MADAME IDA PFEIFFER.

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THE

L A S T   T R A V E L S

OF

IDA PFEIFFER:

INCLUSIVE OF A VISIT TO MADAGASCAR.

WITH

An Autobiographical Memoir of the Author.

TRANSLATED BY H. W. DULCKEN.


NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1861.

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PREFACE.

It was at Buenos Ayres that I received the intelligence of the death ofmy beloved mother. Shortly before her decease she had expressed the wishthat I should arrange and prepare for publication the papers she leftconcerning her last voyage to Madagascar. The dangerous illness whichbefell her in the Mauritius immediately after she had left Madagascar,and which, in spite of the most careful medical attention, and thekindest nursing on the part of her friends, proved fatal, prevented herfrom doing this herself.

When, after a few months, I returned from Buenos Ayres to Rio deJaneiro, I found my mother’s papers waiting for me there; but the losswas too recent, and my grief too violent, to allow me to read them then,much less to peruse them with the care and attention which mustnecessarily precede their publication.

At length I made up my mind to the task. I was obliged to go through it,for it was my mother’s last wish. Filial duty induced me to leave mydear mother’s journal as little altered as possible. In thus giving thislast work of my mother to the world, I trust that our kind readers willreceive it with the indulgence they have so frequently extended to theother works of the late enterprising traveler.

Oscar Pfeiffer.

Rio de Janeiro, July 8th, 1860.

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CONTENTS.