The Victorian Traderess Who Battled Colonialism and Crocodiles in Africa

Explorer, trader, and anthropologist Mary Henrietta Kingsley was once saved from a grisly death by her proper and sturdy Victorian skirt. Kingsley, then 31, had been attempting a shortcut through the forest near the West African village of Efoua, when she suddenly found herself at the bottom of a game pit lined with spikes. “It is at these times you realize the blessing of a good thick skirt,” Kingsley states in "Travels in West Africa" (1897).
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