Ida Pfeiffer in SEA : simplebooklet.com

VOL 15 Facing page Ida Pfeiffer encounters a green snake while paddling up the Kallang River on her first visit to Singapore Image reproduced from Pfeiffer I 1852 Reis eener vrouw rondom de wereld Frontispiece Gorinchem Noorduyn Right The earliest known daguerreotype of Ida Pfeiffer date and photographer unknown Her clothing suggests this must be the early 1840s She is wearing a lace day cap not a bonnet a headpiece worn by married women Image reproduced from Lebzelter F F 1910 Die sterreichische Weltreisende Ida Pfeiffer 1797 1858 mit besonderer Ber cksichtigung der naturwissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse ihrer Reisen Vienna Bottom right Ida Pfeiffer dressed in her travel costume with an insect net in her hand and a specimen bag across her shoulder Lithograph by Adolf Dauthage Courtesy of John van Wyhe t The name Ida Pfeiffer 1797 1858 is largely unknown today but in the mid19th century she was one of the most famous women in the world Starting in her mid 40s this Viennese mother of two embarked on five major expeditions two of which involved circumnavigating the globe She accomplished all this while travelling as an unchaperoned woman a notion that was almost unheard of in those days During the course of her journeys Pfeiffer visited Singapore twice in 1847 and in 1851 Thanks to her we have a glimpse of Singapore s natural environment during the period as well as snapshots of daily life on the island A Tomboy Who Grew Up Ida Laura Reyer was born into a wealthy merchant family in Vienna in 1797 As a child she was a stubborn and headstrong tomboy who frequently harboured grand ambitions such as travelling to exotic far off lands and exploring the world She married a lawyer named Dr Mark Anton Pfeiffer in 1820 The union which produced two sons was not a happy one though In 1835 she separated from her husband although they remained on good terms By 1842 her sons were gainfully employed and independent With her motherly duties completed Ida Pfeiffer now aged 45 was finally free to do what she had always dreamed of to see the world Pfeiffer s career as a travel writer began after her first journey which was to Dr John van Wyhe is a historian of science who has written extensively about Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace He is the author of Wanderlust The Amazing Ida Pfeiffer the First Female Tourist 2019 the Middle East in 1842 when she visited Constantinople Jerusalem and Cairo Her travel journal caught the attention of a publisher in 1844 he turned it into her first book Journey of a Viennese Lady to the Holy Land which became a bestseller This bankrolled her next adventure to Iceland in 1845 The country had a reputation as both impossibly remote and a land of dramatic natural wonders including volcanoes and geysers Her adventures led to her second book in 1846 titled Journey to the Scandinavian North and the Island of Iceland ISSUE 04 FEATURE announced in the newspapers The Singapore Free Press must have assumed that the Austrian lady who disembarked with two other passengers in first class also travelled in the same class Respectable people didn t travel any other way and so they reported the arrival of Mrs Pfeiffer from Hong Kong 2 However Pfeiffer had very little money and had actually travelled second class even though the men at the ticketing office in Hong Kong commented that respectable people did not travel in steerage Upon her arrival in Singapore Pfeiffer made her way to the office of German shipping and trading agent Behn Meyer Co which had been established by Theodor August Behn and Valentin Lorenz Meyer in 1840 She had brought letters of introduction with her Behn s wife Caroline was the first German lady Pfeiffer had met since Brazil and the two immediately hit it off In fact Frau Behn would not hear of my lodging in a hotel I was immediately installed as a member of her own amiable family in their comfortable bungalow on Mount Sophia not far from Government hill 3 First Visit to Singapore 1847 Not long after her Nordic adventure Pfeiffer set off on her greatest voyage yet a circumnavigation of the entire globe She would be the first woman ever to do so alone In 1846 Pfeiffer boarded a sailing ship to Brazil During a forest excursion she and a male companion were attacked by a robber with a large knife that left both of them injured She continued on her journey to Chile and then Tahiti before arriving in China in 1847 where her appearance as an unaccompanied European woman on the streets nearly caused riots In September 1847 she boarded the monthly P O steamer from Hong Kong to Singapore The 10 day trip was not a happy one She wrote I have made many voyages on board steam ships and always paid second fare never did I pay so high a price for such wretched and detestable treatment In all my life I was never so cheated 1 The names of arriving and departing first class P O passengers were 21

