la_. It is quite understood
that no "terra incognita" exists into which our female travellers would
fear to penetrate.

Lady Florence Dixie frankly tells us her reason for venturing into
Patagonia, and no doubt it is the reason which has actuated many of her
sisters in their world-wanderings. She went to "an outlandish place so
many miles away"--as her friends called it--"precisely because it _was_
an outlandish place and so far away." She adds: "Palled for the moment
with civilization and its surroundings, I wanted to escape somewhere
where I might be as far removed from them as possible. Many of my
readers have doubtless felt the dissatisfaction with oneself and
everybody else that comes over one at times in the midst of the
pleasures of life; when one wearies of the shallow artificiality of
modern existence; when what was once excitement has become so no longer,
and a longing grows up within one to taste a more vigorous unction than
that afforded by the monotonous round of society's so-called pleasures."

In this state of mind she looked round for some country that would
satisfy her requirements, and decided upon Patagonia, because nowhere
else could she find an area of 100,000 square miles for "equestrian
exercise," where one would be free from the presence of savage tribes
and obnoxious animals, as well as from the persecution of morning calls,
invitations, garden parties, telegrams, letters, and all the other
"resources of civilization." To these attractions was added the
thought, always alluring to an active mind, that there she would be able
to penetrate into vast wilds, untrod as yet by the foot of man. "Scenes
of infinite beauty and grandeur might be lying hidden in the silent
solitude of the mountains which bound the barren plains of the Pampas,
into whose mysterious recesses no one as yet had ever ventured. And I
was to be the first to behold them!--an egotistical pleasure, it is
true; but the idea had a great charm for me, as it has had for many
others."

Accompanied by her husband, brothers, and three friends, Lady Florence
left Liverpool on the 11th December, 1878. Early in January they reached
Rio de Janeiro, of which she furnishes a pleasantly graphic sketch, that
gives a true idea of her descriptive powers. "Nowhere," she says, "have
the rugged and the tender, the wild and the soft, been blended into such
exquisite union as at Rio; and it is this quality of unrivalled
contrasts that, to my mind, giv