The Emperor and the Sultan in Mark Twain: How Innocent were the "Innocents"?

In a chartered steamship provided with every necessary comfort, a highly select group of sixty five excursionists including ministers of the gospels, doctors, high ranking officers and professors of various kind embarked on an a “pleasure excursion” to the Holy Land, Europe, Turkey, Egypt and intermediate points of interests. That was back in 1867. Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910 documented this excursion in his reports in the form of observations, descriptions, comments and notes sent in his letters to the daily San Francisco Alta California, The New York Tribune and The New York Herald. These reports were later published in what became a landmark in American literature and travel literature in general in Twain’s best known and most widely read travel narrative entitled The Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrims Progress: Being Some Account of the Steamship Quaker City’s Pleasure Excursion to Europe and the Holy Land; With Descriptions of Countries, Nations, Incidents and Adventures as they Appeared to the Author”.[1] Though claimed to be a “pleasure excursion”, Twain affirms that it was not. Neither it was a scientific expedition. It was a primarily a “pilgrimage” to the Holy Land and a tour of Europe and “intermediate” points of interest.

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