Twenty-one-year-old Samuel Clemens decided he needed a change. He would leave his dull job as a printer and head to New Orleans. From there, he would get passage on a ship to South America. He hoped to have great adventures and become a wealthy businessman.
The trip changed his life but not in the way he expected. Almost as soon as Clemens boarded the steamer in April 1857, his dreams of South America began to fade. An old childhood dream—to pilot a Mississippi steamboat—grew stronger. He soon made friends