dock. Sam watched as the Greenwood Theatrical Co. and four prisoners, disembarked in a basket over the rough seas into the small steam launch Snark for transport to shore. As a result of the
November 26-28, 1895
November 26 Tuesday – The Clemens party sailed from Auckland at 3 p.m. on the Union Co.’s Rotomahana. Shillingsburg: “They had arrived at Auckland’s western port near Onehunga, crossed through the city and departed from the northeastern shore on their way to Gisborne and Napier on the eastcoast” [At Home 161]. (MTDBD)
Chapter 33, Following the Equator
November 26—3 P.M., sailed.
