WOMEN TRAVELLERS

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 193, 10 May 1924, Page 15

WOMEN TRAVELLERS

THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE

Those who have followed with interest that has been constantly ma itained the narrative of Rosita Forbes s journey to Morocco to gather the life story of Raisuli have been asking whether adventurous travel is not rather a new field of feminine enterprise. Certainly within the last two decades women Lave shown a greater tendency to move off the beaten track and to explore countries far afield; but the movement is not altogether one of quite recent development, states a writer in “The Daily Telegraph.” Hie last century gave us some real pioneers, even if we do not go farther back than the days when Lady Mary Wortley Montagu travelled in Turkey and recorded her impressions. When, some twenty-two years ago, the Royal' Geographical Society recognised that women were adding to our knowledge of the remoter parts of the "earth, by making them eligible for Fellowship .of that learned body, it gave a great incentive to educated women to qualify for the distinction, and to-day the society has a considerable percentage of ladies upon its roll. The first lady who was elected to Its Fellowship was Mrs. Isabella Bird, In 1892. She had travelled much, in spite of serious ill-health, and had visited that strange race of tho Hairy Ainos on the Island, of Gezo, and had gathered the material for her book, “The Golden Chersonese.’’ But her greatest Journey was done in 1894, when she went to Japan, Korea, and Manchuria, on an expedition of many 'thousands of miles lasting for fifteen months. Her trail is marked by hospitals that she founded in memory of her huband (Dr. Bishop, with whom she enjoyed but three years of happy wedded life), and her parents for the sufferings in illness of the more backward peoples had ever made great appeaL to her. In a noble tribute to her work the Royal Geographical Society’s “Journal” placed it on record that she took her place among the foremost travellers of her time when on her death in 1904 it summed up her achievements. No loss a pioneer was Mary Kingsley, a niece of the well-remembered social reformer, who set forth alone in 1893 to collect bodies and freshwater fishes on the West Coast of Africa, because some scientific friends wanted them for museums. In the following year she made Old Calabar a base from which she explored the O’Gowe River, and made a daring and adventurous journey through the Fan Country. She had an admirable sense of humour, and made friends with Europeans and natives alike, while she ■ acquired a knowledge of trading conditions that made her an accepted authority on the subject. Her sympathies led her to go to tend the - wounded Boers in the South African War, where she laid down her life at her task, to be commemorated in Kipling’s “Dirge of Dead Sisters.” Earth shall not remember but the the Waiting Angel knows,

Her that fell at Simonstown in service on our foes.

There Is a goodly little company . or women now with us who are adding to the sum total of our knowledge of the earth’s surface. Rosita Forbes has so lately told her own story that there is no need here to dwell upon

her work. In tho South Seas, Miss Beatrice Grimshaw has long been a resident, and is familiar with that fringe of humanity that goes down to the remoter islands of the South Pacific. Then should be named .Mrs. Mary Gaunt, Among other difficult journevs that she has made was one through China, Siberia, and Saghahen in the years immediately preceding the war. A unique record is that of Miss Gertrude Lowthian Bell, C.B.JS-, who shares with Lady Franklin, widow of the great Arctic explorer, the uistinction of having received the bounders’ Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. Lady Franklin was awarded this in 1860, having herself been a traveller in Australia and New Zealand. but it was conferred chiefly for the devotion and the monev that she lavished upon the search for the remains of tho Erebus and Terror. Miss Bell is now Oriental secretary to the High Commissioner of Irak, Baghdad, and has acted in military capacities usually associated with men, while she has also travelled through Persia and written various charming books. Miss Ella Sykes, secretary to the Roval Asiatic Society, rode from the shores of the* Caspian into India, and knows well Chinese-Turkestan and the Panuis. . , Two outstanding names remain for final mention. There is Mrs. Fanny Bullock Workman, perhaps the most scientific of the women explorers. She holds the feminine records for mountaineering. and three of her ascents exceeding 21.009 ft., were made in the Karakoram Mountains, while in a fourth in the Himalayas, during 1906, over one of the Nun Kun peaks, she attained the tremendous altitude, of 23 300 ft. The knowledge thus gained by' herself and her husband has proved of great value in the more recent expeditions for the conquest of Mount Everest „ , ~ — Then there is Mrs. Charlotte Cameron, 0.8. E., who has traversed the Andes and South America, has gone into the most inhospitable fastnesses of Alaska and the Yukon spent months in German West and East Africa, and knows the Southern Seas from Samoa to the Solomon Islands. At present she is in Mexico C’ty, which it is not considered advisable for her to leave in view of the disurbed state 'of the country. The purpose of her journey is to explore some of the Aztec ruins, and as she knows' well the antiquities of .Egypt, she hopes to establish many points of interest. Like most of the women travelers and explorers of to-day, she prefers . to go unaccompanied by friends and with the smallest possible retinue. In her Alaskan book she has expressed the feminine philosophy on the subject: “Someone has asked me, ‘Do you always travel alone, Mrs. Cameron, even in the wilds of Africa and South AmericaP’ I respond, ‘Yes, always alone.’ But how untrue, because in travelling one is never alone! Whatever your destination, whatever your chosen route, there you will find others who have a like intention. No matter how wild or how uncivilised the place may be, you will find people on boat or train who have been there before, or who have made their homes at the spot you imagined so isolated.. Soon, also, you will know all that is worth knowing about the locality you have chosen. H yours is a personality which

is not d'sagrneable, you will at once find friends in the "University of Travel; it will be your own fault if you are lonely.” The women explorers’ mission may bo in quest of knowledge of domestic life, or it may be scientific. But it is never invested with the idea. of conquest or domination. Instinctively these women realise that they will see, far more of the true conditions of. existence if they rely upon the hospitality of their temporary hosts —and hostesses. For it is through the woman traveller that we have all learned much of the tribal and family customs, the marriage rites and ideals, the upbringing of the children, tf.e dress and jewellery and so forth, that have made the study of anthropology something vivid and real, and not a merely dry-as-dust inquiry of the learned.