The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain Book Review

We’ll travel the world aboard the USS Quaker City paddlewheel steamship. The year is 1867.

A special charter is commissioned, all passengers carefully vetted before steaming across the Atlantic.

Let’s promenade on the upper deck, kiss on the forecastle, watch the phosphorescence illuminate the sea under a silver moon, and hope to God we aren’t sea sick the entire voyage.

I’ll see you in Gibraltar, I’ll see you in Tangier, I’ll see you in Paris and all the places in between. We watch the people more than the scenery, they are infinitely more fascinating than inanimate attractions.

We’re in love.
We’re on a boat.
we’re on a train.
There’s room enough beside Mark Twain.

You won’t want the book to end. Traveling with Mark Twain is a joy. Genoa, Milan, Versailles, Marseilles. I have no idea where these places are and will never be able to go myself– biometric registration stickers, digital id passport, vaccine track and trace, beast mark on forehead and hand, TSA/DHS humiliation terror procedures.

We arrive at the Holy Land. Your golden tresses wrapped in white silk, we meet our dragonat, Abraham, and his endless caravan of mules. Private bedouins, fine carpets and saloon tent where we take our meals.

You look like an Arabian Princess on the ancient hills.

It was really fun traveling with you. Let’s do it again soon.

Twain is unimpressed with the Holy Land. The smallness, dryness, and desolation reforms the ancient story inscribed on his fallible Christian brain. The Holy Land is a tricked out Sepulcher with gimcracks and gewgaws strewn about under an ancient dome.

The American pilgrims are always taking precious artifacts from foreign monuments. Little bits of Galilee and columns of stone. They travel through Jerusalem on horseback with revolvers and umbrellas.

I’m sure the 1948ers have changed the experience.

The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain Book Review

My highlights and annotations:

Chapter 711: CHAPTER I.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 42.64%
Highlight: It was to be a picnic on a gigantic scale.
Notes: I’m excited to embark on this foray.

Chapter 711: CHAPTER I.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 42.64%
Highlight: a ballroom that stretched from horizon to horizon, and was domed by the bending heavens
Notes: We dance on the upper deck of the ship under a silver moon.

Chapter 712: CHAPTER II.
Highlight
Chapter progress: 42.71%
Highlight: I basked in the happiness of being for once in my life drifting with the tide of a great popular movement.

Chapter 714: CHAPTER IV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 42.82%
Highlight: If you wish to inflict a heartless and malignant punishment upon a young person, pledge him to keep a journal a year.
Notes: Hehe

Chapter 717: CHAPTER VII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 42.99%
Highlight: I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

Notes: Hehe

Chapter 717: CHAPTER VII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 43.06%
Highlight: We had entertained an angel unawares, but we did not take her in. She did that for us.

Notes: Hehe

Chapter 718: CHAPTER VIII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 43.07%
Highlight: Tangier is a foreign land if ever there was one, and the true spirit of it can never be found in any book save The Arabian Nights.
Notes: Can we go here without submitting to TSA/DHS biometric slave terrorism ritual?

Chapter 718: CHAPTER VIII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 43.07%
Highlight: Here are no white men visible, yet swarms of humanity are all about us.
Notes: Lol

Chapter 718: CHAPTER VIII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 43.07%
Highlight: original, genuine Negroes as black as Moses;
Notes: Moses is blaaaaack.

Chapter 719: CHAPTER IX.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 43.13%
Highlight: The young man takes the girl his father selects for him, marries her, and after that she is unveiled, and he sees her for the first time.
Notes: Surprise!

Chapter 719: CHAPTER IX.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 43.14%
Highlight: I have caught a glimpse of the faces of several Moorish women (for they are only human, and will expose their faces for the admiration of a Christian dog when no male Moor is by), and I am full of veneration for the wisdom that leads them to cover up such atrocious ugliness.

Notes: Lol

Chapter 719: CHAPTER IX.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 43.17%
Highlight: “O Solitude, where are the charms which sages have seen in thy face?
Notes: Good question.

Chapter 721: CHAPTER XI.
Highlight
Chapter progress: 43.25%
Highlight: chateau Boarely and its curious museum.

