PRACTICAL STUDY OF GEOGRAPHY

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22451, 12 July 1938, Page 5

PRACTICAL STUDY OF GEOGRAPHY

TRAVELS OF A DANISH WOMAN LECTURER STAY OF A FORTNIGHT IN NEW ZEALAND (PRESS ASSOCIATION TELEGRAM.) WELLINGTON. July 11. A lecturer in geography at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Dr. Sophie Petersen, who reached Wellington to-day in the Awatea, believes in the theory that it is necessary to visit a country before one is qualified to teach other people about it, so'she spends her vacations travelling the world by air, because that is the quickest way. She has met many adventures in her wanderings.

r She intends to spend a fortnight in New Zealand, she said to-day, and she is devoting the whole of that time to .the North Island. “The South Island, with its mountains, glaciers, and fiords, is too like Norway,” she said. “I am more interested in your geysers, thermal regions, volcanoes, and Maoris.” Less than a month ago, Dr. Petersen embarked on the flying-boat Challenger, at Southampton, and travelled by air to Brisbane. It was no new experience to her, for in 12 years she had flown over Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, Alaska, and Greenland. Indeed, the Antipodes were practically the only part of the world she had not .previously visited. Last year Dr. Petersen was travelling off the Liberian coast when the | Dutch steamer Maaskerk ran on to a , sunken reef in thick weather and a heavy sea. The sharp teeth of the ' rocks bit through her plates and held ' her fast,'but the ’immediate danger of j linking was averted. In the breaking waves,, however, it was impossible to

launch the boats without their being instantly dashed to pieces. The passengers were rescued by the natives, who put off from the shore in surfboats. For some days, the travellers, most of whom were English, lived in a primitive native village on the shore, eating such provisions as could be saved from the stranded steamer, and enjoying the hospitality of the natives until a steamer could be sent to take them off. Dr. Petersen afterward felt herself well qualified to lecture on the Liberian natives. When she arrives back in Copenhagen, barely three months after leaving, she will lecture to her class of 400 students, belonging to a co-educa-tional college attached to the university, on what she will have seen on her present trip to Australia and New Zealand. She speaks English fluently.