Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 89, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1910 — NURSE IN WILDEST AFRICA. [ARTICLE]

NURSE IN WILDEST AFRICA.

Girl Who Began Service in Kimberly Thirty Yean Ago. Sister Bessie Smythe, the pioneer nurse of wildest Africa, will i-eturn to England some time this year, and it is supposed she will have a remarkable tale to tell of her wanderings, the New York Sun’s correspondent says. It is nearly thirty years since she began her career at Kimberly and was graduated in her profession. She was then a bright young Irish girl, keen, adventurous and hardy. Id 1898, when a severe smallpox epidemic broke out in the Transvaal,, it was she who took charge of the lazarette in Pretoria. She organized the wards and trained awkward Kaffirs as orderly boys. For four months she lived in that camp and saw the danger through. Then came the war. She was in the fighting line at Kimberly and Boshof, and later she was put in Charge of a hospital. When the war ended she took charge of the government hospital at Mombassa, and after this set off unarmed and only attended by occasional carriers picked up on the way, through northwest Rhodesia, across a corner of the Congo Free State and along the shores of Lake Tanganyika, till she came to the Victoria Nyanza, which she crossed In an Arab dhow. Everywhere she helped the savages and found them grateful and helpful in return. The year 1906 saw Sister Bessie on the Gold coast, which she left after the hospital closed for Liberia and San Thome, after which she found herself at the scene of the Cape colonial whale fisheries. Here she became counsellor and friend of the Norse fishermen. A whaling ship recentlylanded her at Capetown. A woman who saw Her on her arrival at that city describes her thus: “Khaki clad from head to foot, her whole demeanor speaks of readiness and service. A strong, sweet face, framed in soft gray hair, gazes at you with the most understanding eyes you could meet —gray, Irish eyes, which •winkle with sudden burner as readily as they moisten with pitiful tears.”