Chapter 721: CHAPTER XI.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 43.25%
Highlight: “I am a free-born sovereign, sir, an American, sir, and I want everybody to know it!”
Notes: Free speech is dead. Vaccine lockdown mandate face mask required track and trace biometric enslavement uss.

Chapter 724: CHAPTER XIV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 43.48%
Highlight: sacristy
Notes: Spacesuit closet.

Chapter 725: CHAPTER XV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 43.56%
Highlight: He wrote to her; she answered. He wrote again; she answered again. He was now in love. He longed to know her — to speak to her face to face.

Notes: connexion

Chapter 725: CHAPTER XV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 43.64%
Highlight: by far the handsomest women we have seen in France were born and reared in America.

Notes: American beauty

Chapter 727: CHAPTER XVII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 43.69%
Highlight: But we were at sea again, and we had the stars and the ocean to look at, and plenty of room to meditate in.
Notes: Why do i think of you always? this is crazy

Chapter 727: CHAPTER XVII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 43.69%
Highlight: obstreperous
Notes: Noisy and difficult to control.

Chapter 727: CHAPTER XVII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 43.7%
Highlight: I did not see how a man of only ordinary decision of character could marry here, because before he could get his mind made up he would fall in love with somebody else.
Notes: Genoa. Hehe

Chapter 727: CHAPTER XVII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 43.72%
Highlight: I wasted so much time praying that the roof would fall in on these dispiriting flunkies that I had but little left to bestow upon palace and pictures.

Notes: Lol

Chapter 728: CHAPTER XVIII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 43.78%
Highlight: It was a vision! — a miracle! — an anthem sung in stone, a poem wrought in marble!

Notes: Milan Cathedral

Chapter 730: CHAPTER XX.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 43.96%
Highlight: The more immediate scenery consisted of fields and farm-houses outside the car and a monster-headed dwarf and a moustached woman inside it. These latter were not show-people. Alas, deformity and female beards are too common in Italy to attract attention.

Notes: Hehe. Show people.

Chapter 730: CHAPTER XX.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 43.99%
Highlight: Beyond all question, this is the most voluptuous scene we have yet looked upon.

Notes: Lake Como

Chapter 732: CHAPTER XXII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 44.14%
Highlight: If a man had an enemy in those old days, the cleverest thing he could do was to slip a note for the Council of Three into the Lion’s mouth, saying “This man is plotting against the Government.
Notes: FBI citizen watch program.

Chapter 733: CHAPTER XXIII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 44.24%
Highlight: It is not pleasant to see an American thrusting his nationality forward obtrusively in a foreign land, but Oh, it is pitiable to see him making of himself a thing that is neither male nor female, neither fish, flesh, nor fowl — a poor, miserable, hermaphrodite Frenchman!
Notes: Lol- hermaphrodite Frenchman!

Chapter 734: CHAPTER XIV.
Highlight
Chapter progress: 44.3%
Highlight: Florence pleased us for a while. I think we appreciated the great figure of David in the grand square, and the sculptured group they call the Rape of the Sabines.

Chapter 735: CHAPTER XXV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 44.4%
Highlight: And, where is the wisdom in permitting hundreds upon hundreds of millions of francs to be locked up in the useless trumpery of churches all over Italy, and the people ground to death with taxation to uphold a perishing Government?
Notes: 501c3 surveillance agreement. Church and state.

Chapter 735: CHAPTER XXV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 44.41%
Highlight: And now that my temper is up, I may as well go on and abuse every body I can think of.
Notes: Hehe

Chapter 735: CHAPTER XXV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 44.43%
Highlight: vituperation.
Notes: Bitter and abusive language.

Chapter 736: CHAPTER XXVI.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 44.55%
Highlight: We saw the Dying Gladiator at the Capitol,
Notes: Rome

Chapter 737: CHAPTER XXVII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 44.64%
Highlight: the Creator made Italy from designs by Michael Angelo!
Notes: Lol

Chapter 738: CHAPTER XXVIII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 44.74%
Highlight: Transfiguration, by Raphael,
Notes: Vatican

Chapter 738: CHAPTER XXVIII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 44.75%
Highlight: Rape of the Sabines,
Notes: Rome statue.

