MADAME IDA PFEIFFER.
II.
At length she was free to indulge her long-cherished inclinations. Her sons stood no longer in need of her support; her husband was separated from her and was living in retirement at Lemberg; her means, though moderate, were not inadequate to the fulfilment of the projects she had in view. It was true she was forty-five years old, and that is not an age at which one usually attempts a tour round the world; but, on the other hand, it invested a woman with a certain degree of security, and it rendered more feasible an enterprise which in any case was beset with difficulties.
Having completed the necessary preparations, she set out on her first great journey in March, 1842. It was natural enough that a woman of religious temperament should be attracted to the Holy Land. She visited its holiest places, and the effect they produced upon her imagination is a proof that years and the cares of domestic life had in no wise chilled its early warmth. Returning in December, she proceeded to compile a narrative of her experiences, which was published in 1843, under the title of "Travels of a Viennese Woman to the Holy Land," and immediately obtained a worldwide popularity. Its merits, however, are not of a literary character; its attractiveness is due entirely to its simplicity and straightforwardness. The reader at once discovers that he is dealing with a writer who makes no attempt to deceive, who neither diminishes nor exaggerates, nor adapts her facts to preconceived opinions. To this we may add that Madame Pfeiffer, though an accurate, is not a profound observer.
From the sultry heat of the East she next betook herself to the sullen cold of the North; and the result of her wanderings in 1846 was a lively book upon Scandinavia and Iceland, describing perils which few men would care to confront, with evidently unaffected enjoyment.
But these comparatively short excursions were but preliminary to the great enterprise of her life, the prologue, as it were, to the five-act drama, with all its surprises, hazards, amazing situations, and striking scenes. The experience she had acquired as a traveller she resolved to utilize in the accomplishment of a tour round the world, and on this notable adventure she set out in June, 1846, being then in her fiftieth year, on board the Caroline, a Danish brig, bound for Rio Janeiro. She arrived at the Brazilian capital on the 16th of September, and remained there for upwards of two months, exclusive of the time devoted to excursions into the interior. On one of these excursions she narrowly escaped the murderer's knife. She and her companion, in a lonely spot, were overtaken by a negro, who, with a lasso in one hand and a long knife in the other, suddenly sprang upon them, and gave them to understand, more by gestures than words, that he intended to murder them, and then drag their bodies into the forest. They had no arms, having been told that the road was perfectly safe; their only defensive weapons were their parasols, with the exception of a clasp knife, which Ida Pfeiffer instantly drew from her pocket and opened, resolved to sell her life as dearly as possible. They parried their adversary's blows as long as they could with their parasols, but these did not long avail; Madame Pfeiffer's broke in the struggle, leaving only a fragment of the handle in her hand. The negro, however, dropped his knife; the courageous woman made an effort to seize it; he thrust her away with his hands and feet, recovered it, and brandishing it furiously over her head, dealt her two wounds in the upper part of the left arm. She thought she was lost, but despair nerved her to use her own knife; she made a thrust at his breast, but succeeded only in wounding him severely in the hand. At the same moment, her companion, Count Berchthold, sprang forward, and while he seized the villain from behind, Madame Pfeiffer regained her feet. All this took place in less than a minute. The negro was now roused into a condition of maniacal fury; he gnashed his teeth like a wild beast, and brandished his knife, while shouting fearful threats. The issue of the contest would probably have been disastrous, but for the opportune arrival of assistance. Hearing the tramp of horses' hoofs upon the road, the negro desisted from his attack, and sprang into the forest. A couple of horsemen turning the corner of the road, our travellers hurried to meet them, and having heard their tale, which, indeed, their wounds told eloquently enough, they leaped from their horses, and entered the wood in pursuit. Two negroes afterwards came up; the villain was captured, securely pinioned, and, as he would not walk, severely beaten, until, as most of the blows fell upon his head, Madame Pfeiffer feared the wretch's skull would be broken. Nothing, however, would induce him to walk, and the negroes were compelled to carry him bodily to the nearest house.
Our traveller was much impressed by the beauties of the tropical scenery. In one of her rambles she crossed a small waterfall; she struck right into the depths of the virgin forest, following a narrow path along the bank of a little stream. Stately-crested palms waved high above the other trees, which intertwining their inextricable boughs, formed the loveliest fairy-bowers imaginable; every stem, every branch, was garlanded with fantastic orchids; while ferns and creepers glided up the tall, smooth trunks, mingling with the boughs, and spreading in every direction waving curtains of flowers of the rarest fragrance and vividest hues imaginable. With shrill twittering cry and rapid wing flashed the humming-bird through the transparent air; the pepper-pecker, with glowing plumage, rose timorously upwards; while parrots and parroquets, and innumerable birds of beautiful appearance, enhanced, by their voices and movements, the loveliness of the scene.
From Rio Janeiro Madame Pfeiffer sailed in an English ship, the John Renwick, on the 9th of September, for Valparaiso, the great sea-port of Chili. In sailing southward, the ship touched at Santos, where the voyagers celebrated New Year's Day, and they made the mouth of the Rio Plata on the 11th of January. In these latitudes the Southern Cross is the most conspicuous object in the heavens. It consists of five shining stars, arranged in two diagonal rows. Towards the end of the month Madame Pfeiffer gazed upon the sterile cliffs and barren mountains of Patagonia, and next upon the volcanic rocks, wave-worn and wind-beaten, of Fire-Land, or Tierra del Fuego. Through the Strait of Le Main, which separates the latter from Staten Island, the voyagers passed onward to the extreme southern point of the American Continent, the famous promontory of Cape Horn. This is the last spur of the mighty mountain-chain of the Andes, and consists of a mass of huge basaltic rocks, piled together in huge disorder as by a Titan's hand.
Doubling Cape Horn they encountered a furious gale, which raged for several days; and soon discovered, like other voyagers, how little the great southern ocean deserves its name of the Pacific. "Such a storm as this," says Ida Pfeiffer, "affords much food for reflection. You are alone upon the boundless ocean, far from all human aid, and feel more than ever that your life depends upon the Most High alone. The man who, in such a dread and solemn moment can still believe there is no God, must indeed be irretrievably struck with mental blindness. During such convulsions of Nature a feeling of tranquil joy always comes over me. I very often had myself bound near the binnacle, and allowed the tremendous waves to break over me, in order to absorb, as it were, as much of the spectacle before me as possible; on no occasion did I ever feel alarmed, but always full of confidence and resignation."