WOMEN EXPLORERS TO VISIT LEVIN

Chronicle (Levin), 30 August 1946, Page 4

WOMEN EXPLORERS TO VISIT LEVIN

TRAVELS IN GOBI DESERT Due to visit Levin on Septembej 9 to attend the annual meeting of the British and Foreign Bible Society are three amazing women who, although. all elderly, have been travelling alone for the past 25 years in one of the most indccessible parts of the globe. They are Miss Mildred Cable, a Londoner, and the Misses Francesca and Eva French, of Ireland, who are at present in Australia after a caravan tour of the Gobi Desert in Inner Mongolia. Their story is an extraordinary one. .They were all intensely religious girls who studied hard in London, and each in turn welcomed a.chance to get tq China on inland mission work. In China the two sisters joined forces with Miss Cable and, with a working knowledge of Chinese and Turki, set out on a 15 years' exploration of the Gobi Desert, being the first white women seen there. By day their caravan of 'two rickety carts and a guide on horseback crawled along the ancient trade routes that linked Asia tenuously together in the days before Rome. By night they slept in tents, or squatted around the crude mud huts of an oasis village and told the eager natives the story of Christ. They carried simple provisions to last the fortnight it often took them to travel between villages or water holes. Of adventure the three intrepid travellers have had plenty. Once they were halted in the middle of the desert by brigands, taken to an oasis and kept under guard there for eight months. They escaped eventually to the open safety of the great desert. For their work as explorers in the Gobi Desert, the three missionaries have been awarded the Lawrence of Arabia Medal by the Royal Geographical Society and the Livingstone Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. Their exploring days are not yet over, however. Forced * oiit of Arabia by the war, they are on a lecture tour for the British and Foreign Bible Society and after that they intend to start exploring the heart of India or Africa.