Amazon, where he thought he could get rich quickly. He arrived in New Orleans without a penny in his pocket only to find that there were no boats for South America. Forced to change his plans, he worked for several years as a pilot on a steamboat, taking passengers up and down the Mississippi, the great river which flows from the north of the US near the Canadian border, down to the Gulf of Mexico.

Later he became a journalist and began writing stories about life on the river. Twain’s vivid and often amusing descriptions of life on the river quickly became popular, and established the reputation he still enjoys today as one of America’s greatest writers.