One of the most striking of all the numberless enterprises of one kind
and another which have been brought to naught by the war was the plan
of a young, rich and beautiful Russian countess to unveil the secrets
of one of the earth's last unexplored and admittedly most dangerous
regions--the great Desert of Arabia, called by the tribesmen who live
on its fringe "The Dwelling of the Void," a region that is three times
as large as Great Britain, and upon which no European foot is yet known
to have been set.
The young widow of a wealthy Russian nobleman, whose estates were in
the neighborhood of Moscow, Countess Molitor's life had been full of
thrilling experiences even before she made her plan to go, without any
European companion, and conquer the unexplored Ruba-el-Khali.
Previously she had wandered, with only a small escort of native
bearers, through savage Southwest Africa, and had been captured there
and held for ransom by native torturers. She had adventured, too,
among the savage Tuaregs of the Saharan Desert, known as the most
bloodthirsty tribe on earth; had crossed the Alps in a balloon, made
between sixty and seventy flights in aero and water planes, been
attacked and kept prisoner by Apaches in Paris, had nursed in the
hospitals of Europe and taken part in rescue work in the slums of
London.
Of the remarkable experiences that have befallen the plucky countess
since then I am now able to tell as the result of having, to begin
with, received several lengthy letters from her at Cartagena, in Spain,
where she has been living for some months, and, more recently, having
been privileged to read the mightily interesting and vividly written
journal that she kept from the moment of her arrival at Port Said.
Had it not been for the war, it is extremely probable that the countess
would have accomplished her project, which would have pushed her into
the front rank of successful explorers. She carried out, it seems, her
original intention, a venturesome one, indeed, for a white woman, of
joining a Bedouin tribe and traveling with them, and had covered over
nine hundred miles of her journey when she was caught in the Turkish
mobilization and arrested, on suspicion of being a Russian spy, by
the Moslems, who, from the beginning had frowned on her project and
attempted to prevent it. Bitterly disappointed at being thus defeated
just when the chance of success seemed rosiest, the countess was
brought back as a prisoner to Damascus. There she had the narrowest
escape of being shot for supposed espionage, and it was only after
months of surveillance and affronts that she finally was permitted to
return to Europe.