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
Historically Santiago de Cuba was the second-most important city on the island after Havana, and remains the second-largest. It is on a bay connected to the Caribbean Sea and an important sea port. In the 2022, the city of Santiago de Cuba recorded a population of 507,167 people.
Sam and companions traveled to Seville by train October 19, 1867, arriving at midnight.
On October 22, they boarded a train for Cadiz.
Mark Twain Project: Quaker City Itinerary
St. Augustine is a city in and the county seat of St. Johns County located 40 miles (64 km) south of downtown Jacksonville. The city is on the Atlantic coast of northeastern Florida. Founded in 1565 by Spanish colonists, it is the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in what is now the contiguous United States.
Saint Louis, Missouri was well known to Samuel Clemens.
According to Rasmussen, while working as a river boat pilot "he landed at St. Louis perhaps 60 times."
St Louis was Sam's destination when he first left home in Hannibal, arriving May 27, 1853. He was 17 1/2 years old and aiming for New York City.
Sam returned to St. Louis in 1854. He contributed a letter to the Muscatine Tri-Weekly Journal, 16 Feb 1855 that remarked on efforts to enlarge the size of St. Louis as well as railroad developments.
Stockton was founded by Charles Maria Weber in 1849 after he acquired Rancho Campo de los Franceses. The city is named after Robert F. Stockton, and it was the first community in California to have a name not of Spanish or Native American origin.
Strasbourg is immersed in Franco-German culture and although violently disputed throughout history, has been a cultural bridge between France and Germany for centuries, especially through the University of Strasbourg, currently the second-largest in France, and the coexistence of Catholic and Protestant culture. It is also home to the largest Islamic place of worship in France, the Strasbourg Grand Mosque.
On the Following the Equator tour, Twain made port here on Wednesday September 11, 1895. They spent had a dinner on land and visited with "the head of the state" then made sail again.
Edwin L. Drake, an out-of-work conductor for the New Haven Railroad, went to Titusville in December of 1857 to deal with financial problems associated with the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company of Connecticut, soon to be the Seneca Oil Company in 1858.
Oil had been coming from a spring on Oil Creek that was used to lubricate machinery and provide smoky light. The technology for producing kerosene from crude oil was been developed and the crude from Titusville was thought to be valuable for this purpose.
An interview in Winnipeg provides an example of the issue of traveling on the Sabbath. a recurring problem in Twain's travels This is the subject of Mark Twain and Sunday Streetcars: An Interview in Winnipeg by Taylor Roberts. The interviewer was Marie Jousaye for the Toronto Globe, 10 August 1895 and is included in Mark Twain: The Complete Interviews.