: Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World. Part 1 by Twain Mark - Voyages around the world; Twain Mark 1835-1910 Travel; Equator Description and travel

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Close to Australia--Porpoises at Night--Entrance to Sydney Harbor--The Loss of the Duncan Dunbar--The Harbor--The City of Sydney--Spring-time in Australia--The Climate--Information for Travelers--The Size of Australia --A Dust-Storm and Hot Wind

The Botanical Gardens--Contributions from all Countries--The Zoological Gardens of Adelaide--The Laughing Jackass--The Dingo--A Misnamed Province--Telegraphing from Melbourne to San Francisco--A Mania for Holidays--The Temperature--The Death Rate--Celebration of the Reading of the Proclamation of 1836--Some old Settlers at the Commemoration--Their Staying Powers--The Intelligence of the Aboriginal --The Antiquity of the Boomerang

Road to Ballarat--The City--Great Gold Strike, 1851--Rush for Australia --"Great Nuggets"--Taxation--Revolt and Victory--Peter Lalor and the Eureka Stockade--"Pencil Mark"--Fine Statuary at Ballarat--Population --Ballarat English

Elephant Riding--Howdahs--The New Palace--The Prince's Excursion--Gold and Silver Artillery--A Vice-royal Visit--Remarkable Dog--The Bench Show --Augustin Daly's Back Door--Fakeer

CONCLUSION. Table Rock--Table Bay--The Castle--Government and Parliament--The Club --Dutch Mansions and their Hospitality--Dr. John Barry and his Doings--On the Ship Norman--Madeira--Arrived in Southampton

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR

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 Columbia the forest fires were raging. We had an added week of smoke at the seaboard, where we were obliged 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 summer sea; an enticing sea, a clean and cool sea, and apparently a welcome sea to all on board; it certainly was to 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.

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