Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century

by W. H. Davenport Adams

From Tiflis our traveller proceeded across Georgia to Redutkalé, whence she made her way to Kertch, on the shore of the Sea of Azov; and thence to Sevastopol, destined a few years later to become the scene of a great historic struggle. She afterwards reached Odessa, one of the great European granaries, situated at the mouth of the Dniester on the Euxine. From Odessa to Constantinople the sea-distance is four hundred and twenty miles. She made but a brief sojourn in the Turkish capital. Taking the steamer to Smyrna, she passed through the star-like clusters of the isles of Greece—those isles "where burning Sappho loved and sung;" and from Smyrna she hastened to Athens. There she trod, indeed, upon "hallowed ground." Every shattered temple, every ruined monument, every fragment of arch or column, recalled to her some brave deed of old; or some illustrious name of philosopher, statesman, poet, patriot, enshrined for ever in the world's fond remembrance. Madame Pfeiffer was not a scholar, but she had read enough to feel her sympathies awakened as she gazed from the lofty summit of the Acropolis on the plains of Attica and the waters of the Ægean, on Salamis and Marathon. She was not an artist, but she had a feeling for the beautiful; and she examined with intense delight the Parthenon, the Temple of Theseus, the Olympian, the Tower of the Winds, and the graceful choragic monument of Lysicrates. These, however, have been more fitly described by writers capable of doing them justice, and Madame Pfeiffer's brief and commonplace allusions may well be overlooked.

From Athens to Corinth, and from Corinth to Corfu, and thence to Trieste. Our traveller's bold enterprise was completed on the 30th of October, and she could honourably boast of having been the first woman to accomplish the circuit of the globe. She had been absent from Vienna just two years and six months, and had travelled 2,800 miles by land, and 35,000 miles by sea. Such an achievement necessarily crowned her with glory; and when she published her plain and unaffected narrative of "A Woman's Journey Round the World," it met at once with a most favourable reception.

At first, on her return home, she spoke of her travelling days as over, and represented herself, at the age of fifty-one, as desirous only of peace and repose. But her love of action, her craving after new scenes, her thirst for knowledge could not long be repressed; and as she felt herself still strong and healthy, with energies as potent as ever, she resolved on a second circuit of the globe. Her funds having been augmented by a grant of 1,500 florins from the Austrian Government, she quitted Vienna on the 18th of March, 1851, proceeded to London, and thence to Cape Town, where she arrived on the 11th of August. Her original intention was to penetrate the African interior as far as Lake Ngami; but eventually she resolved on exploring the Eastern Archipelago. At Sarâwak, the British settlement in Borneo, she received a warm welcome from Rajah Sir James Brooke, a man of heroic temper and unusual capacities for command and organization. As soon as she could complete the necessary preparations, she boldly plunged into the very heart of the island—a region almost unknown to Europeans. This was the most daring enterprise of her life, and of itself stamps her as no ordinary woman—as, in truth, a woman of scarcely less heroic temper than the boldest adventurers of the other sex. To endure the pains and perils of such a journey she must have had, not only a remarkable physical energy, but a scarcely less remarkable energy of mind. Night after night she passed in the depths of the vast Bornean forest, a little rice her only food—journeying all day through thickets, which lacerated her feet; swimming brooks and rivers too deep to be forded; recoiling before no form of danger, however unexpected; and astonishing the very savages by her daring and endurance. She equipped herself in a costume of her own devising, well adapted for the work she had to do; and protected her head with a large banana leaf from the burning rays of a tropical sun. No conjuncture, however critical, found her without resources; and we hesitate not to say that in the whole history of discovery and geographical enterprise there is no more wonderful or exciting chapter than that which records Madame Ida Pfeiffer's travels in the interior of Borneo.

