"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was his first popular story, written while in San Francisco in 1865.
In 1866, as a reporter for the Sacramento Union, he traveled to the Sandwich Islands (present-day Hawaii).
In 1867, a newspaper funded his voyage to the Mediterranean, which he recorded in his book,
Innocents Abroad, 1869.
While
on this trip, he saw the picture of his friend's sister, Olivia Langdon
of Elmira, New York, and he fell in love. Immediately upon his return,
he met and married Olivia.
His name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, born NOVEMBER 30, 1835.
In
Innocents Abroad, 1869, which established his reputation as a writer, Mark Twain described Syria under the Ottoman Turkish Empire:
"Then
we called at the tomb of Mahomet's children and at...the mausoleum of
the five thousand Christians who were massacred in Damascus in 1861 by
the Turks.
They
say those narrow streets ran blood for several days, and that men,
women and children were butchered indiscriminately and left to rot by
hundreds all through the Christian quarter; they say, further, that the
stench was dreadful.
All
the Christians who could get away fled from the city, and the
Mohammedans would not defile their hands by burying the 'infidel dogs.'
The
thirst for blood extended to the high lands of Hermon and Anti-Lebanon,
and in a short time twenty-five thousand more Christians were massacred
and their possessions laid waste..."
Mark Twain added:
"How they hate a Christian in Damascus!--and pretty much all over Turkeydom as well.
And
how they will pay for it when Russia turns her guns upon them again! It
is soothing to the heart to abuse England and France for interposing to
save the Ottoman Empire from the destruction it has so richly deserved
for a thousand years..."
Mark Twain continued:
"It
hurts my vanity to see these pagans refuse to eat of food that has been
cooked for us; or to eat from a dish we have eaten from; or to drink
from a goatskin which we have polluted with our Christian lips, except
by filtering the water through a rag which they put over the mouth of it
or through a sponge!...
These degraded Turks and Arabs...When
Russia is ready to war with them again, I hope England and France will
not find it good breeding or good judgment to interfere..."
Mark Twain wrote in
Innocents Abroad, chapter XLII:
"If
ever an oppressed race existed, it is this one we see fettered around
us under the inhuman tyranny of the Ottoman Empire. I wish Europe would
let Russia annihilate Turkey a little--not much, but enough to make it
difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a
diving-bell."
Mark Twain wrote in Innocents Abroad, chapter LVI:
"Palestine
sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that
has withered its fields and fettered its energies...about whose borders
nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of cane, and that
treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching lips, but turns
to ashes at the touch...Palestine is desolate and unlovely..."
In
Innocents Abroad, chapter LIII, Mark Twain described the condition of Jerusalem under Ottoman Muslim rule:
"Rags,
wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate
the presence of Moslem rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself,
abound...Jerusalem is mournful, and dreary, and lifeless. I would not
desire to live here...
The
Moslems watch the Golden Gate with a jealous eye, and an anxious one,
for they have an honored tradition that when it falls, Islamism will
fall and with it the Ottoman Empire.
It did not grieve me any to notice that the old gate was getting a little shaky."
Mark Twain wrote in Innocents Abroad, chapter LVI:
"Renowned
Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its
ancient grandeur...the wonderful temple which was the pride and the
glory of Israel, is gone, and the Ottoman crescent is lifted above the
spot where, on that most memorable day in the annals of the world, they
reared the Holy Cross."
In chapter XLVII of
Innocents Abroad, 1869, Mark Twain described the land of Israel:
"We
dismounted on those shores which the feet of the Saviour had made holy
ground...We left Capernaum behind us. It was only a shapeless ruin. It
bore no semblance to a town. But, all desolate and unpeopled as it was,
it was illustrious ground.
From
it sprang that tree of Christianity whose broad arms overshadow so many
distant lands today. Christ visited his old home at Nazareth, and saw
His brothers Joses, Judas, James, and Simon....
Who wonders what
passed in their minds when they saw this brother (who was only a brother
to them, however He might be to others a mysterious stranger; who was a
God, and had stood face to face with God above the clouds) doing
miracles, with crowds of astonished people for witnesses?...
One
of the most astonishing things that has yet fallen under our observation
is the exceedingly small portion of the earth from which sprang the new
flourishing plant of Christianity.
The longest journey our Saviour ever performed was from here to Jerusalem - about one hundred to one hundred and twenty miles...
Leaving
out two or three short journeys, He spent His life, preaching His
Gospel, and performing His miracles, within a compass no larger than an
ordinary county of the United States..."
Get the book, What Every American Needs to Know about the Qur'an-A History of Islam & the United States
Of the Bible, Mark Twain wrote in
Innocents Abroad, 1869:
"It
is hard to make a choice of the most beautiful passage in a book which
is so gemmed with beautiful passages as the Bible; but it is certain
that not many things within its lids may take rank above the exquisite
story of Joseph.
Who taught those ancient writers their
simplicity of language, their felicity of expression, their pathos, and
above all, their faculty of sinking themselves entirely out of sight of
the reader and making the narrative stand out alone and seem to tell
itself?
Shakespeare
is always present when one reads his book; Macaulay is present when we
follow the march of his stately sentences; but the Old Testament writers
are hidden from view."
Mark Twain wrote in
Innocents Abroad, 1869:
"In
the starlight, Galilee has no boundaries but the broad compass of the
heavens, and is a theatre meet for great events; meet for the birth of a
religion able to save the world."
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