the main dock across the harbour. On 28 July 2012, a new passenger ferry and dock was inaugurated across the harbour at the mouth of the Ribeira da Conceição across from the old District Courthouse. A €33 million project, the dock was started in 2009, and resulted in a long wharf, with a long by wide usable docking space containing two ramps for roll-on/roll-off operation, with the express purpose of supporting passenger traffic within the triangle islands of the central Azores. A long embankment in area was also built to protect the Ribeira da Conceição. The project involved changes to the road network in the area, parking areas, pavement and green-spaces, as well as new public illumination, water supply, telecommunications, and fueling resources. In addition to these improvements, Transmaçor acquired two new ships to be brought into service by the end of 2014 in order to support the island's tourist economy. At the new wharf's inauguration, President of the Azorean Regional Government Carlos Cesar indicated the importance of inter-island traffic for the islands, which for 16 years had transported 290,000 passengers annually (and now is beyond 400,000). In literature The city contains the Horta Regional Museum which has a permanent exhibit, Exhibition of Capelinhos Volcano, detailing in photographs the 1957 volcanic eruption in the Azores. The museum also contains a large collection of scale models of buildings, ships, and people carved from fig kernels by Euclides Rosa. Mark Twain visited Horta in June 1867 near the beginning of a long pleasure excursion to Jerusalem. He described his visit with acerbic commentary on the people and culture of Horta in his semi-autobiographical book The Innocents Abroad. In the book Twain compliments Horta's physical appearance: The town has eight thousand to ten thousand inhabitants. Its snow-white houses nestle cosily in a sea of fresh green vegetation, and no village could look prettier or more attractive. It sits in the lap of an amphitheatre of hills which are three hundred to seven hundred feet high, and carefully cultivated clear to their summits - not a foot of soil left idle. However, Twain painted a less complimentary picture of the inhabitants of Horta and Faial at the time: The group on the pier was a rusty one — men and women, and boys and girls, all ragged, and barefoot, uncombed and unclean, and by instinct, education, and profession, beggars. They trooped after us, and