Imperial Valley press., 1913-11-26
Duchess of Aosta
Takes to Woods
BY Henry Wood

tiiS hNNSi'i VI i'Oos''t ''''N
went into the Maine woods eau ma
turelle," is to be gone one better by
the duchess of Aosta. Under far
more exacting conditions than those
which Artist Knowles chose for him
self last summer in the Maine woods,
the duchess will demonstrate the pos
sibilities of the "modern Eve" The
one difference in which Knowles ex-
pertinent was slightly more-er-uh-
hazardous than the experiment of the
duchess will be is that the latter will
wear a few clothes. Knowles wore
his birthday suit until he had killed
enough animals to make him suit
la "O'Brien O'Lynn," with "the skinny
side out and the woody side in" While
not cutting absolutely loose from
everything which modern civilization
has produced, the duchess will limit
these to the arms, ammunition and
medicine that can be carried on the
back of one small negro lad, and
then will go the "modern Adam" one
better by plunging into an unknown
wilderness where not only her SUBJ
sistence will depend on her physical
endurance and mental ingenuity, but
where she will have to protect her own
life every moment from wild animals
and savage tribes. This is something
which Eve herself did not have to do.
The duchess of Aosta has just left
for her fourth African hunting and
exploration trip under circumstances
never before attempted by woman
and very seldom by man. Accom-
panied only by the negro lad, who will
carry the only baggage, she plans to
spend five months in the unexplored
regions of Africa, depending entirely
for her subsistence on her prowess as
a hunter. The duchess is one of the
best hunters and sportswomen of tho
world. In her past African hunting
trips, however, she has been accom-
panied by a retinue with all the ac-
couterments usually considered neces-
sary for such an undertaking. Fol-
lowing the first two of these expedi-
tions, the duchess is declared to have
wearied of even this much contact
with civilization during her plunges
"back to nature" and as a conse-
quence on her third trip she was ac-
companied only by an English maid
and the black boy whom she picked
up in Africa on her first trip.
Incidentally, no small amount of in
spiration for the present undertaking
is declared to have come to the duch-
ess from former President Roosevelt.
The duke and duchess of Aosta, in
their palace of Capodimonte near Ma
pies, were the first hosts of Roosevelt
upon his arrival in Europe from his
African hunt. The duchess herself
had just returned shortly before from
her third trip, which she made alone
with her English maid and African
boy, and the visit of Roosevelt is de-
clared to have preceded by very few
moments her determination to do
something that would demonstrate
more convincingly than ever to the
world at large her own opinion and
estimate of harcalf
The duchess is of royal Bourbon
stock and believes as all Bourbons do
that there flows in her veins blood
which makes her superior to mankind
and womankind in general. Not con-
tent with merely believing this, how
ever, she has ever been bent on dem
onstrating that in having in her the
blood of which queens are made--or
at least used to be made-she is the
equal in every way of the greatest of
kings and emperors of today.
AS matter of fact, her accomplish
ments have been such as to demon
strate her the equal of most any
man-be he king or peasant-and the
duchess has always been received by
such rulers as the emperor of Ger
many, King Alfonso, Franz Josef and
others not only as their equal in every
way but as one of "their own kind"
In meeting Roosevelt the duchess
while recognizing that because of his
lack of royal blood she could hardly
class him with herself, as she put
it-recognized a man who with that
one exception was very much of her
type. AS past president of the
United States she felt that he came
somewhere within the category of rul-
ers of the kind with which she frat
ernizes and therefore to demonstrate
her equality-or superiority-to him,
as she had demonstrated it to all other
European monarchs, she conceived the
idea of the present trip that would
outdo anything ever before done by