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BIBLIOASIA JAN MAR 2020 Apart from the incessant heat and inescapable humidity Pfeiffer found life very pleasant in Singapore There was very little crime and the infrastructure was good Pfeiffer wrote the whole island offers the most enchanting sight the luxuriant verdancy the neat houses of the Europeans in the midst of beautiful gardens the plantations of the most precious spices the elegant areca and feathered palms with their slim stems shooting up to a height of a hundred feet and spreading out into the thick feather like tuft of fresh green by which they are distinguished from every other kind of palms and lastly the jungle in the background compose a most beautiful landscape The whole island is intersected with excellent roads of which those skirting the sea shore are the most frequented and where handsome carriages and horses from New Holland and even from England are to be seen 4 Paddling up the Kallang River During her time in Singapore Herr Behn and Herr Meyer took Pfeiffer on a hunting excursion where they hoped rather optimistically to bag a tiger or at least a wild boar They first paddled up the narrow Kallang River It was here that Pfeiffer encountered the vibrant exuberance of a tropical Southeast Asian forest The natural beauty of the scene was so great however that these occasional obstructions so far from diminishing actually heightened the charm of the whole The forest 22 was full of the most luxuriant underwood creepers palms and fern plants the latter in many instances sixteen feet high proved a no less effectual screen against the burning rays of the sun than did the palms and other trees 5 No tigers or wild boars were spotted but they did encounter a large green snake in a tree In her diary Pfeiffer melodramatically described the shooting of this snake as a dangerous battle against a fork tongued devil After the snake was killed one of their Malay assistants dragged it out of the tree with an impromptu noose made from grass and after skinning the reptile gave it to some Chinese plantation workers nearby Later that afternoon returning to the same spot where they had killed the snake Pfeiffer could not resist checking to see if the plantation workers were eating the reptile She rushed up to one of their houses to find out but sensed that the men wished to hide their repast I entered very quickly and gave them some money to be allowed to taste it I found the flesh particularly tender and delicate even more tender than that of a chicken 6 The same day Pfeiffer also paid a visit to a sugar refining establishment situated upon the banks of the Kallang river She described the operation The cane is first passed under metal cylinders which press out all the juice this runs into large cauldrons in which it is boiled and then allowed to cool It is afterwards placed in earthen jars where it becomes completely dry 7 Customs of the Chinese in Singapore On another day Pfeiffer observed the funeral procession of a wealthy Chinese merchant She joined the long line of mourners who seemed to her strangely to be in high spirits and observed everything about the funeral carefully She would write a detailed account of the rituals all of which were very new and mysterious to her She noted The friends and attendants who followed the coffin in small groups without order or regularity had all got a white strip of cambric bound round their head their waist or their arm As soon as it was remarked that I had joined the procession a man who had a quantity of these strips came up and offered me one which I took and bound round my arm 8 She also noted how Chinese burial customs required public displays of deep grief which did not appear to be completely genuine On reaching the grave the relatives at first threw themselves on the ground and covering their faces howled horribly but finding the burial lasted rather long sat down in a circle all round and taking their little baskets of betel burnt mussel shells and arecanuts began chewing away with the greatest composure This is a scene that Ida Pfeiffer would have come across when she visited Singapore in the mid19th century It shows a gharry an enclosed carriage drawn by horses led by four Indian syces with torches hurrying home at dusk in the countryside Lithograph by Barth lemy Lauvergne Jean Louis Tirpenne and Adolphe Jean Baptiste Bayot 1837 Courtesy of National Museum of Singapore National Heritage Board

