s_ a long time afterwards, "but their work has been mere
child's play compared with the trials which Lady Baker had to undergo in
forcing her way into a region absolutely unknown and bristling with
dangers of every kind."

But after encountering many adventures, the determined traveller and his
brave wife at last reached the top of a slope from which, on looking
down, they saw a vast inland ocean. No eye of white man had ever beheld
this lake before, and to Lady Baker, not less than to her husband,
belongs the glory of the discovery of the lake which all the world knows
to-day as the Albert Nyanza.

"Thus," to quote an earlier passage in the same _Times_ article, "amid
many hardships and at the frequent risk of death at the hands of Arab
slavers and hostile chiefs, Baker and his wife forged one of the most
important links in the course of one of the world's most famous rivers."

After many further difficulties, the explorers found their way back to
the coast, and thence to England. But their fame had gone before them,
and everywhere they were welcomed. And though it was Baker who was
awarded a gold medal by the Royal Geographical Society, all must have
felt that the honour belonged, not less, to his courageous wife.

[Sidenote: Mary Kingsley]

It may be said that Lady Baker was not alone in her journeys. On the
other hand, Mary Kingsley, another woman African traveller, led her own
expeditions. Moreover, her travelling was often done through territory
reeking with disease. At the age of twenty-nine she explored the Congo
River, and visited Old Calabar, and in 1894 ascended the mountain of
Mungo Mah Lobeh. After her return to England she lectured upon her
adventures. One more journey, this time not of exploration, was she to
make to the great African continent. In 1900 she volunteered as a nurse
during the war, and went out to the Cape. Here she was employed to nurse
sick Boer prisoners. But her work was done. Enteric fever struck her
down and, before long, the traveller had set out upon her last journey.

The names we have mentioned have been those of famous travellers--women
whose work is part of the history of discovery. But there are hundreds
of courageous women to-day, not perhaps engaged in exploration, but who,
nevertheless, are living in remote stations in the heart of Africa, in
the midst of the Australian "never-never," in the lonely islands of the
Pacific--women whose husbands, whose fathers, whose brothe