We owe to her enterprise an interesting account of the character and usages of the Dyaks. Their ferocity of disposition is proverbial in the East. It is said that when a Dyak has promised a head—a human head—to the woman he loves, he will obtain it at any cost. Whether he strikes down friend or foe he cares not, so long as he secures the ghastly gift; and his eye being as sure as that of the tiger, his arrow never misses its aim. When we remember that these savages are cannibals, that they had never before seen among them an European woman, and that Ida Pfeiffer went without guard or guide, we begin to realize the full extent of her daring. But boldness is always the best policy: this plain-featured, middle-aged woman commanded the respect and admiration of her hosts, and went from encampment to encampment in entire security.

After visiting the island of Celebes she repaired to Sumatra, which is inhabited by a race of men even more sanguinary than the Dyaks, namely, the Battahs, who slake their thirst in human blood, and make of anthropophagism a "fine art!" It is said that some of the tribes purchase slaves on purpose to devour them, while, as a matter of course, prisoners taken in battle and shipwrecked seamen fall victims to their cannibal appetites. Many voyagers agree in asserting that they also deal in the same hideous fashion with their old men, who, when they cease to be of any service to the tribe, are deemed unworthy of longer life; the sons themselves become the executioners of their fathers, coolly fastening them to a tree and hacking them to pieces, without showing the slightest emotion at the spectacle of their agony.

In the course of her explorations in Sumatra, she found herself, on one occasion, surrounded by a tribe of savages, who would undoubtedly have treated her as an enemy, if she had not behaved with remarkable presence of mind. The natives who accompanied her took to flight, and left her to face the danger alone. "These savages," she says, "were six feet in stature, and the natural ugliness of their features was increased by the rage that contorted them. Their large mouths, with projecting teeth, resembled the jaw of a wild beast. They deafened me with their yells.... I did not lose my head, but pretending to feel perfectly assured, I seated myself on a stone close at hand.... The gestures of the savages left no doubt of their intentions; with their knives they simulated the action of cutting my throat, with their teeth they seemed to rend my arms, and they moved up and down their jawbones as if my flesh were already in their mouths.... Rising, I went straight to the nearest man, and striking him familiarly on the shoulder, I said, with a smile, half in Malay and half in Battah, 'Come, come, you will never have the heart to kill and eat a woman, and an old woman like me, whose skin is harder than leather!'" A roar of laughter greeted this courageous speech, and the speaker was immediately received into the friendship of her savage auditors, who overwhelmed her with marks of goodwill and admiration.

Having "looked in" at Banda and Amboyna, Madame Pfeiffer quitted the Moluccas, and having obtained a gratuitous passage across the Pacific, sailed for California. On the 29th of September, 1853, she arrived at San Francisco. At the end of the year she sailed for Callao, the port of Lima, with the design of crossing the Andes, and pushing eastward, through the interior of South America, to the Brazilian coast. A revolution in Peru compelled her, however, to change her course, and she made her way to Ecuador, which served as a starting-point for her ascent of the Cordilleras. After witnessing an eruption of the volcano of Cotopaxi, she retraced her steps to the West. In the neighbourhood of Guayaquil she had two very narrow escapes—one by a fall from her mule, and another by accidentally falling into the river Guaya, which swarms with alligators. In no part of the world did she meet with so little sympathy or so much discourtesy as in Spanish America, and she was heartily glad to set sail for Panama.

Crossing the Isthmus towards the close of May, 1854, she sailed for New Orleans. Thence she ascended the majestic but muddy Mississippi to Napoleon, and the Arkansas to Fort Smith. A severe attack of fever detained her for several days. On recovering her strength she travelled to St. Louis, the Falls of St. Anthony, Chicago—which was then beginning to justify its claim to the title of "Queen of the West"—and the vast inland seas of Lakes Superior, Michigan, Erie, and Ontario. After a rapid visit to Canada, she recrossed the frontier of the United States; and from Boston proceeded to New York and other great cities, and then undertook the voyage to England, where she arrived on the 21st of November, 1854. The narrative of her adventures was published in 1856, under the title of "My Second Journey Round the World."

CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.