NOTES

 

PREFACE

 

1 Pg. 13. This work was first exhibited in 1979 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Subsequently, and despite the resistance it suffered to be given the value it really had, it toured sixteen different stages in six countries on three continents, with a face-to-face audience of fifteen million people. It was then removed and stored until 1996, when it began to be exhibited in numerous places and since 2007 the montage has been on permanent display at the Elizabeth A. Sacker Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum in New York.

 

2 P. 20. The nautical mile, also called marine, is a measure of length used in sea and air navigation, equivalent to one meridian arc minute, with an exact length of 1,852 meters.

 

3 P. 27. The first woman chosen as a member of the Royal Geographical Society was the great traveler Isabella Bird in 1892; before a fierce controversy had arisen to accept it. For example, the conservative politician George Nathaniel Curzon, who had been Governor-General of India, still held the view that women were unsuitable for research trips, disqualifying them, saying that "their sex and their background make them equally unsuitable for exploration and the genre of professional female vagabonds with which America has lately become familiar is one of the great horrors of this late 19th century.”  _cc781905-5cde-3194-bb3b- 136bad5cf58d_   This opinion undoubtedly reflected the common ideas of large sectors of the population and influential circles still half a century after Pfeiffer's travels. Between 1892 and 1893, a total of twenty-two traveling women, “well-qualified ladies”, were accepted as members of this association. However, later new additions were suspended until 1913, when access to women was finally open.

 

I. INTRODUCTION TO THE TRIP AND THE COLLECTION OF “NATURAL OBJECTS”

 

1 P. 34. In 1602 the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (Dutch East India Company, VOC) was created, which concentrated Dutch commercial efforts into a single command and a single policy until 1800, when it was dissolved and the Dutch state took control of their territories. The same happened with the West-Indische Compagnie (Dutch West India Company, WIC), created in 1621 and disappeared in 1791.

 

2 P. 40. When Malaspina sent his writings about the trip to the Spanish government, they were considered unsuitable for publication due to the existing political situation. Disenchanted, Malaspina took part in a conspiracy to overthrow Prime Minister Manuel Godoy; and this led to his arrest and sentence of ten years in jail. In 1802 he was released thanks to pressure from Napoleon and deported to Italy, his country of birth.

 

3 P. 40. The Novara voyage was no exception in the German and Austrian tradition of making trips around the world, whether for scientific or other purposes, although it was much less than that of other countries with colonial possessions. During the 16th and 17th centuries there were several travelers and explorers of these nationalities, such as the diplomats Sigismund von Herberstein and Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq, the missionaries and cartographers Martin Martini and Samuel Fritz, or the explorers Georg Christoph Fernberger and his nephew Christoph Carl Fernberger. During the 19th century, but already after the voyages of Ida Pfeiffer, there would be the expeditions to the Arctic by Carl Weyprecht and Julius Payer, and the African explorations by Oscar Lenz, Oscar Baumann and Emil Holub.

 

4 P. 41. While exploring the Malay Archipelago, Wallace changed his ideas about evolution, believed in the "transmutation of species", and began to consider the theory of natural selection. In 1858 he sent a letter to Darwin describing it and he considered that it had many points in common with his, which was already well advanced to be published. Wallace's article appeared that same year along with a description of Darwin's theory, and in 1859 the celebrated On the Origin of Species was published. All the honors went to Darwin and Wallace accepted it, his social and scientific prestige was far superior to his own. Wallace was relegated to the role of co-discoverer but gained access to the highest levels of the scientific community, and the friendship with Darwin will endure through the years.

 

II. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

 

1 P. 52. The Treaty of Schönbrunn, also known as the Treaty of Vienna, was signed between France and Austria in Schönbrunn Palace on October 14, 1809 and ended the Fifth Coalition during the Napoleonic Wars, once Austria was defeated in the decisive battle of Wagram (5-6 July).

     During these negotiations, Napoleon escaped an attempt on his life when he left the palace to observe with a military parade Friedrich Staps, the seventeen-year-old son of a Lutheran pastor, had arrived in Vienna and asked for an audience to make a petition, which was refused by the emperor's aide, General Jean Rapp. Shortly thereafter, the latter observed Staps in the barracks courtyard leading a crowd against Napoleon and was arrested. He was taken to the palace and they found a large kitchen knife hidden in his coat. Once questioned, he openly revealed his plans to kill the emperor, outraged at the plight of his people. Taken before Napoleon, he asked him if he would thank him if he were pardoned, but the boy replied that "I would kill you all the same for much less." The next day, Staps was shot outside the palace, but before being shot he shouted “Long live freedom. Long live in Germany! Napoleon, shocked and fearful that a larger conspiracy might take place, instructed his police minister to keep the event secret. Shortly after the German campaign of 1813, Staps was seen as a martyr to burgeoning German nationalism.

