“The word Palestine always brought to my mind a vague suggestion of a country as large as the United States,” he began, “I do not know why, but such was the case. Most of the tourists on Twain’s trip were devout Christians on their first pilgrimage to the land of the bible, and Twain, who was brought up Presbyterian, was undoubtedly swept up by the excitement and anticipation of reaching the Promised Land, spurred on by his distaste for almost everywhere else he had visited along the way.īut just about every myth and expectation was dashed by the reality Twain confronted when he arrived. The most important leg of the journey for Twain and his fellow passengers was their visit to the Holy Land, then known as Palestine, at the time a minor outpost within the Syrian province of the Ottoman Empire. Although Twain was enthralled by the grandeur of Milan, Venice, Florence and Rome, he was disgusted by the vast economic gap between rich and poor in Italy, particularly as it was evident that all available resources had been invested in architecture and edifices, instead of the impoverished population. Mount Vesuvius was unimpressive when compared to the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii. Lake Como in Italy was nice, Twain said, but Lake Tahoe back home in the United States, was nicer. The result was refreshing, and highly unusual for the nineteenth century. Twain carefully constructed his reports to reflect the reactions of an average layperson visiting exotic lands far away from home, and specifically a person who would not allow preconceptions and mythology to overwhelm the reality of what he saw. As it turned out, the five-month cruise was a gamechanger, and the resulting book, The Innocents Abroad (1869), sold 70,000 copies in its first year, and was Twain’s bestselling book during his lifetime. Twain’s two most famous books, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, were still many years away, and much rested on the success of his travelogue. In 1867, a young man called Samuel Langhorne Clemens set sail from New York, bound for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.Ĭlemens is better known by his pen name, Mark Twain, although in 1867 he was still an obscure journalist who had somehow convinced a California newspaper to fund this spectacular trip abroad, in exchange for regular updates from different stops on his journey.

Mark twain in the holy land