Across Patagonia Florence Dixie With illustrations from sketches by Julius Beerbohm engraved by Whymper and Pearson Lady Florence Caroline Dixie (n e Douglas; 25 May 1855 - 7 November 1905), was a Scottish traveller, war correspondent, writer and feminist. Her account of travelling Across Patagonia, her children’s books The Young Castaways and Aniwee, or, The Warrior Queen, and her feminist utopia Gloriana, or the Revolution of 1900 all deal with feminist themes related to girls, women, and their positions in society. In December 1878, two months after the birth of their second son, Edward, Dixie and her husband left their aristocratic life and children behind them in England and traveled to Patagonia. She was the only female in her traveling party. She set out accompanied by her brothers, Lord Queensberry and Lord James Douglas, her husband Sir Alexander Beaumont Churchill Dixie, and Julius Beerbohm. Beerbohm, a family friend, was hired as the group’s guide because of his previous experience in Patagonia. Dixie debated going to elsewhere, but choose Patagonia because few European men, and no European women, had ever set foot there. (Although reasonably accurate in terms of travelers’ accounts, this claim ignores Britain’s active economic involvement in the region.) Once in Patagonia, Dixie paints a picture of the landscape using techniques reminiscent of the Romantic tradition of William Wordsworth and others, using emotion and physical sensation to connect to the natural world. While she describes the land as ‘uninviting and feared territory’, Dixie’s actions demonstrate that survival in a wild land requires both strength and agency.
