Isabella Bird, who afterwards became famous as a traveller, was the daughter of a clergyman. She was born in 1831, and spent her childhood in a country village in Cheshire of which her father was vicar. She was a frail, delicate child, and as it was good for her to be as much in the open air as possible, her father used to put her on a cushion before him when he rode round his parish. As soon as she was old enough, she rode a horse of her own, going with her father wherever he went. He made her notice everything they passed by the way, and questioned her about all that she saw. In after years she looked back to these early days as having taught her to be perfectly at home on a horse, to observe accurately everything that she saw, to love the flowers and the plants and to know their names and uses, to measure distances with her eye, and to watch the signs of the seasons. She was educated by her mother, and said that no one could teach as her mother did, since she made everything so wonderfully interesting. By the time she was seven, Isabella was an eager reader of books of all kinds, even of serious history. When she was eleven, her father moved to a parish in Birmingham, and there she soon became a keen Sunday school teacher and worker in the parish; later, her father again had a country living in Huntingdonshire. Isabella was not strong, and the doctor recommended a sea-voyage; so when she was twenty-three, she made her first journey, going to Canada and America. She wrote such interesting letters home describing all that she saw that her father urged her to make a book out of them, and soon after she came home her first book, “The Englishwoman in America” appeared, and it was much praised.

It was a bitter grief to Isabella when her father died in 1858. She spoke of him as the mainspring and object of her life. Her mother now settled in Edinburgh, and Isabella paid frequent visits to the Highlands and the Hebrides, and interested herself much in the condition of the Highlanders, who were then very poor. She helped many to emigrate, and worked hard to provide outfits for them. She was often ill, but wrote a great deal whilst lying on her sofa; she brought out another book about America, and sent many articles to magazines. Writing was very easy to her. After some years in Edinburgh, Mrs. Bird died, a crushing sorrow to her two daughters. Isabella wrote: “She has been my one object for the eight years of her widowhood.” Isabella sought comfort in working for the poor people in Edinburgh and tried to do something to get rid of the miserable slums in that city. She wrote a book about them to rouse people to a sense of shame. Her hard work was often interrupted by distressing illness; she suffered a great deal from her spine, but even when ill, she managed to read and study. The doctors recommended a voyage for her health, and parting with much sorrow from her sister, she started in 1872 for New York and went on from there to New Zealand and then to the Sandwich Islands. She loved the sea and wrote that it was like living in a new world, it was so free, so fresh, so careless, so unfettered. The beauty of the Sandwich Islands fascinated her, and the book she wrote about her visit to them helped others to enjoy what she had seen.

She went next to America, determined to explore the Rocky Mountains, which were then much less known than they are now. Her journey amongst the mountains was made on horseback; her habit of riding since her childhood and her intimate knowledge of horses enabled her to spend with real enjoyment long days riding through the mountains, on steep and difficult paths, and sometimes in wild snowstorms. She rode astride like a man, in a dress which she had devised for herself, consisting of full Turkish trousers with frills reaching to her boots, over them a skirt which came down to her ankles, and a loose jacket. She stayed in log huts with settlers in the mountains, helping them with their work and much interested in watching the kind of life they led. The scenery was magnificent, and the fine air and the free open life suited her, and made her feel well and strong. She spent some time with some settlers in a high valley amongst the mountains, sleeping alone in a log hut. She used to ride out with the men to help them drive in the cattle which had strayed on the mountains, and managed so well that they called her a good cattle-man. Towards the end of October she started on a long ride through the mountains alone. She had luggage for some weeks, including a black silk dress packed behind her saddle, and felt very independent. The greater part of her journey was through a white world, for the mountains were covered with snow and the nights were intensely cold. The nights she passed generally in log huts with the settlers, who were always glad to show her hospitality. Some of the men were very wild and rough, but they always behaved well to her, and she came to trust and admire many of the men of the mountains and loved to hear their talk about the wonderful world of nature in which they lived. The newspapers wrote about the strange English woman and her lonely ride through the mountains, and often when she reached a new place, she found that the people had already heard of her.

One man she came across, who was known as Mountain Jim, was leading a very wild life, but had been a gentleman of good birth and education. Meeting her and riding about with her brought out all that was good in him. He gave up his evil habits of drinking, swearing, and fighting, and became a changed man. He was bitterly grieved at parting from her, but promised to keep straight, and his letters to her showed that he did. Unfortunately, not many months afterwards, he was shot by another man in a fit of passion.

