Mark Twain Cave — originally McDowell's Cave — is a show cave located near Hannibal, Missouri. It was named for author Mark Twain whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Clemens lived in Hannibal from 1839 to 1853, age 4 to 17.
A prominent hill in Hannibal, originally known as Holliday's Hill. Mark Twain named the fictional location from a place in Cardiff, Wales that reminded him of Holliday's Hill. It figures in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It stands about 300 feet above the Mississippi River, the southern end of a long escarpment that parallels the river. Rasmussen reports that this is the location from which Sam and a friend rolled a boulder down the hill and through a cooper's shed in town.
Gold prospecting in Calaveras County began in late 1848 with a camp founded by Henry Angel. Angel may have first arrived in California as a soldier, serving under Colonel Frémont during the Mexican War. After the war's end, he found himself in Monterey where he heard of the fabulous finds in the gold fields. He joined the Carson-Robinson party of prospectors and set out for the mines. The company parted ways upon reaching what later became known as Angels Creek. Henry Angel tried placer mining but soon opened a trading post.
Twain's father purchased the property in 1839 but the date the house was built is unknown. Sam was living there by the time he was eight years old. The family lived there until 1853.
Bear Creek passes through southern Hannibal, about a half mile from Sam's boyhood home. He learned to swim in Bear Creek and as with other boys ignored the ordinance against swimming within the city limits. He saw two friends drown there and claimed to have nearly drowned there twice, himself. See chapter 55 of Life on the Mississippi.
They reached Horta early on 21 (not 20) June. Like most of the other passengers, Clemens spent a busy day on shore and probably began this letter when he returned to the ship that evening. Continued rough seas delayed departure for Gibraltar until noon of 23 June.
175.13 “Esmeralda” had just had a run] The principal town in the Esmeralda mining district was Aurora (claimed by both California and Nevada, until the resolution of the boundary dispute in the fall of 1863), which was located in the Sierra Nevada foothills about a hundred miles southeast of Carson City (see supplement B, map 3).
On January 22, 1865, Mark Twain went north from Jackass Hill, in nearby Tuolumne County, to Angel's Camp with Jim Gillis, who had a claim there. During their first week, heavy rains confined them to Tryon's Hotel; they spent the next three weeks prospecting with little success. Throughout this time -- especially during the rainy week -- Mark Twain exchanged yarns with locals, notably Ben Coon, and left with a notebook filled with story ideas. Chapter 61 of Roughing It briefly describes this period.
Twain's summer home...Quarry Farm is located in Elmira, New York. In 1869, Jervis Langdon purchased it as a vacation home for his family. When he died the following year, it was inherited by his eldest daughter, Susan Langdon Crane, Mark Twain's sister-in-law. Twain and his family summered there for more than twenty years. He wrote much of his work in an octagonal study built expressly for him, apart from the main house, in 1874. The study has since been moved to the Elmira College Old Campus in order to protect it from vandalism.
Mark Twain visited Africa on two separate journeys. This, his first visit, he writes about in "The Innocents Abroad". He actually visits the continent twice on this trip. At its furthest point he visits Egypt. Of course, in the world of fiction Tom, Huck and Jim take a balloon ride over the Sahara in "Tom Sawyer Abroad". Many years later Mark Twain visits South Africa, as written about in "Following the Equator".