d for the work she had to do; and protected her
head with a large banana leaf from the burning rays of a tropical sun.
No conjuncture, however critical, found her without resources; and we
hesitate not to say that in the whole history of discovery and
geographical enterprise there is no more wonderful or exciting chapter
than that which records Madame Ida Pfeiffer's travels in the interior of
Borneo.

We owe to her enterprise an interesting account of the character and
usages of the Dyaks. Their ferocity of disposition is proverbial in the
East. It is said that when a Dyak has promised a head--a human head--to
the woman he loves, he will obtain it at any cost. Whether he strikes
down friend or foe he cares not, so long as he secures the ghastly
gift; and his eye being as sure as that of the tiger, his arrow never
misses its aim. When we remember that these savages are cannibals, that
they had never before seen among them an European woman, and that Ida
Pfeiffer went without guard or guide, we begin to realize the full
extent of her daring. But boldness is always the best policy: this
plain-featured, middle-aged woman commanded the respect and admiration
of her hosts, and went from encampment to encampment in entire security.

After visiting the island of Celebes she repaired to Sumatra, which is
inhabited by a race of men even more sanguinary than the Dyaks, namely,
the Battahs, who slake their thirst in human blood, and make of
anthropophagism a "fine art!" It is said that some of the tribes
purchase slaves on purpose to devour them, while, as a matter of course,
prisoners taken in battle and shipwrecked seamen fall victims to their
cannibal appetites. Many voyagers agree in asserting that they also deal
in the same hideous fashion with their old men, who, when they cease to
be of any service to the tribe, are deemed unworthy of longer life; the
sons themselves become the executioners of their fathers, coolly
fastening them to a tree and hacking them to pieces, without showing the
slightest emotion at the spectacle of their agony.

In the course of her explorations in Sumatra, she found herself, on one
occasion, surrounded by a tribe of savages, who would undoubtedly have
treated her as an enemy, if she had not behaved with remarkable
presence of mind. The natives who accompanied her took to flight, and
left her to face the danger alone. "These savages," she says, "were six
feet in stature, and the natural ugliness o