Mark Twain recalls how, as a young man before the Civil War, he learned to pilot steamboats on the Mississippi, memorising every bend, sandbar and snag of…
Mark Twain recalls how, as a young man before the Civil War, he learned to pilot steamboats on the Mississippi, memorising every bend, sandbar and snag of twelve hundred miles of changing river under a demanding master pilot. The second half follows his return more than twenty years later, travelling the river as a passenger and finding the towns, the trade and the river itself transformed. It is history, memoir and tall tales at once, and the source of his pen name, a pilot's call for two fathoms of water.
Context and significance
Published in 1883, the book stands between Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, both in this library, and shows where they came from. John Greenman reads it alone, in about fifteen hours.
This is a LibriVox recording, read by volunteers and dedicated to the public domain; its audio files are kept by the Internet Archive, which plays and serves them here. Public-domain status differs from country to country, so check the law where you live before republishing it. Do you hold rights in this work? Request its removal
The Adventures of Tom SawyerMark Twain6 h 46 min · English
Adventures of Huckleberry FinnMark Twain10 h 42 min · English
The Prince and the PauperMark Twain6 h 56 min · English
Narrative of the Life of Frederick DouglassFrederick Douglass4 h 3 min · English
The Autobiography of Charles DarwinCharles Darwin2 h 45 min · English
Up from SlaveryBooker T. Washington7 h 58 min · English
Twelve Years a SlaveSolomon Northup8 h 5 min · English
The Story of MankindHendrik Willem van Loon13 h 30 min · English