The Story of Ida Pfeiffer Part 7

The journey to Tamatave was not without its dangers and difficulties, and Madame Pfeiffer, who had been attacked with fever, suffered severely. The escort purposely delayed them on the road; so that, instead of reaching the coast in eight days, the time actually occupied was three-and-fifty.

This was the more serious, because the road ran through low-lying and malarious districts. In the most unhealthy spots, moreover, the travellers were left in wretched huts for a whole week, or even two weeks; and frequently, when Madame Pfeiffer was groaning in a violent excess of fever, the brutal soldiers dragged her from her miserable couch, and compelled her to continue her journey.

At length, on the 12th of September, she arrived at Tamatave; broken-down and unutterably weary and worn, but still alive. Ill as she was, she gladly embarked on board a ship which was about to sail for the Mauritius; and reaching that pleasant island on the 22nd, met with a hearty welcome from her friends--to whom, indeed, she was as one who had been dead and was alive again.

The mental and physical sufferings she had undergone, combined with the peculiar effects of the fever, now brought on an illness of so serious a character that for long the doctors doubted whether her recovery was possible. On her sixtieth birthday, the 14th of October, they p.r.o.nounced the brave lady out of danger; but, in fact, her const.i.tution had received a fatal shock. The fever became intermittent in its attacks, but it never wholly left her; though she continued, with unabated energy and liveliness, to lay down plans for fresh expeditions. She had made all her preparations for a voyage to Australia, when a return of her disease, in February 1858, compelled her to renounce her intention, and to direct her steps homeward.

Early in the month of June she arrived in London, where she remained for a few weeks. Thence she repaired to Berlin.

Her strength was now declining day by day, though at first she seemed to regard her illness as only temporary, and against the increasing physical weakness her mind struggled with its usual activity. About September, she evinced a keen anxiety to behold her home once more,--evidently having arrived at a conviction that her end was near. She was carefully conveyed to Vienna, and received into the house of her brother, Charles Reyer; where, at first, the influence of her native air had an invigorating effect. This gave way after a week or two, and her illness returned with augmented force. During the last days of her life, opiates were administered to relieve her sufferings; and in the night between the 27th and 28th of October she pa.s.sed away peacefully, and apparently without pain,--leaving behind her the memory of a woman of matchless intrepidity, surprising energy, and heroic fixity of purpose.

NOTES.

{105} Since Madame Pfeiffer's time this mode of self-torture has been prohibited by the British Government.

{197} That is, the "City of a Thousand Towns."

{204} We give Madame Pfeiffer's account, as an ill.u.s.tration of the old ways of Madagascar society. But the poison-ordeal has of late been abandoned, owing to Christian influence.