 

2 P. 55. The name Galitsia is the Latinized form of Halichinano, a principality of medieval Ruthenia. The kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, also known as Austrian Poland, became the crown of the Habsburg monarchy in 1772, following the First Partition of Poland. After the 1867 reforms it became an autonomous unit administered by Poles under the Austrian crown. Currently, this historical region is divided between Poland and Ukraine.

 

3 P. 60. In 1818, the American businessman William Scarbrough had become the main investor and president of the Savannah Steamship Company; the company purchased a 320-ton sailing ship, the Savannah, which was equipped with a steam engine, funnel, and sidewheel. In April 1819 it was already available and even President James Monroe, on a visit to the city, toured the Savannah River in this boat. On May 22 of the same year, the steamer left Savannah and arrived at Liverpool (June 20) and later Saint Petersburg (September 15). This was the first steamship in history to cross the Atlantic Ocean, although it did so alternating the sail and the steam engine, since it had to be supplied frequently; however, it did not generate commercial profit and apart from the initial reluctance of the people about the great innovation that steam travel represented, the engine and coal did not leave much room for the transport of goods.

     A few years later, steamships began to prevail over sailboats and on April 1827 they already produced the first voyage using only steam power: the Dutch ship Curaçao went from Rotterdam to Paramaribo (Suriname) powered by two 50-horsepower engines, a voyage that lasted just under a month (April 26 to May 24, 1827 ). From 1838 the era of steam liners began, which would cover most of the oceanic routes.

 

III. TRIP TO THE HOLY LAND

 

Europe and Asia Minor

 

1 P. 66. The plague is a rodent disease that can pass to man only through the bite of a mouse flea and can present epidemic or endemic forms. An inflammatory reaction occurs in the lymph nodes in a few days, with very painful swelling, necrosis, and suppuration, which characterizes the bubonic form of the disease. There may be early passage of bacteria in the blood, or septicemic plague, which without adequate therapy causes multiple purulent, hemorrhagic, and necrotic lesions in most organs, generally accompanied by shock and disseminated intravascular coagulation, which causes death in a short time. Lung involvement, or pneumonic plague, causes fulminant pneumonia; contagion, which can cause devastating person-to-person spread, occurs directly from droplets of saliva emitted when speaking, coughing, or sneezing, which can travel very far through the air and remain suspended for a long time.

 

2 P. 66. In fact, the first known plague had an enormous effect on Constantinople during the sixth century AD. and is known as Justinian's plague. The Black Death of 1348, although it had its origin in China, spread through Europe from outbreaks in Asia Minor and Constantinople, and this was a repeated event during the following centuries. In the 16th century there were six epidemics in Turkey and one in Egypt; the seventeenth century, four in Turkey and two in Egypt; and the eighteenth century, seven in Turkey and thirteen in Egypt.

During the 19th century there were several plagues in Eastern Europe: Wallachia, Bessarabia or Albania (1824); Greece, Moldavia, Wallachia, Bessarabia, Odessa, Crimea and Transylvania (1828-1829); Dalmatia (1840). Both in Asia Minor and in Egypt and the Near East, outbreaks of plague were frequent: Baghdad, Cairo and Upper Egypt (1801); Constantinople and Armenia (1802-1803); Constantinople (1808); Smyrna (1809); Egypt, Mecca (1812); Constantinople (1813); Egypt (1814-1816); Armenian (1828-1831); Persian (1829-1835); Iraq, with 60,000 deaths in Baghdad in a single month (1831); Egypt (1833-1845); Whole Turkey (1836); Constantinople and a good part of Turkey (1839); Armenian (1840-1843).

 

3 P. 66. The kreuzer was a currency that was used between the 13th and 19th centuries in southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland. One hundred kreuzer was equal to one guilder.

 

Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Egypt

 

1 P. 85. Sattler did not suffer from the plague since the incubation time of the disease is between two and eight days after the flea bite. Apart from high fever, chills and headache, and also nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, the most characteristic is the appearance of the bubo, more frequently in the groin but also in the axillary and cervical area, but Pfeiffer did not say anything about that. .

