Following The Equator A Journey Around The World — Mark Twain

This book illustrated version of the Mar Twain s Following the Equator A Journey Around the World It has nearly 200 illustrated graphics and pictures A man may have no bad habits and have worse Pudd nhead Wilson s New Calendar The starting point of this lecturing trip around the world was Paris where we had been living a year or two We sailed for America and there made certain preparations This took but little time Two members of my family elected to go with me Also a carbuncle The dictionary says a carbuncle is a kind of jewel Humor is out of place in a dictionary We started westward from New York in midsummer with Major Pond to manage the platform business as far as the Pacific It was warm work all the way and the last fortnight of it was suffocatingly smoky for in Oregon and British Columbia the forest fires were raging We had an added week of smoke at the seaboard where we were obliged to wait awhile for our ship She had been getting herself ashore in the smoke and she had to be docked and repaired We sailed at last and so ended a snail paced march across the continent which had lasted forty days 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 The city of Victoria was twinkling dim in the deep heart of her smoke cloud and getting ready to vanish and now we closed the field glasses and sat down on our steamer chairs contented and at peace But they went to wreck and ruin under us and brought us to shame before all the passengers They had been furnished by the largest furniture dealing house in Victoria and were worth a couple of farthings a dozen though they had cost us the price of honest chairs In the Pacific and Indian Oceans one must still bring his own deck chair on board or go without just as in the old forgotten Atlantic times those Dark Ages of sea travel img src https s3 eu west 1 amazonaws com dia kitadagitim ckeditor_assets pictures 53 content_1_original_original jpg alt height 15 width 15 font size 1 color white font img