Miss Bird got back to her sister in Edinburgh after nearly two years’ travelling, and set to work to make a book out of her letters home. She could never stay quiet for long and travelled about in England, Scotland, and Switzerland, and when in Edinburgh was busy with all kinds of work for others. Soon she began to dream of another long journey. This time it was Japan she wished to visit; she dreaded parting from her sister, but she was always better travelling than when at home, and hoped that another journey would still more improve her health. She started for Japan in 1878, when she was forty-seven years old, determined not to go to the well-known places but to the almost unknown interior of the country. She was told that the difficulties in the way of such a journey would be very great, and that no English lady had as yet travelled through the interior. When she reached Japan many tried to dissuade her from her plans, but she engaged a Japanese servant and made her preparations for her journey, in spite of feeling a little nervous. She was afraid of being afraid. But very soon she could laugh at her fears and misfortunes, though she had endless discomforts to put up with. Everywhere there were fleas and mosquitoes, and as strangers were seldom seen in the interior, she was tormented by the crowds who turned out to see her and allowed her no privacy. Still she found that the Japanese crowds were quiet and gentle and did not press rudely upon her. As she got further inland, the villages became horribly dirty, and the women were filthy and hardly clothed. Her servant was deeply grieved that she should see such things, and once sat on a stone with his face buried in his hands, he was so distressed.

Her journey was made fatiguing by bad horses, and by very bad weather. Rain fell in torrents, and she was glad to use one of the straw rain cloaks which the Japanese women wear. But she was not discouraged by the difficulties of her first journey, and determined to visit Yezo, the island north of Japan, where live a wild people known as the hairy Ainos. In order really to study the ways of these people, she spent three days and two nights in the hut of their chief, sleeping in a sort of bunk in the wall, with a mat hung in front of her. The men of the place used this hut as a club, and crowded in at night to sit round the fire piled up with logs. She wrote: “I never saw such a magnificent sight as that group of magnificent savages with the fitful firelight on their faces, and the row of savage women in the background.” They were very kind and courteous to her; she was treated as an honoured guest in every house she entered, and she returned their kindness by attending to the sick. It was with real regret that she left the friendly, gentle Ainos, after carefully studying their habits and manner of life. She returned to Tokio, the capital of Japan, and stayed two months with the British minister, studying Japanese ways and making excursions into the neighbourhood. From there she sailed to Hong-Kong and then to Canton and the Malay States, and then turned homewards, stopping at Cairo on the way, where she fell very ill. Her travels in the East had not suited her health, but they had filled her with new interests and taught her many things. Her books about her travels were better written after this, and attracted much admiration and interest. She was becoming a famous woman. But all the enjoyment of her success was spoilt to her by the serious illness of her beloved sister, who died the year after Miss Bird’s return.

Miss Bird was now alone in the world, but she had a devoted friend in Dr. Bishop, who had for some years attended her sister and was with her in her last illness. He had several times asked Miss Bird to marry him, but she had always said that her heart was given to her sister. Now in her loneliness, he repeated his request and she at last consented, and they were married in the spring after her sister’s death. She was fifty, ten years older than her husband. He promised that when the need of travel awoke in her, she should go to whatever end of the earth beckoned to her. He used to say that the only rival he had in her heart was the high tableland of Central Asia. As it turned out she never left him for long. He became ill soon after their marriage, and was almost a complete invalid till he died five years afterwards. Dr. Bishop was a man of noble character, and Mrs. Bishop was devoted to him and mourned him all her life. She was now altogether alone except for her friends, and there was no one to keep her from the long and dangerous journeys in wild countries which she loved. She, who was always ill when in civilised countries, often spending weeks on her sofa because of pains in her back, seemed to be able to endure anything when she was travelling and leading a wild, free life. One thing that helped her was that she was able to eat anything. Dr. Bishop said that she had the appetite of a tiger and the digestion of an ostrich. At first after her husband’s death, she busied herself with bringing out her books of travel and with caring for the poor people amongst whom her sister had worked. She also wished to learn nursing, and spent three months in London in the surgical wards of a hospital. Dr. Bishop had been much interested in medical missions, and she decided to found a mission hospital in his memory. It was nearly three years after his death when she started on her next long journey, going first to India and on to Kashmere, where she thought of founding her hospital.

