Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World. Part 3 — A Closer Reading

A Club in Ireland and a Badge of Frogs

Twain devotes considerable space to the Mark Twain Club of Corrigan Castle, a literary society formed in his honor. He reproduces the club's note-paper, describes the badge—a frog enameled on gold, with a hidden monogram—and quotes from the secretary's letters. The club's activities included monthly essays on Twain's works, followed by discussions, and quarterly suppers with speeches. Twain identifies five favored speakers: Palmer, Forbes, Naylor, Norris, and Calder, each with a distinct rhetorical style. Palmer and Forbes were known for their mutual attacks, one using "virile and eloquent abuse," the other "courtly and elegant but scalding satire." This extended episode, occupying much of Chapter XXV, reveals Twain's fascination with his own reception and his willingness to let a digression dominate the narrative.

Colonial Australia: Gold, Gums, and Grapevines

Twain's Australian itinerary includes Horsham, Stawell, Ballarat, and Bendigo, each described with an eye for economic detail and local color. In Horsham, he notes the width of roads measured in chains and perches, the presence of pepper trees, and an agricultural college with forty pupils. At Stawell, he reports a gold mine yielding $75,000 per month, yet the community is "the dryest on earth"—a pun on both aridity and temperance. Ballarat is celebrated for its great gold strike of 1851, the Eureka Stockade revolt, and fine statuary. Twain's prose is laced with dry humor: he mentions a bird with a forgettable name, a magpie that stole a lady's scissors, and gum trees that drink water. These details ground the travelogue in tangible observations.

Aboriginal Encounters and Colonial Ironies

Twain's treatment of Aboriginal Australians is marked by a mix of ethnographic curiosity and dark humor. He describes the "weet-weet" throwing stick, the practice of killing aboriginals in Queensland's pioneer days, and a grim anecdote about pudding laced with arsenic as revenge. He notes the aboriginals' manly qualities, dodging balls, feats of spring, and jumping—skills from which the kangaroo learned its art. Yet he also records the extermination of natives in Tasmania, referring to the "Picture Proclamation" and the "Conciliator" who faced "the Formidable Sixteen." Twain's tone is often sardonic, as when he comments on the "right spirit but a wrong method" of colonial violence. These passages reveal a traveler aware of the brutalities underlying settlement.

Tasmania: Neatness, Museums, and a Parrot's Taste

Twain's visit to Tasmania (then Van Diemen's Land) yields a portrait of Hobart as the "neatest city on earth," with an Englishman's love of home surroundings. He describes the museum, which houses a parrot with an acquired taste—presumably for alcohol—and glass arrow beads. He also notes a refuge for the indigent that is "too healthy," a typical Twainian twist. The chapter on Tasmania includes a reflection on the extermination of the native population, but the overall tone is lighter, focusing on the town's orderliness and curiosities. Twain's method is to juxtapose the grim with the quaint, never allowing the reader to settle into a single mood.

Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar and the Art of the Aphorism

Each chapter of Following the Equator is prefaced by a maxim from Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, and this volume is no exception. The opening epigram for Chapter XX reads: "It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them." This sardonic commentary on American hypocrisy sets the stage for Twain's observations on colonial societies. Throughout the excerpts, these aphorisms serve as thematic anchors, distilling Twain's skepticism into a single, sharp line. Readers should attend to these epigrams as keys to the chapters' underlying arguments.

This third part of Following the Equator offers a fragmented but vivid portrait of late-nineteenth-century Australia and New Zealand, filtered through Twain's irreverent sensibility. The excerpts reveal a writer more interested in digressions—a fan club, a parrot's habits, the width of a road—than in systematic travelogue. Readers will benefit from treating each chapter as a self-contained essay, with the Pudd'nhead Wilson epigrams as guides. Twain's humor often masks sharp social criticism, particularly regarding colonialism and human folly. Approach this text as a series of sketches rather than a continuous narrative, and you will find its pleasures multiply.

Twain’s detour to that Irish fan club always felt like a wink across the ocean. His wanderings pause for an unexpected, human warmth. Years later, I found that same unhurried curiosity in In the Oregon Country Out-Doors in Oregon, Washington, and California Together with some Legendary Lore, and Glimpses of the Modern West in the Making — Text and Context, where place becomes a gentle conversation. Both whisper of lands still finding their stories.