 

2 P. 87. Flies can transmit about a hundred diseases. They do it passively or mechanically, limiting themselves to the transfer of microorganisms by contaminating their feet, tarsal hairs, trunk, or by passing through their gastrointestinal tract and subsequent regurgitation, without multiplication of the pathogenic agent or with development of the same. Its high transmitting capacity is not surprising if we take into account that flies are highly mobile, come into contact with faeces, corpses or garbage, and are closely associated with humans and their diet. As eye diseases they can transmit ophthalmia, epidemic conjunctivitis and especially trachoma, which today remains the leading cause of infectious blindness in the world, especially in Africa and the Middle East.

 

Rreturn to Vienna

 

1 P. 97. The saints whose main specialty was curing the plague or preserving the town from its contagion were called "pestillaceous depulsors" and those who had the most devotion among believers were San Sebastián and San Roque and to a lesser extent Santa Rosalía from Palermo; they were the only chance to survive the scourge sent by God as just punishment for the sins committed by man.

 

2 P. 100. Malaria or paludism, a disease transmitted by the females of some species of mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles, had intensely attacked the city of Rome throughout history. The Holy See paid a high price in victims throughout the entire territory of the Vatican State and both popes and cardinals died in large numbers. In 1241, one of the twelve cardinals who were to choose the new Pope died of malaria before the conclave began; and Celestine IV, the new Pope, died a fortnight after his appointment. During this thirteenth century there is evidence that seventeen Popes died due to fevers and other diseases, and only in the conclave of 1287 six cardinals died and most of those who survived fell ill due to the "intense summer heat" and the conclave was discontinued.

     Pope Boniface VIII died in 1304, “prostrated in body and spirit”, and five years later Papal Court moved to Avignon, the death rate among the religious was halved. However, when the papacy returned to Rome in 1378 malaria struck again: in 1521 Pope Leo X died and in 1590 Popes Sixtus V and Urban VII. During the conclave of 1623 (from July 19 to August 6), in which Pope Urban VIII was elected, eight cardinals and thirty secretaries died of malaria, in the “long and battle-filled conclave, very tiring due to the extreme heat and in rampant malaria”.

 

IV. TRIP TO ICELAND AND SCANDINAVIA

 

Vienna to Copenhagen

 

1 P. 110. The enormous Catalog of Scientific Papers published by the Royal Society of London in nineteen volumes beginning in 1867, covering the period from 1800 to 1900, included tens of thousands of authors of all nationalities devoted to all fields of science with hundreds of thousands of publications. But only about 1,000 women appeared, representing less than 1% of entries, around 3,400 articles. Of all of them, 41% were American and 26% British.

 

2 P. 112. The great fire in Hamburg started on May 5, 1842 in a cigarette factory and lasted for three days. The rapid expansion of the fire was due to drought and strong changeable wind. It destroyed about a third of the buildings in the Altstadt, the old city, and affected around a hundred wineries, two synagogues, sixty schools and several public buildings, including the City Hall and the Bank of Hamburg. In addition, some buildings were demolished by order of the authorities and to serve as firebreaks. Fifty-one people died and 1,700 buildings were destroyed. Some 20,000 people were left homeless and economic losses were estimated at about one hundred million marks.

 

Iceland

 

1 P. 118. Leprosy is an infectious-contagious but hardly contagious disease caused by Hansen's bacillus, a name given in honor of the Norwegian physician Gerhard Armauer Hansen, the discoverer of this bacterium. It is a disease with cutaneous, nervous and visceral involvement, but it can also affect the mucous membranes, eyes, bones and testicles, in its two tuberculoid and lepromatous forms. Its spread depends on the patient's immune status and the most severe complications are disfigurement, deformity and disability, either due to neurological involvement or blindness.

     Leprosy has been known since ancient times and although the oldest remains are found in India, China and Egypt, the origin would be in Africa or the Middle East. However, this disease affected the Nordic countries such as Norway, Sweden and also Iceland, with some seriousness and in a way, where the Laugarnes hospital, near Reykjavik, had even been built to treat these patients infected through secretions. nasal passages and ulcerated skin lesions, although it is not clear that this is always the case. Intimate contact is associated with spread of the disease; that is why family members are the most frequent source of infection.

 

2 P. 122. The solfataras are openings in volcanic terrain through which gases emanate at high temperatures (between 100 and 300°C), characterized by a high content of sulfur dioxide, which in contact with air oxidizes and forms crystals. of sulfur. Its emissions are essentially made up of water vapor and would correspond to the final phases of semi-extinct volcanoes.

Fumaroles are small openings that arise from the outer vents of a volcano. Their composition varies according to the temperature at which they are emitted, so they change throughout their "life cycle".

 

3 P. 123. The eider, Somateria mollissima, is a medium-sized bird of the duck family that is distributed along the coasts of northern Europe, North America, and eastern Siberia. It nests near the sea, on the coast and on islands, and its feathers provide material to fill quilts. It feeds on crustaceans and mollusks, but mussels are its favorite food; they eat them whole, rupture in the stomach, and excrete the shell.