Chapter 739: CHAPTER XXIX.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 44.83%
Highlight: It may be thought that I am prejudiced.
Perhaps I am. I would be ashamed of myself if I were not.

Notes: Hehe.

Chapter 743: CHAPTER XXXIII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 45.12%
Highlight: What supports its poverty-stricken people or its Government, is a mystery.

Notes: Fake debt based money.

Chapter 747: CHAPTER XXXVII.
Highlight
Chapter progress: 45.4%
Highlight: We anchored here at Yalta, Russia,
Notes: Don’t u mean Ukrain. lol

Chapter 748: CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 45.55%
Highlight: Some of the young ladies — many of them, I may say — are even very beautiful; they average a shade better than American girls — which treasonable words I pray may be forgiven me.
Notes: Armenian Women in Smyrna.

Chapter 748: CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 45.55%
Highlight: An hour’s chat at the door with a pretty girl one never saw before, is easily obtained, and is very pleasant.
Notes: Yalta, Russia.

Chapter 751: CHAPTER XLI.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 45.69%
Highlight: the English Company who have acquired the right to excavate Ephesus, and have paid a great sum for that right, need to be protected, and deserve to be.
Notes: Finding and removing the relics.

Chapter 751: CHAPTER XLI.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 45.7%
Highlight: we were approaching the Holy Land!
Notes: No mention of so called middle east.

Chapter 751: CHAPTER XLI.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 45.7%
Highlight: such a critical inspection of saddles and bridles that had never yet touched horses; such a cleaning and loading of revolvers and examining of bowie-knives;
Notes: Pleasure trip w guns.

Chapter 751: CHAPTER XLI.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 45.75%
Highlight: They call this camping out. At this rate it is a glorious privilege to be a pilgrim to the Holy Land.
Notes: Awesome Bedouins and victuals served.

Chapter 752: CHAPTER XLII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 45.76%
Highlight: Hot mutton chops, fried chicken, omelettes, fried potatoes and coffee — all excellent. This was the bill of fare. It was sauced with a savage appetite purchased by hard riding the day before, and refreshing sleep in a pure atmosphere. As I called for a second cup of coffee, I glanced over my shoulder, and behold our white village was gone — the splendid tents had vanished like magic! It was wonderful how quickly those Arabs had “folded their tents;” and it was wonderful, also, how quickly they had gathered the thousand odds and ends of the camp together and disappeared with them.
Notes: Awesome!!!

Chapter 752: CHAPTER XLII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 45.76%
Highlight: dragoman
Notes: Interpreter or guide

Chapter 752: CHAPTER XLII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 45.79%
Highlight: . I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little — not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a diving-bell.
Notes: Hehe

Chapter 753: CHAPTER XLIII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 45.81%
Highlight: Baalbec, a noble ruin whose history is a sealed book.
Notes: Nobody knows anything. History.

Chapter 753: CHAPTER XLIII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 45.83%
Highlight: A race of gods or of giants must have inhabited Baalbec many a century ago. Men like the men of our day could hardly rear such temples as these.

Notes: Impossible construction of the ancients.

Chapter 754: CHAPTER XLIV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 45.91%
Highlight: it is worth while to get tired out, because one so enjoys resting afterward.

Notes: Traveling.

Chapter 754: CHAPTER XLIV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 45.95%
Highlight: I never disliked a Chinaman as I do these degraded Turks and Arabs, and when Russia is ready to war with them again, I hope England and France will not find it good breeding or good judgment to interfere.

Notes: Hehe

Chapter 755: CHAPTER XLV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 45.96%
Highlight: It is madness to travel in Syria without an umbrella.
Notes: Its you in silk holding a white parasol.

Chapter 755: CHAPTER XLV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 45.98%
Highlight: next you meet a woman with a black veil drawn closely over her face, and her bust exposed;
Notes: Arab females covering their faces but not their breasts.

Chapter 755: CHAPTER XLV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.0%
Highlight: execrable
Notes: Extremely bad or unpleasant.

