Mark Twain on travel




Citation


Mort, Terry. Twain, Mark. Mark Twain on travel, 
2005.




Annotation


Mark Twain wrote in a time when travel was difficult and often a dangerous adventure. His astute observations with a sense of humour, makes these writings lively and compelling.  Taken from Twain's five travel volumes, Mort has arranged these excerpts around his world journey beginning in Mississippi, heading west to the Pacific ( Australia and India), to the Middle East and ending up in Europe.  On his travels to Australia he comments on racial genocide by the white squatters on Aboriginal land. In India he observes the caste system, "with them, all life seems to be sacred except human life." The experience invokes Twain's childhood memories of the scarring injustice of Southern slavery. Twains descriptions are vivid, colourful and endlessly surprising. 
 His work  is still relevant and humorous, theres a great  description of when he takes a donkey ride to the great pyramids of Egypt, where he tries to bribe an insistent pest of a tour guide to jump off the top, (so been there),  these excerpts will leave the reader wanting more and to go read the original works.