 

4 P. 128. The Geysir can throw boiling water over 80 meters high. However, eruptions are not usually frequent and in the past there have been years in a row where there were none. Between June 17 and 20, 2000, during an earthquake, one of the emissions of the great Geysir reached 122 meters and since 2006 it has been cordoned off for security reasons.

 

5 P. 129. The Strokkur geyser, which in Icelandic means “cylinder”, currently erupts every six to ten minutes, more than seventy-three thousand times a year, and its usual height is usually fifteen to twenty meters high. height, sometimes forty. This geyser was first mentioned in 1789, after an earthquake unblocked its vent. Its activity fluctuated throughout the 19th century and although in 1815 it was estimated that it could reach a height of up to sixty meters, at the beginning of the 20th century another earthquake blocked the conduit. In 1963, locals cleaned it up, and the geyser once again erupted regularly.

 

6 P. 130. Sigurthur Stefánsson, a master of the monastery of this town and grandson of the former bishop, drew a map in 1570 based on ancient documents, where he located the discoveries of the Norse in the Western Atlantic and included Vinland. The original map of Sigurthur has been lost, but there is a copy from the year 1690 that when consulted by Scandinavian scholars realized that Vinland was located at 51°, the same latitude as the southern tip of Ireland or Bristol. This information, transferred to modern maps, indicated that Sigurthur had marked Vinland in the same position as the northern promontory of Newfoundland, and this was fundamental to the investigations of archaeologists, who in 1960 found Viking remains at the l'Anse site aux Meadows, on the northern tip of the island of Newfoundland, at 51° 35′ 47″ north latitude.

 

7 P. 130. Thorlak Thorhallsson was the sixth Bishop of Skálholt between 1178 and 1193, when he died. Five years later, his successor in the bishopric named the Alþingi a saint and his relics were deposited in Skálholt to be venerated. In 1984, Pope John Paul II canonized him and declared him patron saint of Iceland.

 

8 P. 131. The thaler was an ancient silver coin used in several European countries of the Germanic area. A thaler equaled three marks.

 

9 P. 132. The eruption began on September 2, 1845 with an intense explosive phase of the Plinian type that lasted one hour (magmas with an acid composition and a high degree of explosiveness); then it went into effusive activity and ended on April 5 or 10, 1846 with a possible recurrence on August 13 or 16 of the same year. The amount of tephra or expelled material (magma) was found very close to the volcano, so it can be considered that the eruption was moderate. However, the ashes were transported to the Faroe Islands, Shetland and Orcades. Large amounts of ash were deposited on the pastures, and fluorosis caused cattle deaths over the next two years.

     However, the largest known volcanic eruption in Iceland occurred on June 8, 1783 when a 303 fissure crater in the Laki volcanic complex, it opened explosively due to the interaction between the submarine bottom and the thrust of basaltic magma, emitting 14,000 million cubic meters of lava and being classified at level 4 on the volcanic explosivity scale. The following eight months of sulfuric gas emission, which reached up to fifteen kilometers in height, caused one of the most significant climatic disturbances of the last millennium and gave Europe what became known as “Laki fog”. The coincidence of the emission of sulfur dioxide and unusual climatic conditions, with a very hot summer and winds blowing to the southeast, caused a thick sulfurous fog that spread across western Europe and caused thousands of deaths during 1783 and the winter from 1784 in Bergen, Prague, Berlin, Paris, The Hague or the center of England.

     Fog heated by the summer sun caused violent storms with significant stone precipitation damaging crops until autumn which they killed the cattle. That winter was particularly hard with many days of frost; major floods occurred in the spring and the following winters were also very severe, followed by episodes of drought that caused a drop in the prices of agricultural products and a famine crisis due to widespread poverty in rural areas.

 

Scandinavia and return to Vienna

 

1 P. 139. Situated at the entrance to the Numedal valley, Kongsberg had been founded by King Kristian IV in 1624 as Konings Bierg or King's Mountain, a mining commune after two herdsmen had discovered silver a year earlier. . It became Norway's largest mining industrial center before the industrial revolution, contributing 10% of the gross national product of Denmark and Norway. It was given the royal charter of commerce and in 1802 it already had the official status of a town with a market.

