Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain: Selected Chapters - Summary

Chapter I

Twain, in America, signs on to a steamer expedition to the Holy Land and many other locations. He shows mock excitement and mock intimidation at the celebrities that are to be on board.

Chapter II

Everyone seems to be going to Europe. The journey begins, and they spend the first few days miserable stranded on the ship in the port in a storm.

Chapter III

They finally embark on the voyage. The sea is rough and half the passengers are seasick. They amuse themselves with half-rate music.

Chapter IV

Quaker City's passengers are becoming accustomed to life aboard ship. They play games and low-key sports and dance. Many passengers start keeping a journal, an attempt which they soon abandon. They have a mock trial and pray and find other amusements.

Chapter V

After ten days, they reach the Azores islands, a Portuguese colony in the Atlantic. They let local guides lead them ashore and are followed around by unclean beggar locals. Blucher invites nine friends to dinner and is shocked at the price, only to realize that it needed to be converted to dollars.

Chapter VI

Twain describes the Azores condescendingly as a primitive land. They see a cathedral whose priests are pathetic-looking. They ride donkeys around the town. Twain does marvel at the roads on the island. Lots of guides try to cash in on Twain's party.

Chapter VII

On the way to Gibraltar the sea is super stormy. They are glad to see land. Once in Gibraltar they are once again harassed by guides. They go into and up on the rock of Gibraltar and are told the same legend over and over again. Twain describes several curious and annoying characters aboard ship: the Oracle, a poet, "a good-natured enterprising idiot".

Twain is flattered into buying poor quality kid gloves by a beautiful Spanish saleslady.

Chapter VIII

They arrive in Tangier, which they find to be thrillingly and refreshingly foreign. He marvels at the locals' garb. He is fascinated by the ancientness of buildings. He expounds some of Tangier's history.

He describes the trade and changing money. Morocco is despotic and there is brutal taxation and Moroccans feign poverty so they are not taxed.

Chapter XIII

Paris. They choose one of three guides. They are thrilled by his gentlemanlike appearance, until they start their tours with him and are continually slowed down by his gluttony. They also realize he keeps stopping by stores on the way to the Louvre because he gets commission on items the travelers buy.

They go to the International Exposition but find the museum-goers more fascinating than the exhibitions. 

They go see a military parade under the Arc du Triomph  in which Napoleon III and Abdul Aziz are present. They inspire marvel in him at their respective greatness and terrorism/ignorance/laziness.

Chapter XXVI

Rome. Twain is upset that there is nothing to see in Rome that thousands haven't before him. He imagines he were an Italian having come from a visit to America and expounds the oddities of American life in relation to European. It is implied that he appreciates the quality of life in America.

He sees the cathedral of St. Peter's and it is too large to comprehend. He visits the Forum, and Coliseum, and the Capitol, and the Vatican. He reflects about Rome. He includes the description of an act that was performed in the Coliseum years ago as well as a critical review of it from 1700 years previously (fake/imagined). It is in the manner of a modern American critical review.

Chapter XXVII

Still Italy. The obsequiousness of a certain passage about Rome by Byron reminds Twain of Judge Oliver. Twain finds that passage monotonous just as Oliver found cows crashing through his roof monotonous. Twain is tired of the ubiquity of Michael Angelo in all Italian cities. They mock the guide Ferguson by asking him if everything is by MA and not being impressed by anything and otherwise feigning idiocy.

They go into catacombs in which saints were buried but also had to hide during their lifetimes because they were persecuted for being Christian.

Chapter XXXIII

Twain goes to Greece and is appalled by the squalor of Modern Greece as compared to the splendor of its history. He recounts the reasons for its deterioration. They visit different sites and cities.

They reach Constantinople. By this point in the trip the passengers are not excited to see new sites. Twain finds the city poor, its citizens idiots mostly, and full of cripples. They visit the Mosque of St. Sophia which used to be a church but he's unimpressed, and instead repelled by its dinginess. He attends a religious ceremony and finds it barbaric. His blind judgment gets annoying. He recommends the bazaar in Stamboul.

Chapter XXXIV

Constantinople still. Twain mocks the slave trade. He derides Greek, Turkish and Armenian morality. He is sad to see the sorry state of the city's dogs. The dogs are not fierce as he has heard said but hungry and battered.