Chapter 755: CHAPTER XLV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.02%
Highlight: Thou art Peter; and upon this rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Notes: Foundational

Chapter 755: CHAPTER XLV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.03%
Highlight: They sat in silence, and with tireless patience watched our every motion with that vile, uncomplaining impoliteness which is so truly Indian, and which makes a white man so nervous and uncomfortable and savage that he wants to exterminate the whole
Notes: Hehe

Chapter 755: CHAPTER XLV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.04%
Highlight: I can not keep from talking about my horses, because I have a very long and tedious journey before me, and they naturally occupy my thoughts about as much as matters of apparently much greater
Notes: Horse talk.

Chapter 756: CHAPTER XLVI.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.07%
Highlight: From Baltimore to San Francisco is several thousand miles, but it will be only a seven days’ journey in the cars when I am two or three years older. — [The railroad has been completed since the above was written.]
Notes: Seven days train travel to cross America.

Chapter 757: CHAPTER XLVII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.16%
Highlight: For behold in them is no reverence for the solemn monuments of the past, and whithersoever they go they destroy
Notes: They take from every ancient monument artifacts of all kinds.

Chapter 757: CHAPTER XLVII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.18%
Highlight: If all the poetry and nonsense that have been discharged upon the fountains and the bland scenery of this region were collected in a book, it would make a most valuable volume to burn.

Notes: lol. Fountains of Paradise.

Chapter 757: CHAPTER XLVII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.24%
Highlight: Leaving out two or three short journeys of the Saviour, he spent his life, preached his gospel, and performed his miracles within a compass no larger than an ordinary county in the United States
Notes: Smallness of the holy land.

Chapter 758: CHAPTER XLVIII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.27%
Highlight: They say that the long-nosed, lanky, dyspeptic-looking body-snatchers, with the indescribable hats on, and a long curl dangling down in front of each ear, are the old, familiar, self-righteous Pharisees we read of in the Scriptures. Verily, they look it. Judging merely by their general style, and without other evidence, one might easily suspect that self-righteousness was their specialty.
Notes: Bingo

Chapter 758: CHAPTER XLVIII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.31%
Highlight: unobtrusive basin of water, some mountainous desolation, and one tree.
Notes: Sea of Galilee and surrounding Holy Land. Twain is not impressed.

Chapter 759: CHAPTER XLIX.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.37%
Highlight: It is a lucrative source of emolument, and sometimes brings into the national treasury as much as thirty-five or forty dollars a year.

Notes: Lol.

Chapter 759: CHAPTER XLIX.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.42%
Highlight: A Catholic church is nothing to me that has no relics.

Notes: Hehe

Chapter 760: CHAPTER L.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.47%
Highlight: Our pilgrims’ chief sin is their lust for “specimens.”
Notes: The Americans take pieces of all the holy relics.

Chapter 761: CHAPTER LI.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.54%
Highlight: We took our last look at the city, clinging like a whitewashed wasp’s nest to the hill-side, and at eight o’clock in the morning departed.
Notes: Whitewashed wasps nest. Ladies and gentlemen. Mark Twain.

Chapter 761: CHAPTER LI.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.54%
Highlight: Some of us will be shot before we finish this pilgrimage.
Notes: Lol

Chapter 761: CHAPTER LI.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.55%
Highlight: The population numbers two hundred and fifty, and more than half the citizens live in caves in the rock. Dirt, degradation and savagery are Endor’s specialty.
Notes: The witch of Endors home town.

Chapter 761: CHAPTER LI.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.55%
Highlight: I do not mind Bedouins, — I am not afraid of them; because neither Bedouins nor ordinary Arabs have shown any disposition to harm us, but I do feel afraid of my own comrades.

Notes: Pilgrims pride.

Chapter 761: CHAPTER LI.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.56%
Highlight: I said: “Necessity knows no law.”
Notes: No. I will not wear a face ask, register for digital id vaccine passport system.

Chapter 761: CHAPTER LI.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.58%
Highlight: Oriental scenes look best in steel engravings. I cannot be imposed upon any more by that picture of the Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon. I shall say to myself, You look fine, Madam but your feet are not clean and you smell like a camel.
Notes: Lol

Chapter 762: CHAPTER LII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.64%
Highlight: megatherium
Notes: Ancient ground sloth. Twain fails to reference the Jesuit dinosaur hoax and instead references the “mastadon”.

