Roughing it, Volume 1The book follows the travels of young Mark Twain through the Wild West during the years 1861-1867. Twain left Missouri in 1861 to work with his brother Orion Clemens, the newly appointed Secretary of the Nevada Territory. By hiring him, Orion allowed Twain to fulfill one of his dearest ambitions: to travel. Once settled in Nevada, he fell victim to gold fever and went to the Humboldt mines. When prospecting lost its attractions, he found work as a reporter in Virginia City. In 1864, he moved to California and worked as a reporter in San Francisco. It was there that he began to establish a nationwide reputation as a humorist. Roughing It, first published in 1872, is his account of his adventures in the Far West. He devotes twenty chapters to the overland journey by boat and stagecoach to Carson City, including several chapters on the Mormons. Next come chronicles of mining life, real-estate speculation, local politics, and crime in Virginia City and San Francisco. After a junket to the Kingdom of Hawaii, the book closes with his return to San Francisco and his introduction to the lecture circuit. |
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Common terms and phrases
ain't Arkansas Ballou began boys cabin California Capt captain Carson Carson City cats CHAPTER Chinaman Coriantumr crowd Daily Territorial dead desert desperado dollars a foot driver feet fell fifty fire gave gentleman gold Gold Hill gone Gumbert half hand head heard Higbie horse hostler hour Indians Jack Joe McGee jury Kaahumanu killed knew Lake ledge look miles mining Mono Lake months Mormon morning Mount Davidson mountain native Nevada never nigger night Noakes once Ophir pard party passed quartz Reeder Reese River rich rock sage-brush San Francisco seen shaft ship side silver silver-mine Slade stood stranger street talk tell thing thought thousand dollars tion took town tunnel turned Virginia Virginia City wagon walked wanted warn't week whisky Wide West worth
Popular passages
Page 158 - We plodded on, two or three hours longer, and at last the lake burst upon us— a noble sheet of blue water lifted six thousand three hundred feet above the level of the sea, and walled in by a rim of snow-clad mountain peaks that towered aloft full three thousand feet higher still! It was a vast oval, and one would have to use up eighty or a hundred good miles in traveling around it.
Page 34 - The cayote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth.
Page 114 - And we declare with words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon...
Page 117 - Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord; wherefore, thus saith the Lord, I have led this people forth out of the land of Jerusalem, by the power of mine arm, that I might raise up unto me a righteous branch from the fruit of the loins of Joseph. Wherefore, I, the Lord God, will not suffer that this people shall do like unto them of old.
Page 48 - My friend, I seem to grow more and more bewildered. Your observations are wholly incomprehensible to me. Cannot you simplify them in some way ? At first I thought perhaps I understood you, but I grope now.
Page 198 - I searched, with always increasing interest and always augmenting gratitude that I had come to Humboldt and come in time. Of all the experiences of my life, this secret search among the hidden treasures of silver-land was the nearest to unmarred ecstasy. It was a delirious revel. By and by, in the bed of a shallow rivulet, I found a deposit of shining yellow scales, and my breath almost forsook me! A gold mine, and in my simplicity I had been content with vulgar silver! I was so excited that I half...
Page 53 - And you can say, pard, that he never shook his mother." "Never shook his mother?" "That's it — any of the boys will tell you so." "Well, but why should he shake her?" "That's what I say — but some people does." "Not people of any repute?" "Well, some that averages pretty so-so.
Page 188 - ... to no purpose ; showed him what rapture it is to work all day long for fifty cents to buy food for next day with, as compared with fishing for a pastime and lolling in the shade through eternal summer, and eating of the bounty that nobody labored to provide but Nature. How sad it is to think of the multitudes who have gone to their graves in this beautiful island and never knew there was a hell.
Page 33 - ... an outlook over the world-wide carpet about us for things new and strange to gaze at. Even at this day it thrills me through and through to think of the life, the gladness and the wild sense of freedom that used to make the blood dance in my veins on those fine overland mornings ! Along about an hour after breakfast we saw the first prairiedog villages, the first antelope, and the first wolf. If I remember rightly, this latter was the regular coyote (pronounced ky-o-te) of the farther deserts....
Page 14 - Joy sat on every countenance, and there was a glad, almost fierce, intensity in every eye, that told of the money-getting schemes that were seething in every brain and the high hope that held sway in every heart. Money was as plenty as dust; every individual considered himself wealthy, and a melancholy countenance was nowhere to be seen. There were military companies, fire companies, brass-bands, banks, hotels, theaters, "hurdy-gurdy houses...