Captain Cook found Australia in 1770, and eighteen years later the British Government began to transport convicts to it. Altogether, New South Wales received 83,000 in 53 years. The convicts wore heavy chains; they were ill-fed and badly treated by the officers set over them; they were heavily punished for even slight infractions of the rules; "the cruelest discipline ever known" is one historian's description of their life.—[The Story of Australasia. J. S. Laurie.]

If the climates of the world were determined by parallels of latitude, then we could know a place's climate by its position on the map; and so we should know that the climate of Sydney was the counterpart of the climate of Columbia, S. C., and of Little Rock, Arkansas, since Sydney is about the same distance south of the equator that those other towns are north of it—thirty-four degrees. But no, climate disregards the parallels of latitude. In Arkansas they have a winter; in Sydney they have the name of it, but not the thing itself.

Sydney Heads

By and by, when we had approached to somewhere within thirty miles of Sydney Heads the great electric light that is posted on one of those lofty ramparts began to show, and in time the little spark grew to a great sun and pierced the firmament of darkness with a far-reaching sword of light.

Sept. 15—Night. Close to Australia now. Sydney 50 miles distant.

From Diary:—For a day or two we have been plowing among an invisible vast wilderness of islands, catching now and then a shadowy glimpse of a member of it. There does seem to be a prodigious lot of islands this year; the map of this region is freckled and fly-specked all over with them. Their number would seem to be uncountable. We are moving among the Fijis now—224 islands and islets in the group.

Entering the Islands of the South Seas

From talks with certain of our passengers whose home was Honolulu, and from a sketch by Mrs. Mary H. Krout, I was able to perceive what the Honolulu of to-day is, as compared with the Honolulu of my time. In my time it was a beautiful little town, made up of snow-white wooden cottages deliciously smothered in tropical vines and flowers and trees and shrubs; and its coral roads and streets were hard and smooth, and as white as the houses.

Clemens, Clara, and Olivia aboard the S.S. Warimoo. Victoria, British Columber. August 23, 1895
Clemens aboard the S.S. Warimoo. Victoria, British Columber. August 23, 1895
S.S. Warimoo sailing for Australia, August 23, 1895

Mark Twain Archive, Elmira College courtesy of Kevin Mac Donnell, Austin, Texas.

Clemens and reporters. Hotel Vancouver, British Columbia. August 17
Mark Twain Archive, Elmira College courtesy of Kevin Mac Donnell, Austin, Texas.

Twain had a bad cold and his throat was in poor condition, but he lectured at the Lighthouse Theater, the fourth floor of a building with no fire escapes.