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VOL 15 Pfeiffer s stay also coincided with the Mid Autumn Festival which she called the lantern festival She recalled From all the houses at the corners of the roofs from high posts c were hung innumerable lanterns made of paper or gauze and most artistically ornamented with gods warriors and animals In the courts and gardens of the different houses or where there were no courts or gardens in the streets all kinds of refreshment and fruit were laid out with lights and flowers in the form of half pyramids on large tables 9 India and Onwards After a month in Singapore Pfeiffer was ready to press on Her next destination was India and grumbling to herself she bought another second class ticket for the P O steamer Braganza under Captain Potts which sailed on 8 October 1847 The Singapore Free Press was not fooled this time it did not list her name in the list of first class passengers Pfeiffer travelled to Calcutta and then made her way again alone across northern India where among other things she rode an elephant during a tiger hunt After India she headed to the Persian Gulf and reached Baghdad Then again against all good sense and advice Pfeiffer joined a Kurdish camel caravan and crossed the vast dessert to Mosul and then to Russia Along the way she was kidnapped by a Cossack and kept imprisoned overnight until her travel papers could be checked She finally reached Vienna via Greece and Italy in October 1848 On 16 November 1851 the Louisa Frederika dropped anchor in the bustling harbour of Singapore Again as with her first visit in 1847 Pfeiffer was warmly welcomed by the Behn family Pfeiffer s reputation now preceded her and The Singapore Free Press announced the arrival of the undaunted and adventurous traveller whose remarkable courage and perseverance were now near legendary 10 Shortly before Pfeiffer s arrival a small cottage had been built in the forest far from the town It was to be used as a holiday retreat by several families As it happened to be unoccupied Theodor Behn knew that he could give Pfeiffer no greater pleasure than passing a few days in the midst of the jungle and enjoying to her heart s content the scenery and the amusement of searching for insects 11 Herr Behn sent her a boat to visit nearby islets and five Malays to help ISSUE 04 FEATURE her The men came every morning and asked if she wanted the boat If she didn t they would join in her rambles through the jungle hunting insects and protecting her from tigers T hese animals have of late increased tremendously she was told And the beasts do not hesitate to break into the plantations and carry off the labourers in broad daylight In the year 1851 it is stated that no less than the almost incredible number of four hundred persons were destroyed by them 12 But even these harrowing stories could not deter her from finding the greatest delight in roaming from morning till evening in these most beautiful woods 13 Pfeiffer s Malay companions were armed with muskets and long knives We saw traces of tigers every day we found the marks of their claws imprinted in the sand or soft earth and one Second Visit to Singapore 1851 Three years later in March 1851 Pfeiffer set off again for another circumnavigation She first sailed to London and from there to Cape Town where she hoped to travel into the interior of Africa However once there she found that it was impossibly expensive Fortunately a German brig was then lying in harbour bound for Singapore and there she well knew one may find ships to all the regions of the earth Here her special status as a celebrity lady traveller and writer got her a discount she would only be charged for her board Ida Pfeiffer on a tiger hunt in India Image reproduced from Pfeiffer I 1885 Voyage autour du monde de Mme Ida Pfeiffer Translated from the English by E Delauney Rouen 23

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BIBLIOASIA JAN MAR 2020 day at noon one of these unwelcome guests came quite near to our cottage and fetched himself a dog which he devoured quite at his leisure only a few hundred steps off 14 Although Pfeiffer wrote in her book that 400 people a year were killed by tigers in Singapore she was in fact repeating a widespread myth that virtually every visitor in those years was told The British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace would repeat the same dramatic story in his book The Malay Archipelago published in 1869 In fact the death toll from tiger attacks was more like 20 per year 15 Collecting Specimens While tigers were a concern the richness and diversity of the forest made it far too enticing for Pfeiffer to cower indoors She wrote I was busy with the beautiful objects that presented themselves to my observation at every step Here merry little monkeys were springing from bough to bough there brightly The blue tailed bee eater is a common sight in Singapore This painting of the bee eater in a candlenut tree is one of 477 watercolours in the William Farquhar Collection of Natural History Drawings at the National Museum of Singapore Gift of Mr G K Goh Courtesy of the National Museum of Singapore National Heritage Board plumed birds flew suddenly out plants that seemed to have their roots in the trunks of the trees twined their flowers and blossoms among the branches or peeped out from the thick foliage and then again the trees themselves excited my admiration by their size their height and their wonderful forms Never shall I forget the happy days I passed in that Singapore jungle 16 On 30 November 1851 Pfeiffer wrote to Vinzenz Kollar her museum contact in Vienna The insect collecting was not as productive as she had hoped Nevertheless she was sending back another cache of specimens Oh my dear Herr Kollar Pfeiffer wrote you cannot believe how difficult it is to send collections