for we know that women see many things that the other sex is not likely to observe. A brief sketch of the experience and doings of some of the lady travellers of recent years must, we think, prove interesting to many readers. Generally, like Julius Cæsar, but not always, the travellers themselves have chronicled their achievements.

We begin with Ida Pfeiffer, whose name and fame for a considerable time stood alone as the

lady traveller. Her own name was Reyer; she was born at Vienna in 1797, and married a lawyer, Herr Pfeiffer, with whom, however, she seems not to have lived much. When she was but a little child she tells us that she had a great desire to see the world. Whenever she met a travellingcarriage she would stop involuntarily and gaze after it until it disappeared; she used to envy the very postilion, for she thought that he must have accomplished the whole of a long journey. At the age of ten or twelve nothing gave her so much pleasure as the perusal of voyages and travels. Her parents, and afterwards her husband, used to take her on excursions hither and thither; but she was not satisfied. Often when she climbed to the top of a mountain she would shed tears because she saw other mountains towering above, whose summit she could not gain, to see what lay beyond. Her husband, according to her own account, having to be much from home, the education of her two sons was confided to her care; but when that was completed, and she was living in retirement (for the husband now fades from view), the dreams and aspirations of her youth awoke once more. Most of all she longed to see the Holy

Land. At first the difficulties appeared to be insurmountable, and she tried to put the idea aside; but back it would come with irrepressible force. It took the savings of twenty years to defray the expense of that journey.

It was at the mature age of forty-five that she began her travels, and she hardly laid down the pilgrim's staff till she was sixty-one, when, after a long imprisonment in the island of Madagascar, she returned to Vienna, and on 28th October 1858 died in consequence of hardships and illtreatment borne in prison. Altogether Madame Pfeiffer made four great journeys, the record of which she gave to the world in successive copious narratives. The first was to Palestine in 1842; the second to Iceland and Scandinavia in 1845; the third, entitled 'A Woman's Journey round the World,' in 1846-48, embracing South America, China, India, Asia Minor, Persia, Russia, Turkey, and Greece. In 1851 she set out for a "Zweite Weltreise," in the course of which she visited England. Hearing in London of Livingstone's attempts to reach Lake 'Ngami, and of the fertile regions now discovered in that neighbourhood in place of the traditional desert, and smitten with the desire to explore them, she proceeded to Cape Town in the hope that, as she had travelled in safety among savage tribes where armed men hesitated to go, and had borne with equal impunity the heat of India and the cold of Iceland, she might be destined to raise the veil from some of the unknown portions of the interior of Africa. But owing to what she learned at the Cape of the difficulties and expense of travelling, she was obliged to abandon her intention. The £100

sterling which she had got from the Austrian Government would carry her but a little way. This was in 1851; it was in the year after this that Livingstone set out from the Cape, with a purse little better filled than hers, but with a knowledge of the country and its languages, and an influence over the natives, to which she could not have pretended. She accordingly directed her steps to Australasia and South and North America, having spent a year and a half in the Sunda Islands, and penetrated into the interior of Sumatra and Borneo. She did not reach home till 1855. The narrative of this journey extended to four volumes.

Her last journey was to Madagascar, which had now begun to excite the interest of the civilised world. Unfortunately, it was the time when that island was ruled by the fiend, Ranavalo, the great persecutor of the Christians, and poor Madame Pfeiffer seems to have excited the suspicions of that female miscreant, and was thrown into prison. She languished there for the greater part of two years, experiencing such treatment that her strong constitution broke down, and when she regained her liberty in 1858, she returned to Vienna only to die.

Madame Pfeiffer cannot be classed with those travellers who have explored and brought to light unknown regions, or added substantially to our knowledge of the globe. In Sumatra and Borneo she made the nearest approach to such service; but it is as having more fully described the known, rather than brought to light the unknown, that she has gained her fame. In a simple, lively, and pleasant way she writes of what she has seen and heard, dwelling chiefly on the outside of things. Her descriptions

of the places and people she visited are interesting as conveying the kind of information usually desired by average readers. Her narrative is free from the tendency to exaggeration in which many travellers indulge, magnifying their difficulties and dangers in order that their achievements may appear the more wonderful. When she meets with such exaggeration in others she rebukes it in an honest tone, as when an officer of a French frigate whom she met in Iceland declared that he had ridden on horseback to the very edge of the crater of Vesuvius. It happened that she had been there herself, and knew that the crater is inaccessible on horseback, and must be ascended either on foot or in a chaise à porteur. If she sometimes allows prejudice to crop out, it is when she comes in contact with the doings or the manners of the English, or when she sets herself to criticise Protestant missions.

Her courage was remarkable, especially in robber-infested countries, such as Babylonia, Kurdistan, and Persia. But being a woman, she suffered little, and though she carried pistols, she seems never to have required them. The Russians were the only people from some of whom she experienced rude and violent treatment. Once when travelling with a caravan, and walking alone at a little distance while the caravan rested, she was seized by two Russians, one of them an officer, thrown into a car, and hurried to the posthouse, no doubt to be robbed, or released only for a handsome ransom; but after a night of hardship, her passport set her free. you good Turks, Arabs, Hindus,' she exclaims, "or whatever else you may be called, such treatment was never shown to me amongst you!

