SNAKE IN BED

Opotiki News, Volume II, Issue 133, 13 January 1939, Page 4

SNAKE IN BED

..A UTTfORESS’S EXPERIENCE TREKKED ACROSS AFRICA Best known by her,..pen-name of Dorothy Una Kateliffe, ' .Mrs. AlcGrigor Phillips, authoress and traveller, and a member of the Royal Geographical and Royal Astronomical Societies, arrived at- Wellington by the Rangitano from London. She was accompanied by her husband. Airs. Phillips has trekked' across the African veldt, photographed lion nild elephant in their natural habitations and awakened in a camp in the tropical jungle to find a deadly serpent in bed beside her. She has navigated her own yacht, across the stormy waters of the North Atlantic. She said that it was her intention to spend four months in New Zealand, much of it camping in the back country. „ “it- wiil lie lovely to be ajile to sleep in the open air. without danger front wild beasts or reptiles,” she said. “‘You are lucky in New Zealand to have- nothing that bites or stings. It is- not nice to wake up with a . horrible, cold, poisonous mamba in, bed beside yon.” Asked if that. pened to her, she nodded assent. “But don’t say too much about that,” she said. ‘.‘l don’t want people to think of sucli creepy, horribly tilings.” She said that she-had travelled extensively in Kenya,f Uganda, Belgian Congo-, through tlffi deserts of North Africa, andl all up the River Nile. She had trekked with a caravan through South Africa, a- six months’ journey that few people had emulated.