The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-05-24


 region of the globe in which no tray elers life is safe. Since a Yanke, woman in the person of Mrs. Frencf Sheldon set the example by adventur- ing through Central Africa the name of the fair ones who have followed her example has become legion and the list is being increased every day. Ii seems only yesterday. in fact, hat the papers were full of the adventures of Mrs Marguerite Robey, another daring daughter of the stars and stripes, who played the part of medicine woman in the heart of the Congo and averted war between two powerful and savage tribes b,@ arbitrating twixt their re spective chiefs. and those of Beatrice Grimshaw, among the cannibals, sharks and reptiles of Paqua. Since then we have had the experiences of Mrs. Amaury Talbot among the expert pois- oners and torturers of the African dis trict Of which her husband is district commissioner, and seen the beautiful Countess Molitor setting off almost blithely, in an attempt to cross the great desert of Arabia where no Euro pean is known to have set foot and where almost certain death awaits the explorer.
 Worthy in every respect to be classed with the intrepid women mentioned is the latest feminine traveller in wild places, Mrs. BeatriX Bulstrode, an Eng lishwoman, who has just returned to this country after wanderings that have lasted for nearly two years in the least known, and, to a foreigner, most dan gerous corners of the Chinese empire and through Mongolian wastes where rarely a white woman has been seen before, and where extinction in va riety of forms has to be taken into account by the traveller Her adven- lures there include the discovery of what surely must be the most terrible form of punishment in the world and some of the queerest religious rites in existence wanderings in regions in- fested with brigands of the White Wolf breed and over seas swarming with pirates, and long and lonely jour neyings through land where civil war was raging and over ground that had been recently strewn with headless corpscs.
 Tall fair and extremely good looking, with masses of brown hair, intelligent eyes with determination in them and bearing that suggests great placidity, balanced by a keen sense of humor, Mrs. Bulstrode considerably surprised her interviewer by declaring that, far from pelnS an eApe1lenceu SlODe lrOller Ds- fore she started off to wander far from the beaten track in China, she has, apart from some months In Canada and an intimate acquaintance with nearer Europe, travelled no further east from her native land than Genoa, the birth place of another traveller not wholly unknown to fame-one Christopher Columbus.
 But China always has had fascin- alton for me" she said, and when the death of my husband made me long to put familiar scenes behind me and seek distraction in change 1 decided to sat isfy my old craving and put in a few months-I planned for six at the be- ginning-in travelling through some of the less well known parts of China, and, if it were humanly possible, get ting to northern Mongolia by the car avan route across the Gobi desert"
 So eff she started in September, 1911, landing at Hong Kong and before the end of her journeyings had travelled the whole length of China and right across the Flowery Kingdom from south to north, distance of some thousands of miles, not to mention some 700 in Mongolia. From Hong Kong she went by sea to Fuchow. Then. mostly in a sedan chair, she wandered in southern China, and had lot of queer adventures Later, on 30year- old ocean tramp whose captain frankly owned her unseaworthy, the English woman sailed once more, bound this time for the mouth of the Yangtse- Kiang. and soon became aware that the possibility of their being robbed and perhaps murdered by pirates apparent 1y was causing her skipper keen anx- iety. Such proceeding, on this route it seems, generally begins with mu- tiny on the part of the native crew, when the vessel is captured and hove to, when adherents of the mutneers appear as if by magic in native craft. and strip ship and passengers of all their valuables, the voyagers being un- commonly lucky if they escape with their lives
 This time no such attack occurred. however, and a few days afterward Mrs. Bulstrode was off on her 1200- mile voyage up the great river E of China first ih her "sampan" with a crew of native oarsmen, and then In a British steamer officered by worthies who irresistibly suggested Cutcliffe Hyne's famous Kettle and McTodd. and on which she spent her first Christmas in China in a fashion which doubtless will make an entertaining chapter in the chronicle of her adventures which Mrs, Bulstrode now proposes to write. Thus she penetrated west to 60 miles above 1chang, and then, returning to Hang-Kow made her way north to the capital and eventually set out from Picking for southern Mongolia travel ing in a Picking cart and accompanied by two coolies Mrs. Bulstrode had picked up only smattering of Chi nese and so during the whole of her wanderings among the Mongols the lit tie party had to depend mainly on the sign language.
 In Mongolia it was that her queerest adventures befell the traveller and it is far 1.ta hot har n China itself have been summarized here in so sketchy fashion. Perhaps the most vivid impression of the inhab- itants of Mongolia which she brought away was their invariable filthy con- dition, for the Mongols, it seems. do not wash from one years end to an- other.
 Quite possibly you wouldn't either if you held a similar belief to theirs for the Mongols. according to Mrs, Bulstrode, are firmly convinced that if they make too lavish a use of water In this incar- nation. they will be fishes in the next. so they naturally take no chances. They believe. by the way, in the almost in- stant transmigrat ton of souls. and conse- auently are almost entirely careless of their dead. They throw them out on the hillside" remarked Mrs. Bulstrode, ''where dogs and vultures promptly eat them. What does 1t natter they say. The body is only a new case for the spirit No doubt this is another req son why they never wash their cases"
 All during her travels In Mongolia. Mrs Bulstrode wore riding brooches and a long coat and rode astride. and this led to her being almost invariably mis taken for a man. thing probably all