There is extensive censorship of newspapers in Constantinople. Newspapers do not last long. In Naples newspapers are founded and cancelled often and they make money off this uncertainty.

The cooking in Constantinople is unsanitary.

The romantic notions Twain had of Turkish bathhouses is disappointed as the facilities are dilapidated and the service awful and the experience physically unpleasant.

Chapter XLI

Syria. They had tried to steal relics from mosques in Ephesus but were caught by the government. They approach the Holy Land and are excited and prepare. Because the transportation is not great they contact the American consulate for help. They start at Beirut and work their way South with the help of a dragoman. They are with a huge party with 19 serving men, who set up magnificent camp, complete with circus tents, iron bedsteads and delicious food.

Chapter XLV

Twain and his party of eight are in the desert leaving Damascus. The Americans look ridiculous with green umbrellas. He describes the primitiveness and decrepitude of Syrian villages which all seem the same. They stop by Nimrod's burial place and the ruins of Banias. They are grateful after the dryness of the desert to see the river Jordan. Twain tries to comprehend that Jesus walked this ground. The people are poor and he is appalled at their disease. Dr. B medicates them and they worship him. Twain understands how Christ was easily worshipped.

His and Dan's horses die and they must get new ones. Arab horses are diseased in contrast with the romantic stories of Arabian horses.

Chapter XLVIII

Magdala. The city is filthy. Their huts are tiny and primitively built. They see the hut of Mary Magdalene. 

They go to Tiberias which again is squalid. He describes its inhabitants. It is a sacred town to Jews and many rabbins have lived and died there.

The sea of Galilee is smaller than Lake Tahoe. He finds it to be unremarkable and makes no attempt to color it interesting as other guidebooks he cites did. The probably did because they came with preconceived notions about the places they went. Only at night, Twain says, is it possible to conceive of 

Tiberias as the locale of the birth of the greatest religion.

Chapter XLIX

They leave Tiberias for Jerusalem. Their guide hires for their procession a guard who is splendidly garbed and impressively armed against Christian-hating Bedouins. They protest that they can defend themselves as well without him but he comes along, and it turns out that the Sheik forces guards on travelers as a source of income.

They see a panorama of the Lake of Galilee; they go to the battlefield of Hattin in which Saladin beat the Christian King of Jerusalem. They reach Tabor, climb it and Twain finds the view pleasant. He is taken aback by this view when regarded from a pane of yellow glass and finds that it is magical for it. The ruins themselves, and the mountaintop convent and church are unimpressive. He wishes the plain of Esdralon would inspire visions of the great personages who fought there but it doesn't.

He visits Deburieh, hometown of Deborah and finds it identical to Magdala.

Chapter LIII

Twain finds Jerusalem small and densely populated. The houses are like American ones but with latticed windows and domed. The streets are narrow. There are many nationalities and languages but also poverty and beggars. They go to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and there see the Stone of Unction and the grave of Jesus and other Christian landmarks. They hear legends regarding these. They see the sword of Godfrey, they center of the earth, the place of crucifixion and more. Twain finds it ironic that so many have fought wars over the right to a land upon which the "prince of peace" died.

Chapter LXI (last)

Twain presents an article which he wrote for the NY Herald, which he says is complimentary though people did not find it so.

The article: The pleasure excursion was ill named, for the passengers were old and the mood somber. 

They played dominoes and croquet and wrote books and were seasick. It was more like a funeral procession. The Americans were self-important though no-one had they had met in their travels had heard of America. He portrays Americans as loud idiots who bought and wore local garb in every place and made a spectacle of themselves. They marveled at things when the guidebooks told them to. The Holy Land was the best feature even though it was dreary and dismal. By the end of the journey they were homesick and didn't care about any place. Now that he is home everything seems better.

Conclusion

Twain reflects that, a year after the trip, it seems much more pleasant and he would even do it again and he's friends with or on speaking terms with the passengers. In fact, he's grateful for having been with the same bunch of people for so long, because if he had travelled conventionally he would have had to depend on strangers continually for travel partners and socializing. Also, they had the ship which served as a mobile home.

He praises the journey for keeping to the program and for dispelling prejudices. He says he will remember scenes and incidents for many years to come. The distance of time will cause every place they saw to seem great.

Mark Twain. Image source