Page 123

This is a meme and it came from Elspeth Thompson, who has mentioned me in her book, and has the same name as my cousin (but my cousin uses her other first name).

Pick the nearest book about a foreign place. Go to page 123. Count down five sentences and then type up the next three. Here are mine.

They, too, had been attacked by typhus fever and smallpox. I said farewell, and, mounting my horse, heard angry words behind me. Turning round I found that some of the lepers wanted to near to speak to me, and the Yakuts were driving them away in horror, fearful lest they might catch the disease.

Kate Marsden: On sledge and horseback to outcast Siberian lepers. In Mary Morris (ed): The Virago Book of Women Travellers. Virago Press 1996.

My colleagues gave me this book for my birthday after I returned from a 10-week holiday in Africa. I have always loved travel books (particularly historical ones) and in the pages I ran into some old friends (Christina Dodwell, Dervla Murphy, Mary Kingsley) as well as some new companions (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu who created a scandal in Turkey, and Eliza Farnham, who was 'determined to decrease misery in the world').

I tag: Ellouisestory