Later: We cannot anchor—must go on.
We shall be at Gibraltar before midnight and I think
I will go horseback (a long days) and thence by rail
and diligence to Cadiz. I will not mail this
till I see the Gibraltar lights—I begin
to think they won’t let us in anywhere.
11.30 P. M.—Gibraltar.
At anchor and all right, but they won’t let
us land till morning—it is a
waste of valuable time. We shall reach New York
middle of November.
Yours,
Sam.
Cadiz,
Oct 24, 1867. Dear folks,—We
left Gibraltar at noon and rode to Algeciras, (4 hours)
thus dodging the quarantine, took dinner and then rode
horseback all night in a swinging trot and at daylight
took a caleche (a wheeled vehicle) and rode 5 hours—then
took cars and traveled till twelve at night.
That landed us at Seville and we were over the hard
part of our trip, and somewhat tired. Since
then we have taken things comparatively easy, drifting
around from one town to another and attracting a good
deal of attention, for I guess strangers do not wander
through Andalusia and the other Southern provinces
of Spain often. The country is precisely as
it was when Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were possible
characters.
But I see now what the glory of Spain must have been
when it was under Moorish domination. No, I
will not say that, but then when one is carried away,
infatuated, entranced, with the wonders of the Alhambra
and the supernatural beauty of the Alcazar, he is
apt to overflow with admiration for the splendid intellects
that created them.
I cannot write now. I am only dropping a line
to let you know I am well. The ship will call
for us here tomorrow. We may stop at Lisbon,
and shall at the Bermudas, and will arrive in New
York ten days after this letter gets there.
Sam.
This is the last personal letter written
during that famous first sea-gipsying, and reading
it our regret grows that he did not put something
of his Spanish excursion into his book. He never
returned to Spain, and he never wrote of it.
Only the barest mention of “seven beautiful
days” is found in The Innocents Abroad.
Letters 1867-68. Washington and
San Francisco. The proposed
book of travel. A new lecture
From Mark Twain’s home letters
we get several important side-lights on this
first famous book. We learn, for in stance, that
it was he who drafted the ship address to the
Emperor—the opening lines of which
became so wearisome when repeated by the sailors.
Furthermore, we learn something of the scope and
extent of his newspaper correspondence, which
must have kept him furiously busy, done as it