when funds are so extremely limited as with me She then asked Kollar to sell the specimens not needed for the museum s collection and to turn them into money because to her every small profit is of great value 17 Unfortunately Pfeiffer had not brought enough alcohol to preserve the many specimens that could not be dried and preserved All of her larger specimens rotted almost immediately in the hot and humid tropical weather She did manage to collect a new species of mole cricket Gryllotalpa fulvipes and for almost a century hers was the only specimen ever found 18 She was however more successful in drying seaweed and preserving fish the latter earning her a handsome 25 from the British Museum according to the naturalist Alfred Wallace He later wrote to Samuel Stevens their shared London agent from Singapore saying that he too procured fish in the market but wondered How did Madame Pfeiffer preserve hers 19 Pulau Ubin During her time in Singapore Pfeiffer also visited Pulau Ubin which she described as being off Shangae Changi She found it so interesting that she advised her readers not to neglect visiting this island it has a natural curiosity to show which no geologist I think has been able satisfactorily to explain The masses of rock on the sea shore namely instead of being smoothed and rounded as they usually are when constantly washed over by the tides are angular sharp edged 24 A Dayak head Image reproduced from Marryat F S 1848 Borneo and the Indian Archipelago With drawings of costume and scenery London Longman Brown Green and Longmans and split into various compartments The clefts are from a foot to a foot and a half deep and the edges stand one or two feet apart 20 Pfeiffer also noted that a magnificent lighthouse had been built from the granite quarries of Ubin 21 This was the Horsburgh Lighthouse on Pedra Branca Living with Head hunters On 2 December 1851 Pfeiffer departed for Sarawak Her hosts the representatives of the absent James Brooke the White Rajah of Sarawak 22 secretly thought this middle aged lady traveller was rather ridiculous When Wallace later visited Sarawak in 1854 he was told that she resembled the fictitious Mrs Harris in the satirical magazine Punch This was not a very flattering image as Mrs Harris was an ageing opinionated gossipy bossy and clearly ridiculous busybody While in Sarawak Pfeiffer travelled through the territory of the Dayak headhunters an unprecedented journey for a European She stayed in a succession of Dayak longhouses sometimes with freshly decapitated human heads drying over a fire near where she slept Of one encounter with these heads she wrote They were blackened by smoke the flesh only half dried the skin unconsumed lips and ears shrivelled

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VOL 15 together the former standing wide apart so as to display the teeth in all their hideousness The heads were still covered with hair and one had even the eyes open though drawn far back into their sockets 23 Pfeiffer s response to this was interesting though She wrote I shuddered but could not help asking myself whether after all we Europeans are not really just as bad or worse than these despised savages Is not every page of our history filled with horrid deeds of treachery and murder 24 Pfeiffer subsequently made her way through the very heart of Borneo to the Dutch port of Pontianak in the south When she arrived the Dutch officials were utterly dumfounded that she had crossed the mountains from Sarawak The Athenaeum magazine called it one of the most extraordinary journeys made by a European in Borneo 25 Close Encounters with Cannibals Pfeiffer later made her way through Sumatra where she almost came to an untimely end Again she insisted on visiting the remotest and wildest places to boldly go where no European had gone before Her goal was to reach an inland lake Lake Toba reportedly deep in the territory of the infamous cannibals the Batak people No European had ever seen Lake Toba She pushed on into Batak territory venturing further than any European had ever reached each day negotiating permission to enter the territory of the next village Eventually Pfeiffer s presence could no longer be tolerated One day she was encircled by 80 armed men shouting and gesticulating violently Despite the fact that she could not understand a word of their language there was no mistaking that they meant business They pointed with their ISSUE 04 FEATURE knives to my throat and gnashed their teeth at my arm moving their jaws then as if they already had them full of my flesh 26 Pfeiffer however had memorised a little speech for just such an occasion Standing up and looking straight in the eye of the chief closest to her she clapped him familiarly on the shoulder and said in a half Malay and half Batak phrase Right Ida Pfeiffer calms the Batak in Sumatra in one encounter Image reproduced from St kl H 1920 Die Weltfahrten der sterreichischen Reisenden Ida Pfeiffer Erz hlt von Helene St kl Mit einem Bildnis der Weltreisenden und Bildern von Fritz Gareis Vienna sterr Schulb cherverlag Below Ida Pfeiffer crossing Dayak bamboo bridge in Sarawak with a butterfly net in hand Image reproduced from Pfeiffer I 1856 Meine zweite Weltreise vol II Vienna Gerold 25

