Nellie Bly

She sailed on the Augusta Victoria on the morning of 14 November. At the bottom of her hand-bag was special passport number 247, signed by Secretary of State James G. Blaine; she refused to carry a revolver.

She landed from a tender at night in fog. When she told the customs inspector that her bag was too full to lock, he chalked it and let her through.

She collected cables at the World's London office and had a passport written out at the American Legation. She bought tickets covering about half her journey at the P. & O. office and ate breakfast at Charing Cross station before her train left.

At the invitation of Jules Verne and Mme. Verne she made a detour; they met her on the platform and took her to their home. To fit the visit in she agreed to go two nights without sleep or rest.

She had more than two hours to wait for the weekly mail train to Brindisi and spent them walking the pier to look at the lighthouse.

Her train arrived two hours late, at 1.30 a.m. on 25 November. When she went to the cable office in the night to send a message to New York, the operator asked her where New York was.

The ship anchored on the afternoon of 27 November and she went ashore. The men armed themselves with canes against beggars, but she refused to carry either a stick or an umbrella.

The ship arrived on 3 December. Passengers had been warned not to go ashore because of the heat, but she went ashore with a few others.

Arriving on 8 December, she was held five days waiting for her connecting ship. She stayed at the Grand Oriental Hotel and found that American gold coins were prized there as jewellery rather than as money.

During the delay at Colombo she went up by train, saw the lake and library, and in an old temple surrounded by a moat was shown a piece of ivory said to be the tooth of Buddha. On the way back she visited the botanical garden at Peradeniya.

The ship arrived on 16 December and allowed only six hours ashore. She drove to a garden with a waterfall, and at a Hindu temple on the way back to town she refused the priests' demand that she take off her shoes.

Arriving on 18 December, she toured the town and a museum by gharry. On the way back to the ship she bargained for a monkey at the driver's door and bought it, and it travelled home with her.

At the steamship office she was told that another woman, who had left New York the same day, had passed through Hong Kong three days earlier. This was Elizabeth Bisland of Cosmopolitan, travelling the other way.

She arrived by boat on Christmas Day and was carried through the city in chairs with the guide Ah Cum. On Shamian, the European settlement, she saw the Stars and Stripes for the first time since leaving New York and took off her cap to it.

For her 120 hours in Japan she stayed at the Grand Hotel. A reporter from Tokyo interviewed her, and she was given a luncheon aboard the American warship Omaha in the harbour.

She went to see the great bronze Buddha and recorded its height, girth and the size of its face and ears.

At the Shiba temple she saw the gate lined with stone and bronze lanterns. In Ueno park she was shown a tree planted by General Grant and watched a monkey in the menagerie.

On 21 January, while the Oceanic waited for the quarantine doctor, she was taken ashore on a tug with her monkey. From the newspapers she learned that snow had stopped rail traffic for a week.

On her special train across the continent, more than ten thousand people met her at the station.

She arrived at 7.05 a.m. on 23 January and was taken to the Press Club. At the Chicago Board of Trade the floor fell silent, the men took off their hats and then cheered her.

She completed the circuit here at 3.51 p.m. on 25 January. The table at the end of her book gives 21,740 miles and 72 days, 6 hours and 11 minutes.