 

2 P. 141. The Göta is a navigation channel that is part of a 390-kilometre-long waterway that links several lakes and rivers to provide a route from Gothenburg to the North Sea to Söderköping on the Baltic Sea. This route takes place through the Göta river and the Vänern, Vättern, Boren and Roxen lakes, and reduces the distance from Gothenburg to Stockholm from 900 kilometers to 590. The width of the channel ranged from seven to fourteen meters and the maximum depth It was about three meters. The canal had fifty-eight locks that made it possible to overcome unevenness and raise or lower ships as needed. This canal can accommodate vessels up to 30 meters long, 7 meters wide and 2.8 meters deep.

     Although the idea of making this canal had already been proposed at the beginning of the 16th century, construction began under the orders of Baltzar von Platen, a former Swedish Navy officer of German origin, who had British technical help and where up to 58,000 workers were employed. It was inaugurated on September 26, 1832 and boosted the Swedish economy for only a few years, as it came into competition with the railway lines that started up in 1855 and was never an economic success. Currently it is used almost only as a tourist and recreational activity.

 

3 P. 142. The attack took place inside the building. Although the bullet did not kill him at first, the subsequent infection did prove lethal, and he died on March 29, 1792, a fortnight later.

 

4 P. 143. Eighty-five personalities of great importance and of diverse origins are buried in Uppsala Cathedral. Catharina Magelone is unknown and Ida probably referred to Catharina Jagiellon, the first wife of King Johan III; Gustavus Erichson was the name of King Gustav I before he was crowned and he died a natural death, not beheaded. There were three members of the Sture family killed by King Erik XIV: Svante Sture the Younger and his two sons Nils and Erik. Archbishop Karl Frederik Mennander is correct; he had been a student of the great Linneaeus, the botanist Carl Linné who devised the classificatory system of all animal and plant species for which Ida surely felt great admiration. Charles De Geer, another important naturalist and dedicated to the study of insects and a disciple of Linnaeus, is also buried in this cathedral.

 

5 P. 145. Ida was referring to the area known as “museum island”, or Museuminsel, a museum complex located in the northern part of the island of Spree, in the historic center of the city. In 1830 the Royal Art Museum, or Königliches, was built, and in 1841 King Friedrich Wilhelm IV announced in a royal decree that the entire area "would be transformed into a sanctuary for art and science." Thus, between 1843 and 1855 the New Museum or Neues Museum was built, and the name of the Königliches was changed to the Old Museum or Altes Museum. These were the two museums that Ida saw during her visit. Later the Alte Nationalgalerie (1862-1876), the Bode Museum (1898-1904) and the Pergamonmuseum (1910-1930) would be built.

 

Publication of the travel book

 

1 P. 151. Carl Franz von Schreibers, Professor of Natural History at the University of Vienna, had been commissioned by the former Emperor Leopold II to completely reorganize the collections of the Royal Empire's Natural History Cabinet, the Naturalien-Cabinet which later it would become the Natural Museum of Vienna (Naturhistorihes Museum). It was founded by Schreibers following scientific criteria and using the Natural History Museum in Paris as a model.

 

2 P. 152. He was referring to The Englishwoman in Egypt: Letters from Cairo (1845), a work written by Sophia Poole. She lived in Cairo between 1842 and 1844 with her brother, the well-known orientalist Edward Lane. Sophia had separated from her husband and remained in Egypt with her two children; he learned Arabic, he adopted the characteristic Arab dress, not only to observe daily life in the streets and markets but also to enter the baths and harems and become intimate with Egyptian women of different social classes.

Letters of a German Countess was the work of the previously discussed German Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn, a fervent nun who embraced Catholicism.

 

3 P. 153. The prophet Jeremiah predicted great evils for the people of Jerusalem and Babylon because their rulers and the people lived in the midst of violence and corruption. The "jeremiadas" comes from this prophet and is understood as a "lamentation or very exaggerated display of pain".

 

4 P. 153. Before Ida had gone to Iceland, this island had only been described by a dozen travelers, the vast majority of them belonging to the aristocracy and with a budget far greater than hers. Without a doubt, Pfeiffer can be considered a pioneer in this journey and the first woman to describe the island, even if it was only the southern part, the most visited.

 

V. FIRST VOYAGE AROUND THE WORLD

 

Brazil

 

1 P. 157. Elephantiasis or lymphatic filariasis is a parasitosis produced by nematode worms transmitted to humans through the bite of various species of mosquitoes. It is characterized by inflammation of the lymph nodes and channels, thickening of the extremities, a late complication caused by the obstruction of living, dead or degenerating adult worms. This clogging of the vessels also causes hypertrophy, sometimes monstrous, of the scrotum, penis, breasts and especially the legs and feet.

