Madame Pfeiffer’s last voyage was to Madagascar, and will be found described in the closing chapter of this little volume.  In Madagascar she contracted a dangerous illness, from which she temporarily recovered; but on her return to Europe it was evident that her constitution had received a severe blow.  She gradually grew weaker.  Her disease proved to be cancer of the liver, and the physicians pronounced it incurable.  After lingering a few weeks in much pain, she passed away on the night of the 27th of October 1858, in the sixty-third year of her age.

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This remarkable woman is described as of short stature, thin, and slightly bent.  Her movements were deliberate and measured.  She was well-knit and of considerable physical energy, and her career proves her to have been possessed of no ordinary powers of endurance.  The reader might probably suppose that she was what is commonly known as a strong-minded woman.  The epithet would suit her if seriously applied, for she had undoubtedly a clear, strong intellect, a cool judgment, and a resolute purpose; but it would be thoroughly inapplicable in the satirical sense in which it is commonly used.  There was nothing masculine about her.  On the contrary, she was so reserved and so unassuming that it required an intimate knowledge of her to fathom the depths of her acquirements and experience.  “In her whole appearance and manner,” we are told, “was a staidness that seemed to indicate the practical housewife, with no thought soaring beyond her domestic concerns.”

This quiet, silent woman, travelled nearly 20,000 miles by land and 150,000 miles by sea; visiting regions which no European had previously penetrated, or where the bravest men had found it difficult to make their way; undergoing a variety of severe experiences; opening up numerous novel and surprising scenes; and doing all this with the scantiest means, and unassisted by powerful protection or royal patronage.  We doubt whether the entire round of human enterprise presents anything more remarkable or more admirable.  And it would be unfair to suppose that she was actuated only by a feminine curiosity.  Her leading motive was a thirst for knowledge.  At all events, if she had a passion for travelling, it must be admitted that her qualifications as a traveller were unusual.  Her observation was quick and accurate; her perseverance was indefatigable; her courage never faltered; while she possessed a peculiar talent for first awakening, and then profiting by, the interest and sympathy of those with whom she came in contact.

To assert that her travels were wholly without scientific value would be unjust; Humboldt and Carl Ritter were of a different opinion.  She made her way into regions which had never before been trodden by European foot; and the very fact of her sex was a frequent protection in her most dangerous undertakings.  She was allowed to enter many places which would have been rigorously barred against male travellers.  Consequently, her communications have the merit of embodying many new facts in geography and ethnology, and of correcting numerous popular errors.  Science derived much benefit also from her valuable collections of plants, animals, and minerals.