This was Mark Twain's second visit to the African continent. In "The Innocents Abroad" he visits North Africa. Now, three decades later, he visits South Africa as presented in "Following the Equator". Rasmussen notes "While he had mixed feelings about Britain's proper role in the South African (Boer) War, he was unreservedly opposed to the ruthless commercial exploitation of the Congo Free State -- and denounces it in "King Leopold's Soliloquy".
This is indeed India!
After visits to Maryborough and some other Australian towns, we presently took passage for New Zealand. If it would not look too much like showing off, I would tell the reader where New Zealand is; for he is as I was; he thinks he knows. And he thinks he knows where Hertzegovina is; and how to pronounce pariah; and how to use the word unique without exposing himself to the derision of the dictionary. But in truth, he knows none of these things. There are but four or five people in the world who possess this knowledge, and these make their living out of it.
Mark Twain was in Australia from September of 1895 to January of 1896. Part of that time, some of November and December, was spent in New Zealand. Australia was not a unified country at this time but consisted of seven separate British territories. Twain visited the four southeastern territories: New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. He saw the shoreline of Western Australia from his ship, the Oceana, en route to Ceylon. It anchored off-shore from Albany January 4th, 1896.
We moved westward about mid-afternoon over a rippled and sparkling summer sea; an enticing sea, a clean and cool sea, and apparently a welcome sea to all on board; it certainly was to me, after the distressful dustings and smokings and swelterings of the past weeks. The voyage would furnish a three-weeks holiday, with hardly a break in it. We had the whole Pacific Ocean in front of us, with nothing to do but do nothing and be comfortable.
Twain's party crossed the Cascades, on the switchbacks, in about two hours. It took six more hours to reach Seattle.
Native Americans were pretty much gone from the area, the Treaty of Point Elliott was one of the major instruments in their removal and confinement in reservations. Some did, however, retain fishing rights.
August 6th, Twain's party departs Missoula on the Northern Pacific railway. This particular train had two special cars attached carrying the newly appointed receiver for the bankrupt railroad and the Supreme Court judge who had appointed him. Twain did not join them. They traveled through the Bitterroot Valley, ancestral home of the Salish people. They passed the site of the "starvation winter" of 1883-1884, and on through the Flathead Indian Reservation.
Twain's party departed Great Falls at 7:35 am, Thursday, August 1st, 1895. They rode the Montana Central Railway, part of the Great Northern Railroad owned by J.J. Hill. Hill needed to connect his interests in Great Falls with the mining operations in Helena, Butte and the smelter in Anaconda. The railroad followed part of the old Mullan Military Road. Along the way we examine the fate of Egbert Malcolm Clarke and one of the most egregious actions taken by the U.S. Army against Native American peoples, the Marias massacre. Twain gave a lecture that evening in Butte.
Departing the Great Lakes region, July 22, 1895, Twain's party heads for the Great Plains. First though, into an area of tourist attraction, no small part due to to the fantasy world created by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his Song of Hiawatha, Lake Minnetonka and Minnehaha Falls.
Mark Twain left Cleveland, Ohio July 17 on board the SS Northland. They sailed across Lake Erie to the Detroit River, across Lake St Clair and along the St. Clair River. July 18th they crossed Lake Huron and landed in Sault Ste. Marie. Here he gave his third lecture of the tour. On July 19th, they took the sreamboat F.S. Faxton to Mackinac Island for a lecture in the Grand Hotel. On July 20th, Twain and Major Pond traveled to Petoskey, Michigan by boat and train, the Northern Arrow. Petoskey is the site of the extermination of the last major breeding colony of passenger pigeons, in 1878.