 

2 P. 160. The Puris Indians lived in four states in southwestern Brazil: Espírito Santo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and Sâo Paulo, following the extension irrigated by the Paraíba do Sul river and its tributaries. It is estimated that in the 18th century there were some 5,000 indigenous people living there; currently there are a few hundred.

 

3 P. 163. It is Tunga penetrans, popularly known as chigger, a flea from the Hectopsyllidae family that attacks the skin and produces the disease called tungiasis. This was a typically American condition, but it is known that in 1872 several females of this species were transported by the crew of the British ship Thomas Mitchell, which was sailing from Rio de Janeiro to Ambriz, a Portuguese colonial city about 100 km . north of Luanda, the capital of Angola; from there, the chiggers spread rapidly up the African coast. In 1882, tungiasis was known all over the coastline, from Sierra Leone to Mozambique, invading the entire African continent in just twenty-five years.

 

Cape Horn, Valparaiso, Tahiti

 

1 P. 169. This dissolute and carefree life had already been described almost seventy-five years before. The English explorer Samuel Wallis had discovered the island in 1767 and the following year Louis-Antoine de Bougainville also capsized during the first French circumnavigation. He named the island Nova Citera, in reference to the Greek island of Citera, the garden of Eden where Venus would have been born, because he described it in his work Voyage autour du monde (1771) as an earthly paradise with a people who lived happily on earth. innocence. Regarding his women, authentic “nymphs”, he explained how the expedition arrived in Tahiti:

     As we neared the ground the islanders surrounded the boats. The crowd of canoes was such that we had great difficulty in mooring in the crowd and noise. Everyone came calling "tayo", which means friend, and they gave us a thousand testimonials of friendship and they all asked us for nails and earrings. The canoes had been filled with women who openly showed what their charms were in front of a large number of Europeans and who, due to the beauty of their bodies, could compete with an advantage with any woman. Most of these nymphs were naked since the old men and women who accompanied them had removed the cap with which they usually wrap themselves.

    At first, and despite their naivety they seemed to feel a certain shame; a bit because nature has embellished sex with a naive shyness because even in countries where the sincere golden age* still reigns, women give the feeling of not wanting what they most want. Those men, simpler or freer, soon spoke clearly: they asked us to choose a woman and follow her on the ground, with unmistakable gestures that showed how we should know her. I asked myself: how can you keep your job in the middle of a show like this, with four hundred young French sailors who haven't seen a woman for six months? Despite all the precautions we had taken, a young woman came on board and from behind the quarterdeck on the upper deck stood in one of the winch hatches, which was open to ventilate the lower area. The young woman casually dropped the cap that covered her and appeared like that in everyone's eyes, as when Venus showed herself in the Phrygian shepherd with celestial forms. Sailors and soldiers rushed to the hatch and never had the winch moved so well as with this activity. We dedicated our effort to contain these bewitched men and it must be said that the least difficult thing was not to contain oneself.

     Bougainville reported in his work that later, syphilis contracted in Tahitians, and suspected the expedition was severely affected by syphilis The contagion had been caused by the English from Wallis who had been on the island a year before.

 

* According to Greek and Roman mythology, this period also known as the reign of Saturn, is the time during which Cronos-Saturn, after being dethroned by his son Zeus-Jupiter, is received in the Italian peninsula by King Janus, with who will share the power; and this turned out to be a time characterized by widespread prosperity.

 

2 P. 170. Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, known as “the prince consort”, was the husband of Queen Victoria of Great Britain.

 

China

 

1 P. 175. A few years later a new revolution would take place, known as the Second Opium War, between 1856 and 1860. The United Kingdom wanted to expand its territories to China and asked its authorities to renegotiate the previous treaty, which included exercising free trade throughout the country, legalize the trade in opium, abolish taxes on foreigners for internal traffic, suppress piracy, regulate the traffic of workers (they were treated almost like slaves) and allow the British ambassador to reside in Peking. The court rejected those demands and thus began a war between the Chinese empire and the United Kingdom and its allies France, Russia and the United States.

 

Singapore and Ceylon

 

1 P. 185. Ida was referring to the Polish sanctuary of Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, located about forty kilometers southwest of Krakow and only fifteen kilometers from Wadowice, the birthplace of Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II.

 

India

 

1 P. 190. In July 1857, the regiments of sipais stationed in Dinapur, that is, the Hindu soldiers enrolled in the British East India Company, rose in revolt due to various religious, social, political and economic reasons, mainly due to the ethnic differences between the white officers and the Indian troops. The British had to flee to Shahabad, in the northwest of the country, and Arrah, a town near Patna, was besieged and the reinforcements sent failed. Finally, most of the English were able to retire in boats thanks to various heroic actions, such as those of William McDonell and Ross Mangles. Both received the Victoria Cross, the highest award given by the British forces for acts of courage against the enemy.

