10 September 1867 • Beirut, Syria (MS: NPV, UCCL 00148)
We are here, eight of us, making a contract with a dragoman for to take us to Baalbek, then to Damascus, Nazareth, &c, then to Lake Genassareth (Sea of Tiberias,) then south through all the celebrated Scriptural localities, to Jerusalem—then to the Dead Sea, the Cave of Macpelah & up to Joppa where the ship will be. We shall be in the saddle three weeks—we have horses, tents, provisions, arms, a dragoman & 2 other servants, & we pay five dollars a day apiece in gold.1explanatory note
We leave tomorrow tonight at 2 oclock in the morning.2explanatory note
letter docketed: Rec’d in St. Louis Oct. 11. P. A. M.
The eight were Clemens, Slote, Van Nostrand, Moulton, Davis, Birch, Church, and Denny. Clemens must have written this letter on 10 (not 11) September, for he implies that the contract had not yet been settled, and Denny’s journal shows that negotiations for the trip were completed on 10 September, when a “committee” of three (Church, Birch, and Denny himself), acting for the party, paid the dragoman “in the presence of our Consul one half the cost.” The total cost of the expedition was “one pound sterling each per. day for twenty days,” or $800, the remaining half of which was due on arrival in Jaffa. On 11 September Clemens wrote in his notebook:
Abraham, of Malta, is Chief Dragoman, & Mohamed —— of Alexandria, Egypt is 1st Assistant.
Camp Equipage: 3 sleeping tents; 1 kitchen tent, & 1 eating tent—all large, finely furnished & handsome.
Our caravan numbers 24 mules & horses, & 14 serving men—28 men all told.
The United States consul general in Beirut was J. A. Johnson (N&J1 , 416–17; Denny, entry for 10 Sept; Interior Department, 8).
References
- Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
- Machlis, Paul, ed. Union Catalog of Clemens Letters. Edited by Paul Machlis. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. [In some cases, UCCL catalog numbers cited in this volume supersede those assigned in 1986 and reflect corrections or additions to the catalog since publication. An updated version of the catalog can be consulted via the Letters Search page at MTPO.] 1986
- SLC (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 2: 1867–1868. Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith, Richard Bucci, and Lin Salamo. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Also online at MTPO[bib32371]. 1990
- Paine, Albert Bigelow, ed. Mark Twain’s Letters. Edited by Albert Bigelow Paine. 2 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1917
- N&J1. Mark Twain’s Notebooks & Journals, Volume I (1855–1873). Edited by Frederick Anderson, Michael B. Frank, and Kenneth M. Sanderson. The Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1975
- Denny, William R. “Quaker City and Holy Land Journal.” TS of 273 pages, Manuscripts Department, ViU[bib10492], PH in CU-MARK. 1867
- U.S. Department of the Interior. Register of Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval, in the Service of the United States, on the Thirtieth September, 1867. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. 1868
MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV).
L2 , 93–94; MTL , 1:136.
see McKinney Family Papers, pp. 512–14.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.