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BIBLIOASIA JAN MAR 2020 THE WRITING OF WANDERLUST John van Wyhe talks about the research process behind his book on Ida Pfeiffer and his assessment of her as a traveller and collector You re known as an expert on Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace How did you learn about Ida Pfeiffer and why did she intrigue you I came across her while doing research for my 2013 book on Alfred Russel Wallace I wanted to read about as many travellers to Singapore and Southeast Asia in those years as possible in order to enrich the story I could tell Pfeiffer was one such traveller Her writing was excellent and her adventures unbelievable I could not resist reading more and more about her What was the research process like I spent four to five years researching this book I bought all of her books and made extensive use of resources such as Google Books and online historical newspaper collections From these and other sources I discovered many descriptions of her that had not been found before Plus I read all of the German language articles and books that have been written about her Did you manage to use any resources from the National Library I consulted the Singapore newspapers archives in the NewspaperSG portal This is an amazing treasure trove of materials on the history of 19th century Singapore Ida Pfeiffer is a remarkable person How did she manage to see so much of the world and to do so as a woman travelling alone Pfeiffer never gave up no matter how much hardship she had to endure In addition she was a woman doing what no woman had ever done before so she received a lot of help and sympathy that a man would not have received in similar circumstances She often received free tickets on ships travelling great distances and hotel keepers would not charge her for a stay because they were so honoured to meet this famous traveller As a traveller and a collector how would you compare her to Wallace Pfeiffer made many journeys that were far more adventurous or reckless than Wallace s But as a self taught collector she was nowhere near his level of scientific knowledge Wallace however only collected a very narrow spectrum of the natural world almost nothing but insects birds and mammals Pfeiffer collected these as well NOTES 1 Pfeiffer I 1852 A woman s journey round the world From Vienna to Brazil Chili Tahiti China Hindostan Persia and Asia Minor p 118 unabridged translation London Illustrated London Library Not available in NLB holdings 2 Page 3 miscellaneous column 1 1847 September 9 The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser p 3 Retrieved from NewspaperSG 3 Pfeiffer 1852 p 118 4 Pfeiffer 1852 p 120 5 Pfeiffer 1852 p 122 6 Pfeiffer 1852 p 124 7 Pfeiffer 1852 p 123 26 as plants minerals fungi seaweed crustaceans fish and ethnographic artefacts of many kinds You ve obviously spent a lot of time thinking about Pfeiffer What do you find most striking about her and what do you think were her weak points She was a fascinating human being and her exploits were amazing She was a woman of her time though and as a historian one cannot just praise things that agree with our modern values and condemn things that don t I feel that what she lacked most was preparatory research She did almost no research about the places she was going to visit She could have understood much more about the places she visited if she had For example when she travelled in China she was amazed to see people eating with chopsticks which she had never heard of This was astonishingly ignorant Any basic book on China would have told her about such things She was also very stubborn She never followed the advice of local experts no matter how dangerous they said a part of her journey would be She would just go ahead anyway This includes her final destination Madagascar which ultimately cost her her life Finally you ve written extensively about Darwin and Wallace and now Pfeiffer Who s next on your list John van Wyhe at Lake Toba following in Ida Pfeiffer s footsteps I have returned to my primary area of research on Darwin and Wallace and I m about to submit another book on Darwin which has been 10 years in the making 8 Pfeiffer 1852 p 125 9 Pfeiffer 1852 p 127 10 The Free Press 1851 November 21 The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser p 2 Retrieved from NewspaperSG 11 Pfeiffer I 1855 A lady s second journey round the world From London to the Cape of Good Hope Borneo Java Sumatra Celebes Ceram the Moluccas etc California Panama Peru Ecuador and the United States vol I p 50 London Longman Brown Green and Longmans Not available in NLB holdings 12 Pfeiffer 1855 vol I p 51 13 Pfeiffer 1855 vol I p 51 14 Pfeiffer 1855 vol I p 52 15 Wallace A R 1869 The Malay Archipelago The land of the orang utan and the bird of paradise A narrative of travel with studies of man and nature vol II p 37 London Macmillan Co Retrieved from Wallace Online Also see van Wyhe J Ed 2014 The annotated Malay Archipelago by Alfred Russel Wallace p 86 Singapore NUS Press Call no RSING 959 8 ANN van Wyhe J 2013 Dispelling the darkness Voyage in the Malay Archipelago and the discovery of evolution by Wallace and Darwin pp 83 86 Singapore World Scientific Publishing Call no R 576 82092 VAN 16 Pfeiffer 1855 vol I p 51 17 Quoted in Riedl Dorn C 2001 Ida Pfeiffer pp 265 269 In W Seipel Ed Die Entdeckung der