In her early days Mrs. Bishop had felt no interest in missions, indeed she rather disliked them. She thought it a mistake to interfere with the ways and beliefs of other people, and on her travels used to try to avoid mission houses. Dr. Bishop’s influence had changed her opinion by first giving her an interest in medical missions; what she saw afterwards in Eastern countries turned her into a warm friend of all Christian missions. She made great friends with Dr. Neve, the medical missionary of the Church Missionary Society in Kashmere, and with him arranged for the building of the John Bishop Memorial Hospital at Islamabad. It was a great pleasure to her that Dr. Neve had been a student under her husband. When this was settled, she was glad to escape from the crowds of Anglo-Indians who haunted Kashmere, and whose hubbub she found intolerable, for a ride of twenty-eight days through the Himalayas to Lesser Thibet as far as Leh, travelling alone with native servants and camping out at night. When she got back to India, she found it possible to carry out a long cherished plan and make a journey into Persia. Before she started, she visited several mission stations, and founded another hospital in memory of her sister, called the Henrietta Bird Hospital, which also was under the care of an old pupil of her husband’s.

The journey through Persia began at Bagdad and lasted nearly a year. The first part lay through wild lonely mountains, where no English lady had ever been; here she had the companionship of an English officer, who was travelling for scientific purposes. It was an awful journey, and she would never have undertaken it had she known the hardships she would have to face—the long marches, the wretched food, the abominable accommodation, the brutal barbarism of the people. The weather was terrible: ceaseless rain, or deep snow in the high mountains. The nights had to be spent in cold, filthy caravanserais, as the rough inns of the East are called, mere shelters, which three or four hundred mules and their drivers often shared with Mrs. Bishop’s party. There was constant danger from robbers, and everywhere curious crowds surrounded her, allowing her no rest or peace; they used to feel and pull her hair, to finger all her things, and examine her clothes when she hung them up at night. They brought their sick in crowds to her to be healed. One evening, when she had got a mud hovel to herself and was suffering from a severe chill, lying down covered with blankets, she heard a noise, and looking up saw the room thronged with men, women, and children, covered with sores, and suffering from all kinds of diseases. She had to get up and listen for two hours to their tales of suffering, interpreted to her by her servant. It was painful indeed to be able to do but little for them. The next morning they were all there again. She could only give them ointments for their sores, lotions for their eyes, or some few simple medicines, and had to send most of them sadly away. The cold was so bitter and the storms so terrible in crossing the mountains that it was a wonder that Mrs. Bishop and her whole party did not perish. She felt that they would never have got through had it not been for the splendid Arab horses which carried them with unfailing spirit through all the difficult places.

Forty-six days brought them to Teheran, one of the chief cities of Persia, and here she rested in comfort for three weeks in the house of the English minister, and then they started for another and longer journey of exploration among the mountains. Again terrible hardships and dangers were endured. Every day after the fatigues of the journey, diseased and infirm people crowded her camp, and she did all she could to help them. One of the chiefs came to her one day for medicine, and as he lingered, watching her care for the people, he asked her why she took so much trouble for people unknown to her. She answered by telling him, through her interpreter, the story of Jesus Christ. When he had heard what she had to say, he said sadly, “He is the Hakim (doctor) for us, send us such a one as He was.”

These people are Mahometans, and seeing the little help and comfort their religion gave to them, and the miserable lives to which it condemned their women, made Mrs. Bishop still more keen about Christian missions. In the larger towns she often visited the houses of the chiefs, and went into the women’s quarters, where the many wives of the chief and his children lived shut up together. They were never allowed to go out, and spent their days in quarrelling, eating sweetmeats, and dressing and dyeing their hair. They asked her for love potions and charms, and wondered why she did not dye her hair, and for what purpose she could be travelling.

For the last part of her journey, Mrs. Bishop was quite alone with her servants, as the English officer had to go elsewhere. Her chief companion was the Arab horse on which she rode, which she called “Boy,” and which was as gentle and affectionate as a child. He often slept in her tent, and would come and rub his nose against her face to attract her attention. He carried her safely from Burjurid, in the centre of Persia, to Trebizond, on the shores of the Black Sea, a journey of four months. In dangers and hardships her courage never failed. She was robbed of most of her travelling necessaries, and had to do without them as she could not replace them; she had strange food, and often had to do without food at all; and yet she got safely through though she was a small, delicate woman, fifty-nine years of age. In all she had travelled 2500 miles since she started on her journey through Persia. Wherever there were mission stations, she enjoyed the hospitality of the missionaries, and she was much impressed by their self-denying work. The last part of her journey was through Armenia where she saw with much sympathy the courage and endurance of the Christian Armenians, poor, ignorant people, who clung to their ancient faith in spite of cruel persecution. They begged her to send them teachers, for their own priests were poor and ignorant because they could not afford to go away to study. One of the priests said to her, “Beseech for a teacher to come and sit among us and lighten our darkness.” England he thought could send teachers, for he said, “England is very rich.”

