Following the Equator - A Journey Around the World

Following the Equator is a non-fiction social commentary in the form of a travelogue published by Mark Twain in 1897. Twain was practically bankrupt in 1894 due to investing heavily into the failed Paige Compositor.

Excerpts:

We started westward from New York in midsummer, with Major Pond to manage the platform-business as far as the Pacific. It was warm work, all the way, and the last fortnight of it was suffocatingly smoky, for in Oregon and British Columbia the forest fires were raging. We had an added week of smoke at the seaboard, where we were obliged to wait awhile for our ship. She had been getting herself ashore in the smoke, and she had to be docked and repaired.