The Carpetbag Method

Ida Pfeiffer was a Viennese widow of forty-five with two grown sons and the wrong temperament for staying put. In 1842 she drew up her will, told her relatives she was going on a pilgrimage, and set off down the Danube with a single carpetbag. She did not come back for sixteen years, except to refit.

In Brazil a man came at her with a knife and a lasso. Her party had two parasols between them. She drew her clasp knife from her pocket "in the calm resolution to sell her life as dearly as possible," slashed his hand, and afterward bought a pistol.

In Borneo she slept beside a row of freshly decapitated heads drying over Dyak fires and noted in her diary that her hosts were, without exception, honest and good-natured.

In Sumatra, at fifty-five, she walked into Batak country and was surrounded by eighty armed men miming the chewing of her arm. She clapped the chief on the shoulder. In half-Batak, half-Malay she recited the line she had prepared for the occasion.

Don't eat me. I am an old woman. My flesh is very tough.

They laughed and let her through.