, those who penetrate into
regions hitherto untrodden by civilized men, and add new lands to the
maps of the geographer; and those who simply follow in the track of
their bolder or more fortunate predecessors, gathering up fuller, and,
it may be, more accurate information. To the latter class, as this
volume shows, belong our female travellers, among whom we find no
companion or rival to such pioneers as a Livingstone, a Barth, a
Franklin, or a Sturt. Unless, indeed, we regard as an exception the
wonderful woman to whose adventures and experiences the following
chapter will be devoted. Of Madame Ida Pfeiffer we think it may justly
be said that she stands in the front ranks of the great travellers, and
that the scientific results of her enterprise were both valuable and
interesting. It has been remarked that if a spirit like hers, so daring,
so persevering, so tenacious, had been given to a man, history would
have counted a Magellan or a Captain Cook the more. But what strikes us
as most remarkable about her was the absolute simplicity of her
character and conduct; the unpretending way in which she accomplished
her really great achievements; her modesty of manner and freedom from
pretension. She went about the world as she went about the streets of
Vienna; with the same reserve and quietness of demeanour, apparently
unconscious that she was exposing herself to death, and hazards worse
than death; so calmly and unaffectedly courageous that she makes us
almost forget how truly grand was her heroism, how sublime was her
patience, and how colossal her daring. The same reticence and simplicity
are visible in every page of the published record of her personal
experiences. She does not pretend to literary skill; she attempts no
elaborate pictorial descriptions; she says of herself that she has
neither wit nor humour to render her writings entertaining; she narrates
what she has seen in the plainest, frankest manner. And she imposes upon
us the conviction that she entered upon her wondrous journeys from no
idle vanity, no love of fame, but from a natural love of travel, and a
boundless desire of acquiring knowledge. "In exactly the same way," she
says, "as the artist feels an unconquerable impulse to paint, and the
poet to give free expression to his thoughts, so was I hurried away with
an unconquerable desire to see the world." And she saw it as no other
woman has ever seen it.

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Ida R