Women in All Ages

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21344, 19 November 1932, Page 6 (Supplement)

Women in All Ages

Lady Dorothy Mills is accustomed to roughing life in remofo places thousands of miles distant from what is called civilisation. She has shown in books that she is no mcro wanderer over tracks that others liavo opened. Nothing less than being tho first white woman to enter a renioto region . seems to satisfy her ardent Spirit. In 1923 she was the first Englishwoman to visit Timbuctoo, and tlueo years later pioneered similarly in (ho hinterland

of Liberia, the black republic of Africa. Later sho described for us her extraordinary experiences in Venezuela, where the Orinoco, ono of the famous rivers of South America, runs its circuitous course of 1500 miles. Sho encountered in Ihe upper reaches ol tho river probably the. most primitive

2.—LADY DOROTHY MILLS

people living in the world to-day. She went to siudy tho lives of these Indian tribes, and some of tho places she explored have never before been visited by a white woman. She met races who kill tlieir prey and enemies with poisoned arrows, and related their curious beliefs and social customs in a manner which deeply interested the anthropologist and the general reader. She gave a glimpse, too, of an unknown past in South America, for throughout Southern Venezuela are engraved rocks and caverns, not only near tho river banks but also far in the forest and in places where there is no definite record of man having existed. Some of tho designs show human figures and animals engaged in various forms of activity, as if the artists wero describing the history of the current events of their time, wars, dances, and so on. It was like lifting a curtain on a lost world.

Apart from her black servants, Lady Dorothy was alone, and she admits that to the peoplo among whom sho travelled sho was a source of dazed wonder. But sho impressed them by her quick resource, as when she shot and wounded a man who tried to make a murderous attack on her. Sho gave these pictures of herself:—

" A white Senora who wore trousers and travelled without a man, who had an incomprehensible desire to seo Ihe dread " Indios," who actually gave orders and saw to it that she was obeyed, above all, a creature who took baths. Such was beyond all human understanding. In time they became used to everything about me, except my habtt of washing twice a day when possible. Every morning and every evening at such moments I could hear their ribald jokes about, it, and the fact being related to strangers on the river banks and received with scepticism. ... A woman—and not an imposinglooking ono at that —who wanted things, who had a pig of a temper of her own, and did not seem afraid of anything. So Fnnill and yet without fear— t-orazon de tigre (tiger's heart) was my nickname in moro than one. ranclio . . . and that nickname followed me up and down the river."