 

2 P. 202. Phrase taken from the poet Horace in De Arte poetica. Epistola ad Pisones: “I say mihi, Musa, virum, captae post tempora Trojae, Who mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes” (Say, Oh Musa! Of the man who, after taking Troy, toured many towns and studied their customs).

 

3 P. 203. The Black Hole or Black Hole was a dungeon in Fort William in Calcutta that measured approximately 4.30 x 5.50 meters. On June 20, 1756, the site fell into the hands of the troops of Siraj ud-Daulah, the Nabob of Bengal, and British soldiers, civilians, and sipayos were imprisoned, but as the place was so small and cramped, forty died of heat or drowned. and three people out of the sixty-four who were sent to the hole. One of the survivors was John Holwell, a surgeon and temporary governor of Bengal, who later erected a tombstone at the site to commemorate the victims, but who at some indeterminate time, before 1820, disappeared.

     Later, Viceroy Lord Curzon realized that there was no indication of the fact that he had he commissioned a new monument which was erected in 1901 and made mention of the previous existence of Holwell's headstone. Curiously, as Ida Pfeiffer had mentioned fifty years before, apparently with clairvoyant skills, it was an obelisk fifteen meters high, which is currently in the cemetery of the Anglican church of Saint John in Calcutta.

 

Mesopotamia and Persia

 

1 P. 212. The first excavations in the area were carried out in 1843 by Paul-Émil Botta, French consul in Mosul, and found the royal palace of Sargon II, but in Khorsabad, 20 kilometers north of Nineveh. In 1847 Austen Henry Layard's exploration of Nineveh took place, and he found the palace of Sennacherib and the well-known Ashurbanipal bookstore with 22,000 engraved tables that were sent to London. When Ida arrived in Mosul, Layard was in the British capital, so they did not meet.

     Christian Rassam had a younger brother, Hormuzd, who was hired as his personal assistant at the age of twenty and Lambard was hired as his personal assistant at twenty , impressed by his worth. Hormuzd went to England and studied at Magdalen College, Oxford for eighteen months before accompanying Layard on a second expedition to Iraq. Later, when Layard abandoned archeology and dedicated himself to politics, Hormuzd already worked alone and made important discoveries, such as the clay tablets that would be deciphered as "the epic of Gilgamesh", the oldest narrative poem in the world.

 

2 P. 213. The so-called clothing or human body lice belong to the species Pediculus humanus humanus. They are the transmitters of epidemic or exanthematic typhus, the cause of many epidemics throughout history. There is another human louse, Pediculus humanus capitis, which lives in the hair but does not transmit any disease except for the so-called pediculosis, the concentration of many individuals.

 

3 P. 214. Undoubtedly it was the Locusta migratoria species of lobster, very common in these places and famous for having constituted large swarms and plagues throughout history during its migratory phase. Ida's observation that the natives ate them is accurate and a common occurrence in many places, especially North Africa and the Middle East. It must be taken into account that although 60-75% of the lobster's body is made up of water, the rest is distributed with 60% protein, 24% carbohydrates, 12% lipids and 4% mineral salts. In addition, at the University of Montana they conducted a study showing that 100 grams of lobster have 300% more protein than 100 grams of roasted sirloin.

 

4 P. 218. Ida was not mistaken in the description of the viceroy: once he became the new shah of Persia and despite starting a process of modernization of the country with the introduction of Western technologies and customs, his style of government showed dictator and used for continued repression against religious and political adversaries, thousands died. After reigning for forty-eight years, he was shot to death by an opponent in 1896. Shortly before he died, he said that "if I survive, I will reign in another way."

 

Asian Russia and return to Vienna

 

1 P. 220. Cholera is an acute intestinal infectious-contagious disease, caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The infection is generally benign in up to 75% of cases, but on occasions it can be very serious and appear suddenly. It is characterized by abdominal pain, watery diarrhea with a high number of stools (up to 30-40 in 24 hours) and vomiting that causes rapid dehydration, up to a liter per hour. Without adequate treatment, death can occur in a matter of hours, when dehydration exceeds 12-15% of body weight. These bacteria are present in water and food contaminated by feces and are usually transmitted through these when the person ingests them. During an epidemic, the sources of contamination are generally the feces of the infected person, which is the reservoir of the disease, but the role of flies as spreaders of the infection is also very important.

