Died as Mark Twain in 1910
In 1863, while reporting on meetings of the Nevada legislature, Clemens first used the pseudonym Mark Twain, derived from a call by Mississippi boatmen sounding the depth of the river.
The next year a trip to the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands yielded not only a series of humorous travel letters to the Sacramento Union but also a serious article published in Harper's Magazine.
Upon his return from this voyage, he launched a career on the West Coast as a humorous lecturer that continued until 1906.
In 1866 Twain became a traveling correspondent of the Alta California. A number of letters written for that newspaper told the details of a journey eastward by boat; another series of 17 letters told of his visits to New York and the Middle West in 1867. A letter of June 23 told of his spending a night in a station house in New York, charged with disorderly conduct. Others told of visits to art galleries, theaters, museums, and churches in New York and of brief stays with his family. The year 1867 saw the publication of Mark Twain's first book, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
In December of 1866, Mark Twain sailed from San Francisco in the Opposition Line's steamer America, Capt. Wakeman, at noon, 15th Dec., 1866.
The homeward voyage began with a tempest a little way out of San Francisco -- a storm terrible but brief, that brought the passengers from their berths to the deck, and for a time set them praying. Then there was Captain Ned Wakeman, a big, burly, fearless sailor, who had visited the edges of all continents and archipelagos; who had been born at sea, and never had a day's schooling in his life, but knew the Bible by heart; who was full of human nature and profanity, and believed he was the only man on the globe who knew the secret of the Bible miracles.
Another event of the voyage was crossing the Nicaragua Isthmus -- the trip across the lake and down the San Juan River -- a brand-new experience, between shores of splendid tropic tangle, gleaming with vivid life. The luxuriance got into his note-book.
Dark grottos, fairy festoons, tunnels, temples, columns, pillars, towers, pilasters, terraces, pyramids, mounds, domes, walls, in endless confusion of vine-work -- no shape known to architecture unimitated -- and all so webbed together that short distances within are only gained by glimpses. Monkeys here and there; birds warbling; gorgeous plumaged birds on the wing, Paradise itself, the imperial realm of beauty -- nothing to wish for to make it perfect.But it was beyond the isthmus that the voyage loomed into proportions somber and terrible. The vessel they took there, the San Francisco, sailed from Greytown on January 1, 1867. The next day two cases of Asiatic cholera were reported in the steerage. There had been a rumor of it in Nicaragua, but no one expected it on the ship.
The nature of the disease was not hinted at until evening,
when one of the men died. Soon after midnight, the other followed. A
minister making the voyage home, Rev. J. G. Fackler, read the burial
service. The gaiety of the passengers, who had become well acquainted
during the Pacific voyage, was subdued. When the word "cholera"
went among them, faces grew grave and frightened. On the morning of
January 4th Reverend Fackler's services were again required. The dead
man was put overboard within half an hour after he had ceased to breathe.
Gloom settled upon the ship. All steam was made to put into Key West. Then some of the machinery gave way and the ship lay rolling, helplessly becalmed in the fierce heat of the Gulf, while repairs were being made. The work was done at a disadvantage, and the parts did not hold. Time and again they were obliged to lie to, in the deadly tropic heat, listening to the hopeless hammering, wondering who would be the next to be sewed up hastily in a blanket and slipped over the ship's side. On the 5th seven new cases of illness were reported. One of the crew, a man called "Shape," was said to be dying. A few hours later he was dead. By this time the Reverend Fackler himself had been taken.
"So they are burying poor 'Shape' without benefit of clergy," says Twain's note-book.
It was learned that the ship's doctor had run out of medicines. The passengers became demoralized. They believed their vessel was to become a charnel ship. Strict sanitary orders were issued, and a hospital was improvised.
Verily the ship is becoming a floating hospital herself -- not an hour passes but brings its fresh sensation, its new disaster, its melancholy tidings. When I think of poor "Shape" and the preacher, both so well when I saw them yesterday evening, I realize that I myself may be dead tomorrow.By noon it was evident that the minister could not survive. He died at two o'clock next morning; the fifth victim in less than five days. The machinery continued to break and the vessel to drag. The ship's doctor confessed to Clemens that he was helpless. There were eight patients in the hospital.
Since the last two hours all laughter, all levity, has ceased on the ship -- a settled gloom is upon the faces of the passengers.
But on January 6th they managed to make Key West, and for some reason were not quarantined. Twenty-one passengers immediately deserted the ship and were heard of no more.
"I am glad they are gone. D--n them," says the notebook. The doctor restocked his medicine-locker, and the next day they put to sea again. On the 8th another of the patients died. Then the cooler weather seemed to check the contagion, and it was not until the night of the 11th, when the New York harbor lights were in view, that the final death occurred. There were no new cases by this time, and the other patients were convalescent. A certificate was made out that the last man had died of "dropsy."
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