Task 5 Read the text below. For questions (22–26) choose the correct answer (A, B, C or D). Write your answers on the separate answer sheet.

Mary Kingsley’s Fur Hat

Famous for her eccentric behaviour and appearance, Mary Kingsley wore this moleskin hat during her travels in West Africa.

Often described as “an extremely amusing woman with a strange taste for odd forms of danger”, Mary Kingsley came to adventuring late in life, despite the fact that exploration seemed to be in her blood. The niece of a well-respected travel writer, she spent much of her life helping her father in his studies of African religions and laws, and nursing her mother; however, before her first trip to Africa in 1892, she had never travelled further than Paris.

All that changed when her mother and father died within a few weeks of each other when she was 30 years old. Finding herself alone for the first time, Kingsley made the radical decision to continue her father’s work in Africa. Within five years, she had travelled across large sections of equatorial West Africa. She became the first European to enter some parts of Gabon. She made extensive collections for the British Museum and climbed the region’s highest peak, 4,000-metre Mungo Mah Lobeh (literary “the Throne of Thunder”; now known as Mount Cameroon). On her return to the UK, she spent three years hosting lectures on her travels and wrote several books about her experiences.

At a time when it wasn’t appropriate for a woman to walk the streets of London unaccompanied, travelling in previously unexplored areas of West Africa entirely alone was decidedly eccentric behaviour. However, when accused of behaving improperly, Kingsley replied: “Neither the Royal Geographical Society’s list, nor any other, of articles necessary to travellers in tropical climates makes mention of husbands.”

She had equally firm views about what clothing was appropriate for travel, reportedly saying: “You have no right to go about Africa in things you would be ashamed to be seen in at home.” She gained a reputation for eccentric dress, and wore this moleskin hat, now stored within the archives of the Royal Geographical Society, throughout her travels in West Africa. She got that moleskin hat while staying with the cannibalistic Feng tribe in the Gabon.

Kingsley went on to work as a nurse in Cape Town during the Boer War, and it was here, in 1900, that she died of heart failure. Her body was taken out to sea in a torpedo boat and she was given a military and naval funeral. Burial at sea was a unique honour for woman to receive at the time, and she was further honoured when the African Society was founded in her memory in 1901.

 

Mary Kingsley’s exploration of Africa began when she __________.