      From the mid-17th century to 1817, sixty-four relatively isolated outbreaks of cholera were first reported in the Goera region and later in other localities of the Indian coast, advancing progressively towards the east and north. a period of recess, in 1817 the first pandemic began, which spread throughout the world from its original reservoir in the delta of the Ganges river. The second and most devastating pandemic began in 1829 in Persia, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan and from there it spread worldwide in the following years. The third pandemic began in 1852, but it did not follow a linear course but rather responded to the sum of local outbreaks in various areas around the world. There would still be three more epidemics, between 1863-1875, 1881-1896 and 1899-1923, the last two less fatal due to greater knowledge of the disease. The last and current pandemic, the seventh, began in 1961 and is still persisting in developing countries.

 

2 P. 222. Circassia was a historical region encompassing the entire northwestern Caucasus that was gradually conquered by the Russians between 1763 and 1864 in the framework of the Russo-Circassian Wars that cost the lives of more than three and a half million people. . Because they were Muslim, many of them began a mass exodus to the Ottoman Empire, and today significant communities are found in Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel.

 

VI. PERIOD BETWEEN TRAVELS (I)

 

1 P. 233. The Crystal Palace, the crystal palace, was the main building of the great Exhibition, originally located in Hyde Park. It was a cast iron and glass construction designed by the English architect and gardener Joseph Paxton, a building 564 meters long, 138 meters wide and 39 meters high.

 

2 P. 235. The Museum of Vienna would have bought quite a few species from Ida for 300 florins, and there is evidence that she would also have sold specimens to other institutions, such as the Schottengymnasium in Vienna, a prestigious private Catholic school, since in 1850 he wrote a letter to Ferdinand Breuding, the curator of his natural history collection, offering to sell spices collected during his long journey.

 

Publication of the translations of the travel book

 

1 P. 241. Marmier took advantage of this same article, in its entirety, to include them in his works Les voyageurs nouveaux (1852) and Voyage d'une femme autour du monde (1853). This last work was not limited to Pfeiffer's travels but included others in Lapland, Africa, America, China, New Zealand and Australia. In 1886, Marmier published a new work, Passé et présent. Voyage recitals, where Pfeiffer also appeared, and again in her widowed condition: “Mme. Ida Pfeiffer, the brave Austrian who, at the age of forty-seven, already a widow and with established children, left for Egypt and Palestine, then Sweden, Norway and Iceland; He returned to his home in Vienna and left again to go around the world.

 

VII. SECOND VOYAGE AROUND THE WORLD

From London to Cape Town and Singapore

 

1 P. 243. A marine league is equivalent to 1/20 of a degree of the terrestrial meridian, or 5.55 kilometers. Therefore, 8,000 legas were equivalent to 44,400 kilometers.

 

2 P. 244. Cape Town had been part of the British Empire since 1814, but the territories where Ida wanted to go were in the northeast of the country, which would be the free state of Orange and the Transvaal, dominated by the Boers of Dutch origin . The war of the English against the Kaffirs (from the Arabic "cafir", as they referred to the blacks of southern Africa), actually of the Xhosa ethnic group, was a long conflict with several high points, which remained active between 1779 and 1879 in the territory now known as the Eastern Cape Province.

 

3 P. 245. Ida was referring to the "tsetse" flies, of the genus Glossina, transmitters with their bite of African trypanosomiasis or son disease in humans and nagana in cattle, produced by the protozoan Trypanosoma brucei.

 

4 P. 245. Klein William, now Clanwilliam, one of the oldest cities founded by the Dutch, is located about 230 kilometers north of Cape Town, at the foot of the Cederberg mountain range and on the banks of the Olifantes River . Clanwilliam is the center of cultivation of roibos, Aspalathus linearios, known as the "plant of happiness", which only grows in these mountains. Carl Thunberg, one of Linnaeus's disciples, already noted in 1772 that the natives of the country made infusions with this "red bush".

 

5 P. 247. The discovery of antimony ore in the Kuching region, in the north of the island of Borneo, led Pangeran Indera Mahkota, a representative of the Sultan of Brunei, to increase the development of the territory. The increased production of this mineral caused the sultanate to demand higher taxes, which led to civil unrest. In 1839, Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin II charged his Pangeran uncle Muda Hashim with the task of restoring order, but he was unable to do so and asked James Brooke for help.

 

6 P. 248. Among the insects he sent to the Vienna Museum was the species Gryllotalpa fulvipes, an insect of the mole cricket family, originally known from Singapore but for over a hundred years only the type specimen collected by Pfeiffer existed. , until another was found in January 1978. This extremely rare species is about 3 centimeters long, burrows the ground, and lives underground, confined to primary forest. It was first described in 1877 by the Swiss orthopteran entomologist Henri-Louis-Frédéric de Saussure.