As Clemens later said explicitly (1 Feb 68 to Youngclick to open link), he took these letters (presumably enclosed) from the sequence of those he had written for, but not yet sent to, the Alta. The enclosures themselves have not been found and can be further identified only indirectly. They did not appear in the Tribune, which published no Holy Land letters later than 9 November. The Alta’s numbered sequence of letters, however, omitted numbers 40, 41, and 42—almost certainly because they were sent to Young, who did not immediately return them. One of the letters may have been published by the Alta on 5 April 1868: it is explicitly subtitled “Palestine Scenery,” and was, according to the author’s note at the end, “written in place of No. 51, which was mislaid for a time, but was found subsequently” (SLC 1868). Part or all of the other two letters may have found their way into the manuscript of The Innocents Abroad, which Clemens prepared in the spring of 1868 largely by revising clippings of the Alta letters, at least in the Holy Land portion of the narrative. In that portion an unusually long section of previously unpublished material appears between what was reprinted from letter 39 and what was reprinted from letter 43 (SLC 1868, SLC 1868): most of the latter half of chapter 50, containing a very full burlesque of William C. Prime, and the first half of chapter 51, which continues the description of Nazareth begun in letter 39 (SLC 1869, 529–46). This new material may have been written anew for the book during the period of March–June 1868. But part or all of it may very well have originated as one of the letters sent to Young, though written for the Alta during October–November 1867.

The foreign editor of the Tribune from 1860 to 1869 was Alexander Jacob Schem (1826–81), born in Westphalia, Germany. City editor Cummings described him as