Condover Hall is an elegant Grade I listed three-story Elizabethan sandstone building, described as the grandest manor house in Shropshire, standing in a conservation area on the outskirts of Condover village, Shropshire, England, four miles south of the county town of Shrewsbury.

"I have elsewhere spoken of the endless Winter of Mono, California, and but this moment of the eternal Spring of San Francisco. Now if we travel a hundred miles in a straight line, we come to the eternal Summer of Sacramento. One never sees Summer-clothing or mosquitoes in San Francisco—but they can be found in Sacramento. Not always and unvaryingly, but about one hundred and forty-three months out of twelve years, perhaps.

Interviewed in Australia in 1895, Twain remarked on Robert Lewis Stevenson as “… a great, a very great writer”. Twain had read Stevenson’s novel, The Wrecker. The interviewer noted “...He had read The Wrecker—which depicts the commercial and social life of San Francisco in such daring colors—but so long ago that he had almost forgotten it, but he remembered that part especially.”

From The Wrecker, Chapter VIII, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Opened: 1856. The three story Maguire's Opera House was the first San Francisco theatre built with the intention of housing grand opera with its big stage, a large pit, and good rigging. Although the house was supposedly dedicated to opera they also ran minstrel shows, burlesque, farce, and melodrama.

The Sandwich Island:  

Twain sailed from San Francisco aboard the Ajax on March 7, 1866, arriving in Honolulu 11 days later.

He went to the island of Maui April 14, 1866 ands studied sugar plantations.

Returned to Oahu May 22, 1866 for four days and attended the legislature.

The more he sees of Honolulu, the better he likes it. A delightfully colorful contrast to San Francisco, it has bright-colored houses, flowers, huge trees, comely women, and millions of cats.

Honolulu has no regular livery stable, so one must hire wretched horses from Kanaka - who are unprincipled horse traders.

Early Hawaiians applied the name Haleakalā ("house of the sun") to the general mountain. Haleakalā is also the name of a peak on the southwestern edge of Kaupō Gap. In Hawaiian folklore, the depression (crater) at the summit of Haleakalā was home to the grandmother of the demigod Māui. According to the legend, Māui's grandmother helped him capture the sun and force it to slow its journey across the sky in order to lengthen the day.

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