From Trebizond Mrs. Bishop travelled quickly back to England, and was soon very busy preparing a book with an account of her travels. But she found time to speak at many missionary meetings, so anxious was she to plead the cause of the poor people whom she had seen. Her pleasant voice and way of speaking and all the interesting things she had to tell made people eager to hear her, and she spoke also to gatherings of learned men. She was considered one of the greatest of missionary advocates, and an address, in which she pleaded for the poor secluded women in Eastern lands, was printed and sent all over the world. She spoke of the terrible sins of the non-Christian lands in the East and of the degradation of the women, and said she would give all she had to help them.

As usual when at home Mrs. Bishop was constantly ill, and only three years passed before she started on another journey. She longed for the East and wished to visit China and Japan. Whilst she was at home, she had taken lessons in photographing, that she might be able to take better photographs on her travels. She improved immensely, and after this her books were always illustrated by her own beautiful photographs. She first went to Korea, the strange country which lies between China and Japan, and which both those countries desired to possess. At first she did not like Korea nor its people, but she soon grew to love them, and especially enjoyed the beautiful, sunny climate. She wrote that she felt this journey to be more absorbing in its interest than any she had yet had. During the three years that she now spent in the East, she paid three visits to Korea, in order that she might thoroughly study the land and its people. She had a great many hardships to go through in some parts of her journey. Once after riding for eleven hours under a hot sun, she found the only night’s lodging she could get was in a filthy fishing village full of the vilest smells. Her room in the inn was such an awful black hole, full of vermin and rats, that when her Chinese servant left her for the night he said, “I hope you won’t die.” In other places she was annoyed by the crowds who came to stare at her, never having seen an Englishwoman before. Once her servant had his arm broken by a fall from his horse, and she was obliged to set it herself. He was so touched with her care of him that, in spite of his pain, he somehow managed to do his work just as usual, and said, “The foreign woman looked so sorry, and touched my arm as if I had been one of her own people. I shall do my best.”

Between her visits to Korea, Mrs. Bishop went back to Japan, and also travelled in China. Her first object was to visit the mission stations in China, and she was much interested in all she saw, especially in the medical missions, and was full of admiration for the missionaries. On a second visit to China she made a long journey into the interior, going up first by boat on the river Yangtze for 300 miles, and then alone 300 more miles into the country in a carrying chair borne by Chinese, the only way of travelling. Far in the interior, she visited the missionaries of the China Inland Mission, and there she gave money to found a hospital to be called the Henrietta Bird Hospital after her sister. Wherever she went she photographed, undisturbed by the curious crowds who gathered round her. Once as she was being carried along, the people got so angry because she would not stop her chair to let them have a good look at her, that they threw stones at her, and one hit her a sharp blow on the head from which she suffered for a long time.

In 1897, after an absence of over three years, Mrs. Bishop came back to London. She had accomplished these long and tiring journeys at the age of sixty-six. She brought back with her a beautiful collection of photographs which she had taken, and materials for writing two books, one on Korea and one on her travels in China. She busied herself with writing her books, lecturing about her travels, and speaking at missionary meetings and doing all she could for the cause of missions. She tried to settle down in a house, and took first one in London and then one in the country, but never stayed anywhere long, and was as usual always ill as soon as she tried to live in a civilised country. So after a while she went off to Morocco, and there at the age of seventy she travelled through the wild parts of the country, riding astride on a superb horse and camping out at night. This was her last journey. After she got back to England she still lectured and spoke for missions, and studied photography. She began to plan another journey to China, but she fell ill in Edinburgh. For some months she was confined to bed, but still saw her friends, and was full of eager interest in everything that happened. She was not afraid to die, and waited peacefully for the end, saying that she was going home. She died in March 1904, at the age of seventy-one. Those who wish to know about her travels and the wonderful things she saw must read her many books, which are full of life and adventure and enable us to share her experiences and admire her pluck and energy.