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A British Lady Across Patagonia: Six month's wanderings over unexplored and untrodden ground
“Patagonia! Who would ever think of going to such a place?” Florence Dixie
was asked, and her answer “Precisely because it was an outlandish place and so far away, I chose it.”
Lady Florence Caroline Dixie was no ordinary woman. It was her refusal to accept the life that the Victorian society had assigned to her that convinced her to seek adventure in an outlandish part of the world. When she read George Musters’ book “At Home with the Patagonians” she understood that that was exactly the place that she wanted to know. She convinced her husband and two of her brothers to escort her and so the small group left Great Britain in 1879 to sail towards the end of the world. Southern Patagonia was thought to be a dangerous land inhabited by tribes of giants,
strange animals, limitless plains, snowy mountains and full of secrets to be discovered. This small group was leaded by a young woman, and so… a feminist was born.
Her book is about an untamed land and an untamed woman. Her description of this wild region also describes her desire to prove that women also count.
Florence Dixie was a feminist when the word “feminism” had not yet been invented.
was asked, and her answer “Precisely because it was an outlandish place and so far away, I chose it.”
Lady Florence Caroline Dixie was no ordinary woman. It was her refusal to accept the life that the Victorian society had assigned to her that convinced her to seek adventure in an outlandish part of the world. When she read George Musters’ book “At Home with the Patagonians” she understood that that was exactly the place that she wanted to know. She convinced her husband and two of her brothers to escort her and so the small group left Great Britain in 1879 to sail towards the end of the world. Southern Patagonia was thought to be a dangerous land inhabited by tribes of giants,
strange animals, limitless plains, snowy mountains and full of secrets to be discovered. This small group was leaded by a young woman, and so… a feminist was born.
Her book is about an untamed land and an untamed woman. Her description of this wild region also describes her desire to prove that women also count.
Florence Dixie was a feminist when the word “feminism” had not yet been invented.
148 pages, Paperback
Published April 18, 2023
2 people are currently reading
11 people want to read
About the author
Florence Caroline Dixie
22 books5 followersLady Florence Caroline Dixie, née Douglas, was a Scottish writer, war correspondent, and feminist. Her account of travelling Across Patagonia, her children's books The Young Castaways and Aniwee: or, The Warrior Queen, and her feminist utopia Gloriana: or, The Revolution of 1900 all deal with feminist themes related to girls, women, and their positions in society. She was also a supporter of Irish and Scottish Home Rule.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 15, 2025
I bought this book at the gift store at the Ushuaia Prison in Argentina. It's not about Argentine's Patagonia but the travels of an English noblewoman to Chile's Patagonia and what is now Torres del Paine.
In December 1878 Lady Florence Dixie left England along with her husband, her brother, a few other close male friends, and one servant. They sailed to Sandy Point (what is now Puenta Arenas) on the Magellan Strait. After hiring guides and acquiring dogs, horses, and supplies, they started their "march" or trek across the southern pampas of Chile up to the Cordilleras (the southern Andes). Their finally destination was the torres del paine, or what she called Cleopatra's Needles. It is believed that she and her entourage were the first tourists to view the famed triple towers (torres). The also encountered Indians, mosquitos, pelting rain and winds, and an earthquake. I later looked up this earthquake and it measured an estimate of 7 magnitude.
At first I was taken aback by Lady Florence Dixie's elitism and racism. She mentioned that they took only 1 English servant with them because they "inevitably prove a nuisance and hindrance in expeditions of the kind, when a great deal of roughing it has to be gone through, as they have an unpleasant knack of falling ill at inopportune moments." In addition, while they had a stopover in Brazil, she compared Negros to monkeys. She also didn't think too highly of the Indians either.
I enjoyed reading about her adventures on this expedition from runaway horses to descriptions of the views. There is a lot of hunting because they had to kill their food. In the publishers note, it states that in later years, she abhorred the sport of hunting of wild animals and became one of the first vegetarians in the UK.
I would have preferred that the book included a map of her travels. I tried to follow in Google Maps but the names didn't always match. Also, one of their first stops after leaving Sandy Point (Puenta Arenas) is Cabo Negro. My map showed this as being on the other side of the Magellan Straits and I doubt that they crossed the straits on horses.
Enjoyable.
In December 1878 Lady Florence Dixie left England along with her husband, her brother, a few other close male friends, and one servant. They sailed to Sandy Point (what is now Puenta Arenas) on the Magellan Strait. After hiring guides and acquiring dogs, horses, and supplies, they started their "march" or trek across the southern pampas of Chile up to the Cordilleras (the southern Andes). Their finally destination was the torres del paine, or what she called Cleopatra's Needles. It is believed that she and her entourage were the first tourists to view the famed triple towers (torres). The also encountered Indians, mosquitos, pelting rain and winds, and an earthquake. I later looked up this earthquake and it measured an estimate of 7 magnitude.
At first I was taken aback by Lady Florence Dixie's elitism and racism. She mentioned that they took only 1 English servant with them because they "inevitably prove a nuisance and hindrance in expeditions of the kind, when a great deal of roughing it has to be gone through, as they have an unpleasant knack of falling ill at inopportune moments." In addition, while they had a stopover in Brazil, she compared Negros to monkeys. She also didn't think too highly of the Indians either.
I enjoyed reading about her adventures on this expedition from runaway horses to descriptions of the views. There is a lot of hunting because they had to kill their food. In the publishers note, it states that in later years, she abhorred the sport of hunting of wild animals and became one of the first vegetarians in the UK.
I would have preferred that the book included a map of her travels. I tried to follow in Google Maps but the names didn't always match. Also, one of their first stops after leaving Sandy Point (Puenta Arenas) is Cabo Negro. My map showed this as being on the other side of the Magellan Straits and I doubt that they crossed the straits on horses.
Enjoyable.
Displaying 1 of 1 review