died in Cape Town 30 years ago. It was then
discovered that he was a woman.

The legend goes that enquiries--soon silenced--developed the fact that
she was a daughter of a great English house, and that that was why her
Cape wildnesses brought no punishment and got no notice when reported to
the government at home. Her name was an alias. She had disgraced
herself with her people; so she chose to change her name and her sex and
take a new start in the world.

We sailed on the 15th of July in the Norman, a beautiful ship, perfectly
appointed. The voyage to England occupied a short fortnight, without a
stop except at Madeira. A good and restful voyage for tired people, and
there were several of us. I seemed to have been lecturing a thousand
years, though it was only a twelvemonth, and a considerable number of the
others were Reformers who were fagged out with their five months of
seclusion in the Pretoria prison.

Our trip around the earth ended at the Southampton pier, where we
embarked thirteen months before. It seemed a fine and large thing to
have accomplished--the circumnavigation of this great globe in that
little time, and I was privately proud of it. For a moment.
Then came one of those vanity-snubbing astronomical reports from the
Observatory-people, whereby it appeared that another great body of light
had lately flamed up in the remotenesses of space which was traveling at
a gait which would enable it to do all that I had done in a minute and a
half. Human pride is not worth while; there is always something lying in
wait to take the wind out of it.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Following the Equator, Part 7
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

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