| In July 1867, on a fine Crimean morning the beautiful side-wheel steamship Quaker City steamed down to the foot of the Yalta harbor and anchored. "Among our excursionists," as Mark Twain put it in his The Innocents Abroad, were ministers of the Gospel, doctors, military and naval officers with sound titles, "were an ample crop of 'Professors' of various kinds and a gentleman (Mark Twain) who had 'Commissioner of the United States of America to Europe, Asia and Africa' after his name." The Americans were invited to palace at Livadia to pay the Emperor of Russia a visit.
A dinner was served on the center-tables in the Reception Room and the verandas of the Grand Palace. The Russian nobility escorted them over the grounds and the illustrious host moved from place to place and helped to keep the conversation lively.
To quote from Mark Twain's original, "We have been in no country yet where we have been so kindly received and where we have felt that to be Americans was a sufficient visa for our passports . . . If you know Russia you know that was a wild stretch of hospitality.
 Yalta, Russia, August, 1867
Letter from Mark Twain to Jane Lampton Clemens and Family, Yalta, Aug.25, 1867 see here: http://www.marktwainproject.org/xtf/view?docId=letters/UCCL00145.xml;style=letter;brand=mtp
Mark Twain`s Sebastopol description in his "The Innocents Abroad", Chapter 35, (1869) see here: http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/mtwain/bl-mtwain-innocents-35.htm
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