DESERT TRAVELS

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 59, 2 December 1933, Page 15

DESERT TRAVELS

Exploits of Englishwoman

ROSITA FORBES A “SAINT”

(Reuter. —Special to “The Dominion.” I Loudon, October 3.

When you see a daintily-dressed woman whose clothes have the true Parisian touch you do not imagine that she lias:

Motored more than GOOD miles in the Tripolitan desert. Been the first woman to have penetrated the Sahara as far as Ghat, the oasis capital of the Hoggar, and Flown as a passenger 3750 miles in the Libyan desert. That, however, is wiiat Madame de Bonneuil has done, although she is in appearance so thoroughly feminine. She is now in London, and has related the story of her adventures. “Since Rosita Forbes, disguised as a Bedouin sheik, got into Kufra, no civilian had been allowed to set foot there until I landed in it a few months ago from an aeroplane piloted by the well-known Italian Air Force ace, Col onel Lord!. ••We had to go through hours ot desperate battling in a storm over the desert before we reached the sacred oasis, now in the occupation of the Italian troops. “There I dressed as a Saharan officer so as not to disturb the Kufra population. During my stay I learned that Rosita Forbes, known among them as ‘Sitt Khadija,’ had been raised by them to the position of a saint. “It was from Kufra that I determined to try some pioneer work as a woman explorer. I made up my mind to be the first woman to get to Ghat. A young Dutchwoman who made the attempt many years ago had been assassinated, and more recently several men explorers had lost their lives trying to reach Ghat. “I motored all through the Fezzan, the land of the Garamantes, the ancient African civilisation. “Camping one day near the mountain seat of ’Atlantide,’ I heard to my horror the shrieks and screams of women. I found they came from a well, into which I learned women were thrown when they were deemed to be mad. I tried to approach but was pushed During her travels through the sandy wastes and oases of Tripolitania, Madame de Bonneuil—who, incidentally, is British born, and is the wife of a Briton, whom she married in her native Mauritius— slept in as many as forty forts.