January – Sam wrote a spoof of Victor Hugo’s novel, The Toilers of the Sea (1866) while aboard the steamer San Francisco [MTNJ 1: 280-4].

Key West – New York – Charles Webb Published The Jumping Frog
52 hours to St. Louis – Artemus Ward Dead – Lectures in Hannibal, Keokuk & Quincy
Back in New York – A Night in Jail – Three Lectures in the Big Apple
Quaker City Five-month Excursion– Miniature Portrait in the Bay of Smyrna
A Post in Washington – Elisha Bliss – Sam Met Livy

December 31 Monday – Sam and passengers arrived at San Carlos, Nicaragua. From Sam’s notebook:
“Native thatched houses—coffee, eggs, bread, cigars & fruit for sale—delicious—10 cents buy pretty much anything & in great quantity. Californians can’t understand how 10 or 25 cents can buy a sumptuous lunch of coffee, eggs & bread….Saw at San Carlos the first osage trees of the trip—my favorite tree above all others” [MTNJ 1: 261-2].

December 30 Sunday – The America completed the first leg of the trip, reaching San Juan del Sur. Cholera had claimed 35 passengers there awaiting transportation to San Francisco, so the passengers of America were not allowed ashore until later in the morning [Sanborn 312]. It was a three-hour trip by horses, mules, and mud wagons to Virgin Bay on Lake Nicaragua. Sam was impressed by the roadside stands of fruits and food, and especially by the pretty young women there.

December 29 Saturday – From Sam’s letter to the Alta printed Mar. 15, 1867:
SAN JUAN AND CHOLERA

December 27 Thursday – Sam wrote of a raffle for a dead wife’s jewelry (Mar. 15 Alta):

December 25 Tuesday – Christmas – From Sam’s Mar. 15 Alta letter [Schmidt]:

December 24 Monday – From Sam’s notebook:
Christmas Eve—9 P.M. Me & the Capt & Kingman out forward. Capt. Said—Don’t like the looks of that point with the mist outside of it—hold her a point free. Quartermaster (touching his hat)—“The child is dead sir (been sick 2 days.—) What are yr orders” [MTNJ 1: 257].
The death of a child onboard made for a solemn Christmas Eve.

December 23 Sunday – From Sam’s notebook:
Morning service on Prom deck by Fackler—organ & choir. I had rather travel with that old portly, hearty, jolly, boisterous, good-natured old sailor, Capt. Ned Wakeman than with any other man I ever came across. He never drinks, & never plays cards; he never swears, except in the privacy of his own quarters, with a friend or so, & then his feats of fancy blasphemy are calculated to fill the hearer with awe & the liveliest admiration [MTNJ 1: 253].

December 22 Saturday – From Sam’s notebook:
“Passengers have been singing several days—now the men have come down to leap-frog, boyish gymnastics & tricks of equilibrium—& sitting on a bottle with legs extended & X d , & threading a good sized needle” [MTNJ 1: 251-2].