Mark Twain nos Açores

Robert L. Santos, Bibliotecário e Arquivista da California State University, Stanislaus recorrendo a uma bibliografia notável, escreveu um excelente artigo sobre os Açores, descrevendo, entre outras coisas, as opiniões de visitantes célebres a estas ilhas.
Um deles,Mark Twain, é citado assim:

"Mark Twain visited the Azores and wrote about the islands and its people in his work “Innocents Abroad”. It must be remembered that Twain's style is witty and satirical, and he uses forced humour at times to entertain the reader. But still his comments are worth hearing, if only because he is a giant in the observation of people. His preoccupation with the donkey in the below passage comes a day after his rigorous travel on the beast of burden:

The community is eminently Portuguese - that is to say, it is slow, poor, shiftless, sleepy, and lazy . . . The people lie, and cheat the stranger, and are desperately ignorant, and have hardly any reverence for their dead. The latter trait shows how little better they are than the donkeys they eat and sleep with . . . The donkeys and the men, women, and children of a family, all eat and sleep in the same room, and are unclean, are ravaged by vermin, and are truly happy."