Chapter 762: CHAPTER LII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.67%
Highlight: At last, away in the middle of the day, ancient bits of wall and crumbling arches began to line the way — we toiled up one more hill, and every pilgrim and every sinner swung his hat on high! Jerusalem!
Notes: Reaching holy land after many days journey through desert on horseback.

Chapter 762: CHAPTER LII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.67%
Highlight: No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds the approaches to Jerusalem.
Notes: Holy land over valued.

Chapter 763: CHAPTER LIII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.69%
Highlight: A fast walker could go outside the walls of Jerusalem and walk entirely around the city in an hour. I do not know how else to make one understand how small it is.
Notes: The holy city is a thimble.

Chapter 763: CHAPTER LIII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.7%
Highlight: Over it hang some fifty gold and silver lamps, which are kept always burning, and the place is otherwise scandalized by trumpery, gewgaws
Notes: Tomb of Christ.

Chapter 763: CHAPTER LIII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.7%
Highlight: Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of Moslem rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound.
Notes: Moslem rule.

Chapter 763: CHAPTER LIII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.71%
Highlight: It has been proven conclusively that they can not worship together around the grave of the Saviour of the World in peace.
Notes: Christian fail.

Chapter 763: CHAPTER LIII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.78%
Highlight: Five hundred years hence there will be no vestige of Bunker Hill Monument left, but America will still know where the battle was fought and where Warren fell.
Notes: I know nothing of this Warren or Bunker Hill. American 2026.

Chapter 763: CHAPTER LIII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.78%
Highlight: he looks at all these places with interest, but with the same conviction he felt in the case of the Sepulchre, that there is nothing genuine about them, and that they are imaginary holy places created by the monks.
Notes: Holy city moon landing hoax.

Chapter 764: CHAPTER LIV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.86%
Highlight: and they call up pictures of a pageant that is familiar to all imaginations — camels laden with spices and treasure — beautiful slaves, presents for Solomon’s harem — a long cavalcade of richly caparisoned beasts and warriors — and Sheba’s Queen in the van of this vision of “Oriental magnificence.
Notes: Arabian nights.

Chapter 765: CHAPTER LV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.91%
Highlight: The nomadic instinct is a human instinct; it was born with Adam and transmitted through the patriarchs, and after thirty centuries of steady effort, civilization has not educated it entirely out of us yet. It has a charm which, once tasted, a man will yearn to taste again. The nomadic instinct can not be educated out of an Indian at all.

Notes: Nomadic instinct. Fight or flight.

Chapter 765: CHAPTER LV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.93%
Highlight: but he never could have got his locusts and wild honey here.
Notes: The holy land is a wasted desolation.

Chapter 765: CHAPTER LV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.98%
Highlight: Travel and experience mar the grandest pictures and rob us of the most cherished traditions of our boyhood. Well, let them go. I have already seen the Empire of King Solomon diminish to the size of the State of Pennsylvania; I suppose I can bear the reduction of the seas and the river.

Notes: Holy land reconsidered.

Chapter 765: CHAPTER LV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.98%
Highlight:
We staid at this great convent all night, guests of the hospitable priests. Mars Saba,
Notes: Great description of the hermit recluse monk.

Chapter 765: CHAPTER LV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 47.03%
Highlight: houris
Notes: Beautiful young woman

Chapter 766: CHAPTER LVI.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 47.06%
Highlight: But it truly is “monotonous and uninviting,”
Notes: The holy land.

Chapter 766: CHAPTER LVI.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 47.08%
Highlight: Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village; the riches of Solomon are no longer there to compel the admiration of visiting
Notes: 1948ers now arriving.

Chapter 766: CHAPTER LVI.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 47.08%
Highlight: Palestine is no more of this work-day world. It is sacred to poetry and tradition — it is dream-land.

Notes: Cursed land.

Chapter 771: CHAPTER LXI.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 47.37%
Highlight: Americans — Americans! When we found that a good many foreigners had hardly ever heard of America, and that a good many more knew it only as a barbarous province away off somewhere, that had lately been at war with somebody, we pitied the ignorance of the Old World, but abated no jot of our importance.
Notes: American! hehe