Two centuries ago Miss Mary Read, aged thirteen, entered the Royal Navy as a boy. A little later she deserted, and still disguised as a boy, went soldiering, first in a line regiment, afterward as a trooper. She was very brave. On the peace of Ryswick, seeing that there was to be no more fighting, she went into the merchant service for a change, and was bound for the West Indies when the ship was gathered in by pirates. Rather than walk the plank, she became a pirate herself and rose from rank to rank until she hoisted the black flag with the grade of captain. So she fell in with Mrs. Bonny, widow of a pirate captain. The two amiable ladies, commanding each her own vessel, went into a business partnership, scuttling ships and cutting throats for years with marked success. In the seventeenth century an escaped nun did well as a seafaring man under the Spanish colors, ruffled as a gallant in Chili, and led a gang of brigands in the Andes. On her return to Spain as a lady, she was very much petted at the court of Madrid. The last of many female bandits was Miss Pearl Hart, who, in 1890, robbed a stage-coach in Arizona. Mr. Murray Hall, a well-known Tammany politician and a successful business man, died in New York, and was found to be a woman. But of women who, without disguise, have excelled in adventurous trades, I have known in Western Canada two who are gold miners and two who are cowboys. Mrs. Langdon, of California, drove a stage-coach for years. Miss Calamity Jane was a noted Montana bull-whacker. Miss Minnie Hill and Miss Collie French are licensed American pilots. Miss Evelyn Smith, of Nova Scotia, was a jailer. Lady Clifford holds Board of Trade certificates as an officer in our mercantile marine. A distinguished French explorer, Madame Dieulafoy, is an officer of the Legion of Honor, entitled to a military salute from all sentries, and has the singular right by law of wearing the dress of a man. Several English ladies have been explorers. Miss Bird explored Japan, conquered Long’s Peak, and was once captured by Mountain Jim, the Colorado robber. Lady Florence Dixie explored Patagonia, Miss Gordon-Cumming explored a hundred of the South Sea Isles, put an end to a civil war in Samoa and was one of the first travelers on the Pamirs. Mrs. Mulhall has traced the sources of the Amazons. Lady Baker, Mrs. Jane Moir, and Miss Kingsley rank among the great pioneers of Africa. Lady Hester Stanhope, traveling in the _Levant_, the ship being loaded with treasure, her own property, was cast away on a desert island near Rhodes. Escaping thence she traversed the Arabian deserts, and by a gathering of forty thousands of Arabs was proclaimed queen of Palmyra. This beautiful and gifted woman reigned through the first decades of the nineteenth century from her palace on the slopes of Mount Lebanon. Two other British princesses in wild lands were Her Highness Florence, Maharanee of Patiala, and the sherifa of Wazan, whose son is reverenced by the