Still rollin' along

John Niven cruises in the wake of Mark Twain up the great Mississippi river of the American South

- Viking’s seven-night ‘New Orleans & Southern Charms’ itinerary

UNDERLINING Mark Twain's words in the departure lounge at London Heathrow, I'm reminded of how his prose still swings today. You look at the bracketed dates after his name and you're surprised to see he was born not as recently as 1935, but in 1835, so that this year sees the 190th anniversary of his birth. It's the reason I'm boarding a flight to New Orleans and the Mississippi. For you cannot understand Twain without understanding the great river that winds its way as twistingly through his work as it winds through the middle of America. To travel the length of the Mississippi back in the 19th century—all 2,300 miles of it—was no small undertaking and took Twain many months. I'll have to do what I can in a week...

'When you are invited to drink-and this does occur now and then in New Orleans...'

Twain wrote this, with delicious understatement, in 1883. Today, 142 years later, not much has changed in The Big Easy. A night wandering beneath its lights when you are jangled from the flight and spangled from the welcoming cocktails is something we should all experience. A little woozy by the riverside, I can see the docks and the massive ships standing ready, as they have for centuries. Later still, back at the hotel, I clamp a hand over one eye and turn to Twain's memoir Life on the Mississippi.

It is the crookedest river in the world, since in one part of its journey it uses up one thousand three hundred miles to cover the same ground that the crow would fly over in six hundred and seventy-five'

Braced for the circuitous, I flop into bed at about 5am, my time.

I'm not sure what I'm expecting ship-wise, but