Roughing it, by Mark Twain,
begins with two brothers making preparations to travel to the West. One of them
was appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory and, in his brother´s point of
view, he would be like a hero. He would see buffaloes and Indians and have all
kinds of adventures…
My brother had
just been appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory—an office of such majesty
that it concentrated in itself the duties and dignities of Treasurer,
Comptroller, Secretary of State, and Acting Governor in the Governor's absence.
A salary of eighteen hundred dollars a year and the title of "Mr.
Secretary," gave to the great position an air of wild and imposing
grandeur. I was young and ignorant, and I envied my brother. I coveted his
distinction and his financial splendor, but particularly and especially the
long, strange journey he was going to make, and the curious new world he was
going to explore. He was going to travel! I never had been away from home, and
that word "travel" had a seductive charm for me. Pretty soon he would
be hundreds and hundreds of miles away on the great plains and deserts, and
among the mountains of the Far West, and would see buffaloes and Indians, and
prairie dogs, and antelopes, and have all kinds of adventures, and may be get
hanged or scalped, and have ever such a fine time, and write home and tell us
all about it, and be a hero. And he would see the gold mines and the silver
mines, and maybe go about of an afternoon when his work was done, and pick up
two or three pailfuls of shining slugs, and nuggets of gold and silver on the
hillside. And by and by he would become very rich, and return home by sea, and
be able to talk as calmly about San Francisco and the ocean, and "the
isthmus" as if it was nothing of any consequence to have seen those
marvels face to face.
What I suffered
in contemplating his happiness, pen cannot describe. And so, when he offered
me, in cold blood, the sublime position of private secretary under him, it
appeared to me that the heavens and the earth passed away, and the firmament
was rolled together as a scroll! I had nothing more to desire. My contentment
was complete.
Riverboast at Menphis, 1906 |
At the end of an
hour or two I was ready for the journey. Not much packing up was necessary,
because we were going in the overland stage from the Missouri frontier to
Nevada, and passengers were only allowed a small quantity of baggage apiece.
There was no Pacific railroad in those fine times of ten or twelve years
ago—not a single rail of it. I only proposed to stay in Nevada three months—I
had no thought of staying longer than that. I meant to see all I could that was
new and strange, and then hurry home to business. I little thought that I would
not see the end of that three-month pleasure excursion for six or seven uncommonly
long years!
I dreamed all
night about Indians, deserts, and silver bars, and in due time, next day, we
took shipping at the St. Louis wharf on board a steamboat bound up the Missouri
River.
We were six days
going from St. Louis to "St. Jo."—a trip that was so dull, and
sleepy, and eventless that it has left no more impression on my memory than if
its duration had been six minutes instead of that many days. No record is left
in my mind, now, concerning it, but a confused jumble of savage-looking snags, which
we deliberately walked over with one wheel or the other; and of reefs which we
butted and butted, and then retired from and climbed over in some softer place;
and of sand-bars which we roosted on occasionally, and rested, and then got out
our crutches and sparred over.
In fact, the
boat might almost as well have gone to St. Jo. by land, for she was walking
most of the time, anyhow—climbing over reefs and clambering over snags
patiently and laboriously all day long. The captain said she was a
"bully" boat, and all she wanted was more "shear" and a
bigger wheel. I thought she wanted a pair of stilts, but I had the deep
sagacity not to say so.
The first thing
we did on that glad evening that landed us at St. Joseph was to hunt up the
stage-office, and pay a hundred and fifty dollars apiece for tickets per
overland coach to Carson City, Nevada. The next morning, bright and early, we
took a hasty breakfast, and hurried to the starting-place. Then an
inconvenience presented itself which we had not properly appreciated before,
namely, that one cannot make a heavy traveling trunk stand for twenty-five
pounds of baggage—because it weighs a good deal more. But that was all we could
take—twenty-five pounds each. So we had to snatch our trunks open, and make a
selection in a good deal of a hurry. We put our lawful twenty-five pounds
apiece all in one valise, and shipped the trunks back to St. Louis again. It
was a sad parting, for now we had no swallow-tail coats and white kid gloves to
wear at Pawnee receptions in the Rocky Mountains, and no stove-pipe hats nor
patent-leather boots, nor anything else necessary to make life calm and
peaceful… (from Roughing it, chapters
1 and 2, by Mark
Twain)
The
novel
Roughing It is a book of semi-autobiographical travel literature
written by American humorist Mark Twain.
It was written during 1870–71 and published in 1872 as a prequel to his first
book Innocents Abroad.
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