A WOMAN’S TRAVELS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 23 April 1927, Page 5

A WOMAN’S TRAVELS.

THIRTY-TWO TIMES ROUND WORLD. AMBITIONS TO SAIL ROUND GAPE. SYDNEY, April 7. There recently dropped in to pay her respects to Melbourne, a woman, who for 67 years ha 3 been travelling, and now *at 81 is on her 32nd trip round the world, and still only desires to travel. This remarkable woman is Miss Celeste Miller, of Chicago, U.S.A.. and of independent means. Chicago is her home town, but she describes herself as a citizen of the world. She lives in hotels and steamers. “The world would look like a spider’s web,” she told a Melbourne interviewer, “if all my travels were marked on a map. When I was little more than 13 I began by nyself, and here I am still going strong.” Miss Miller was in Australia over 30 years ago and she notices great changes since then. “In fact,” she said, “I have got to know the worli so well that I notice its physical configuration changing, as well as mainers and customs. For instance, many of the glaciers in Switzerland have utterly Vanished since I visited them in the days of my youth. Manners and morals, too, are different. I ira sorry to say that I think the world is getting worse. I have met thousands of people in my time, and I don’t tHnk much of the present generation.” In 1902 Miss Miller was the first woman to travel over the Siberian railway. Officials in Moscow warned her against it, but she persevered and wrote a book about it. Over 27 years ago she explored the Amaron River and crossed the Andes —the oily white person with a party of Indisns. She has visited both China and Japan many times, and 23 years ago mzde a journey to Manchuria in a littef drawn by mules. Explorations in Alaska, India and Africa followed. In fact, there are no parts of the world Mss Miller has not visited save the Norfh and South Poles and Greenland. She has yet to realise her ambition —to sail Tound Cape Horn in a sailing vessel Last year she travelled 50,000 miles by water and another 10,000 miles in sight-seeing motor cars. Ships, she Junks, have changed their personalities even more than men and women. Slo recalled the days when she travelled yn Italian and German tramp steamers, and in Chinese merchantmen because there was no other way of getting to the places she wanted to sec. “Now,” she said, “you just press a button, and everything is arranged for you in a luxurious manner.”