Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth CenturyAdams, W. H. Davenport (William Henry Davenport)
History
Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century
Adams, W. H. Davenport (William Henry Davenport)
Women travelers -- Biography
From Tiflis our traveller proceeded across Georgia to Redutkale, whence
she made her way to Kertch, on the shore of the Sea of Azov; and thence
to Sevastopol, destined a few years later to become the scene of a great
historic struggle. She afterwards reached Odessa, one of the great
European granaries, situated at the mouth of the Dniester on the Euxine.
From Odessa to Constantinople the sea-distance is four hundred and
twenty miles. She made but a brief sojourn in the Turkish capital.
Taking the steamer to Smyrna, she passed through the star-like clusters
of the isles of Greece--those isles "where burning Sappho loved and
sung;" and from Smyrna she hastened to Athens. There she trod, indeed,
upon "hallowed ground." Every shattered temple, every ruined monument,
every fragment of arch or column, recalled to her some brave deed of
old; or some illustrious name of philosopher, statesman, poet, patriot,
enshrined for ever in the world's fond remembrance. Madame Pfeiffer was
not a scholar, but she had read enough to feel her sympathies awakened
as she gazed from the lofty summit of the Acropolis on the plains of
Attica and the waters of the AEgean, on Salamis and Marathon. She was not
an artist, but she had a feeling for the beautiful; and she examined
with intense delight the Parthenon, the Temple of Theseus, the Olympian,
the Tower of the Winds, and the graceful choragic monument of
Lysicrates. These, however, have been more fitly described by writers
capable of doing them justice, and Madame Pfeiffer's brief and
commonplace allusions may well be overlooked.
From Athens to Corinth, and from Corinth to Corfu, and thence to
Trieste. Our traveller's bold enterprise was completed on the 30th of
October, and she could honourably boast of having been the first woman
to accomplish the circuit of the globe. She had been absent from Vienna
just two years and six months, and had travelled 2,800 miles by land,
and 35,000 miles by sea. Such an achievement necessarily crowned her
with glory; and when she published her plain and unaffected narrative of
"A Woman's Journey Round the World," it met at once with a most
favourable reception.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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