Bound on a lecturing trip around the world, Mark Twain turns his keen satiric eye to foreign lands in Following the Equator. The first of two volumes, this vivid record of a sea voyage on the Pacific Ocean displays Twain's instinctive eye for the unusual, his wide-ranging curiosity, and his delight in embellishing the facts.

The personalities of the ship's crew and passengers, the poetry of Australian place-names, and the success of women's suffrage in New Zealand, among other topics, are the focus of his wry humor and redoubtable powers of observation. Following the Equator is an ecocative and highly unique American portrait of nineteenth-century travel and customs.