Queen Pomare’s Palace, Tahiti “I’ll put a girdle round the world.”— shakespeare . LONDON: THOMAS NELSON AND SONS. edinburgh and new york . 1879. CONTENTS. I.  HER BIOGRAPHY. II.  JOURNEY ROUND THE WORLD. III. NORTHWARD. IV.  LAST TRAVELS....

Ida Pfeiffer, the celebrated traveller, was born in Vienna on the 14th of October 1797.  She was the third child of a well-to-do merchant, named Reyer; and at an early age gave indications of an original and self-possessed character.  The only girl in a family of six children, her predilections were favoured by the circumstances which surrounded her.  She was bold, enterprising, fond of sport and exercise; loved to dress like her brothers, and to share in their escapades.  Dolls she contemptuous

Prompted by a boundless thirst for knowledge and an insatiable desire to see new places and new things, Madame Pfeiffer left Vienna on the 1st of May 1846, and proceeded to Hamburg, where she embarked on board a Danish brig, the Caroline , for Rio Janeiro.  As the voyage was divested of romantic incidents, we shall land the reader without delay at the great sea-port of the Brazilian empire. The traveller’s description of it is not very favourably coloured.  The streets are dirty, and the houses,

In giving to the world a narrative of her journey to Iceland, and her wanderings through Norway and Sweden, Madame Pfeiffer anticipated certain objections that would be advanced by the over-refined.  “Another journey!” she supposed them to exclaim; “and that to regions far more likely to repel than attract the general traveller!  What object could this woman have had in visiting them, but a desire to excite our astonishment and raise our curiosity?  We might have been induced to pardon her pilgr

Madame Pfeiffer set out on what proved to be her final expedition, on the 21st of May 1856.  She proceeded to Berlin, thence to Amsterdam, Leyden, Rotterdam; visited London and Paris; and afterwards undertook the voyage to the Cape of Good Hope.  Here she hesitated for a while in what direction she should turn her adventurous steps before she pushed forward to the goal of her hopes—Madagascar.  At length she decided on a visit to the Mauritius; and it is at this part of her journey that we propo

{105} Since Madame Pfeiffer’s time this mode of self-torture has been prohibited by the British Government. {197} That is, the “City of a Thousand Towns.” {204} We give Madame Pfeiffer’s account, as an illustration of the old ways of Madagascar society.  But the poison-ordeal has of late been abandoned, owing to Christian influence....