"Oh,

How pleasantly have I always taken leave of all your countries; how attentively was I treated at the Persian frontiers when I would not understand that my passport was required; and here, in a Christian empire, how much incivility have I had to bear during this short journey!"

Though not a scientific geographer, she gained the respect of some who were distinguished as such. Herr Petermann wrote highly of her in the Athenæum,' regretting that when in London she received scarcely any encouragement, her travels and her books being little known. "Though not a scientific traveller," he said, "she is a faithful recorder of what she sees and hears; and she is prepared to note the bearings and distances of the journey, make meteorological observations, and keep a careful diary, so that the results of her projected journey [in Africa] would perhaps be of as much interest as those of other travellers of greater pretensions."

Madame Pfeiffer in her various travels showed that she appreciated the three passports which Livingstone found so useful among savages"good principles, good conduct, and good manners."

She

always looked on the natives with a kindly feeling, especially the women, whose dreary life in Eastern countries she pitied much, and whose social position she earnestly desired to see improved. Her readiness, if only she had had the means, to undertake the very expedition that immortalised Livingstone, on the ground that an unarmed woman might fare better than a man among ferocious tribes, was a splendid testimony to her self-sacrificing spirit; while her untimely death, the result of imprisonment among a people whom she desired to benefit, gives her a

good title to be ranked among the martyrs of civilisation.

Just about the time of Madame Pfeiffer's death, the spirit of travel and adventure took possession of another lady, also a foreigner, Alexandrine Tinne, of Holland. The father of this lady was a Dutchman by birth, but at one time a naturalised Englishman. He had held an important post in what is now British Guiana, when it was under Dutch rule; afterwards he carried on business as a merchant in Liverpool, and finally he returned to Holland. His first wife was an English lady; afterwards he married Henrietta van Capellen, the daughter of a distinguished Dutch admiral, who, on his own responsibility, co-operated with Lord Exmouth at the siege of Algiers, aided in the liberation of a large body of slaves, and obtained the thanks of the House of Commons. Mr Tinne was a man of wealth, and on his death his daughter Alexandrine succeeded to a large fortune.

From her childhood she had a strong desire to travel, and having ample means, it was not long before she began to gratify her desire. In her early teens she had visited Norway and Sweden, and at eighteen she had made a journey through Asia Minor, Palestine, and Egypt. When in Egypt she was captivated by the Pyramids and the Nile, and a vehement desire arose in her breast to explore part of the unknown regions of Africa, and especially to investigate the sources of the Nile. A desire to contribute to the suppression of the slave-trade was another motive. She was ageous and adventurous, a bold horsewoman, an accomplished linguist, and beautiful as well as rich. She had suitors in great abun

cour

a steamer and five boats, 168 persons (of whom a considerable number were soldiers), four camels, and thirty mules and donkeys. The expedition was on such a scale, and so grand, that the natives averred that Miss Tinne was the daughter of the Sultan. At first they got on wonderfully well; they had fewer difficulties than Baker encountered on the same route a few months later. But, at the best, it was very trying and toilsome work. The Bahr-elGhazal was found to be a great swamp, blocked by such masses of vegetation that the paddles had to be taken off, and the steamer towed through it by the boats. When they reached the head of the Bahr, the party had to take to marching overland. The country was full of beauty-birds, trees, and plants being alike most interesting.

But terrible disasters fell upon them now. Miss van Capellen had already died at Khartoum, and Dr Steudner, Madame Tinne, two maids, and other members of the party, were successively attacked by fever and cut off. Some idea of the hardships encountered may be formed from the fact that the tents would sometimes be overthrown by torrents of rain, and the inmates deprived of all shelter. On one of these occasions Miss Tinne was prostrated by fever, and the party prevented from travelling for many days. Provisions fell short, and porters mutinied. After all, Speke and Grant were right. It was not work for ladies. Overcome by such an accumulation of disasters, Miss Tinne had to abandon further exploration for the time: she returned to Cairo, Herr von Heuglin remaining to prosecute the explor

ation.

All this time the Royal Geo

graphical Society of London had been receiving short accounts of the expedition, which they regarded with great interest, partly owing to its being the first expedition of the kind undertaken by ladies, and partly to the extraordinary curiosity then felt about the particular spot of Africa which they were exploring, and about the sources of the Nile. The Society were supplied with intelligence by Mr John Tinne, one of their members, a step-brother of Miss Tinne's. Sir Roderick Murchison, President of the Society, spoke of the ladies oftener than once in highly commendatory terms in his opening address, and at other times.

When Mr John Tinne heard of the disasters which had terminated the expedition and compelled his sister to return to Cairo, he hastened to her, and endeavoured to persuade her to give up the East and return to Europe. But she had become such an Oriental in her tastes and modes of life that she resisted all his appeals. Her household at Cairo was constituted after the oriental fashion; her principal servants were allowed to be polygamists; wherever she went she was attended by a eunuch; and she adopted the costume of the Arabian women. One trait of her character attracted no little notice-her kindness to animals. On one occasion she had taken into her stables two donkeys that were ill-used by their owners, and had given them rest and food. From that time all the sick and worn-out donkeys of the town were brought to her place to be cured. When Herr Gentz called upon her, he found apes sunning themselves on the outside stairs; inside, little negroes, the children of her slaves, lay basking in the sunshine; and long-haired Nubian