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VOL 15 ISSUE 04 FEATURE Far left Ida Pfeiffer playing the piano at the royal court in Madagascar Image reproduced from Anon 1880 December 5 Mme Ida Pfeiffer Journal des voyages et des aventures de terre et de mer no 178 Lef t T he Diademed sif aka Propithecus diadema discovered by Ida Pfeiffer in Madagascar Image reproduced from Grandidier A 1875 Histoire physique naturelle et politique de Madagascar vol 9 part 4 atlas Paris Nationale Schulb cherverlag Don t eat me I am an old woman so my flesh is very tough 27 The tension was dispelled and laughing the armed men dispersed Unfortunately Pfeiffer never made it to Lake Toba as she was eventually forced to turn back Her journey continued to the Spice Islands of Maluku where she trekked all the way across the mountainous island of Seram to visit the Alfur people who were also said to be head hunters From Batavia her fame gained her the offer of a free passage across the Pacific to California From California Pfeiffer visited Peru and Ecuador Unable to swim she almost drowned when she fell off a boat in Ecuador Travelling across Panama she landed at New Orleans where she was outraged by the slave trade Eventually she toured New York and Boston before returning home via London in 1855 She had circled the globe alone for a second time Pfeiffer s next and last journey in 1856 was to a land almost completely unknown to Europeans the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar To reach it she had to travel via South Africa and Mauritius When Pfeiffer arrived in Madagascar she became inadvertently involved in an attempted coup against the queen by a French businessman and she and the conspirators were banished from the island Tragically on her way to the coast under armed guard Pfeiffer contracted the infamous Madagascar fever The queen had ordered them to be taken on a long and circuitous route through swampy terrain rather than the direct eight day walk back to the port Fortunately Pfeiffer eventually made it safely to Mauritius to convalesce Disappointed that she had collected so few specimens on this trip Pfeiffer still hoped to travel further but it was not to be the fever kept returning There was only one journey left in her to return home Emaciated and weak she finally reached Vienna in mid September 1858 A few weeks later she succumbed to her illness in the night of 28 October She was only 61 By the time she died Pfeiffer had become one of the most famous women in the world She had seen more of the world than any other woman before her But wanderlust at last had killed her Welt Die Welt der Entdeckungen sterreichische Forscher Sammler Abenteurer Vienna Skira Not available in NLB holdings 18 NParks Flora Fauna web 2019 Gryllotalpa fulvipes Saussure 1877 Retrieved from Flora Fauna Web 19 Wallace to Samuel Stevens 12 May 1856 See van Wyhe J Rookmaaker K Eds 2013 Alfred Russel Wallace Letters from the Malay Archipelago p 80 Oxford Oxford University Press Call no RSEA 508 092 WAL 20 Pfeiffer I 1856 A lady s second journey round the world From London to the Cape of Good Hope Borneo Java Sumatra Celebes Ceram the Moluccas etc California Panama Peru Ecuador and the United States p 53 New York Harper Brothers Not available in NLB holdings 21 Pfeiffer 1855 vol I p 49 22 The White Rajahs were a dynastic monarchy of the British Brooke family who ruled Sarawak from 1841 to 1946 The first White Rajah was James Brooke who ruled until his death in 1868 As a reward for helping the Sultan of Brunei suppress insurgency among the indigenous peoples Brooke was made Rajah of Sarawak in 1841 Final Journey Madagascar 1856 58 John van Wyhe s Wanderlust The Amazing Ida Pfeiffer the First Female Tourist 2019 retails at major bookshops and is also available for reference at the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library and for loan at selected public libraries Call nos RSING 910 41 VAN and SING 910 41 VAN The 1888 French edition of Ida Pfeiffer s second book Voyage autour du monde de Mme Ida Pfeiffer Voyage Around the World by Mme Ida Pfeiffer translated by E Delauney can be viewed at the On Paper Singapore Before 1867 exhibition held at level 10 of the National Library Building 23 Pfeiffer 1855 vol 1 p 84 24 Pfeiffer 1856 p 60 25 Anon 1861 August 3 Review of Ida Pfeiffer s last travels The London Review vol 3 p 153 26 Anon 1861 p 153 27 Pfeiffer s words are quoted by von Humboldt See M ller C Ed 2010 Alexander von Humboldt und das Preu ische K nigshaus Briefe aus den Jahren 1835 1857 p 255 Severus Verlag Not available in NLB holdings 27

Ida Pfeiffer in SEA