Nowadays, we take curiosity for granted.
现今，我们对好奇心不以为然。
We believe that if we put in the hard work,
我们相信如果努力工作，
we might one day stand before the pyramids, discover a new species of flower, or even go to the moon.
有朝一日我们或许会站在金字塔前，发现一个新品种的花，或者甚至是登上月球。
But, in the 18th and 19th century, female eyes gazed out windows at a world they were unlikely to ever explore.
但在十八、十九世纪，女性凝视窗外，看到的是她们不曾探索的世界。
Life for women in the time of Queen Victoria was largely relegated to house chores and gossip.
维多利亚女王时代的妇女生活主要是在家做家务和说长道短。
And, although they devoured books on exotic travel,
尽管她们津津有味地阅读异国游记，
most would never would leave the places in which they were born.
但多数人从没离开过她们的出生地。
However, there were a few Victorian women,
可是却有少数维多利亚妇女，
who, through privilege, endurance, and not taking "no" for an answer, did set sail for wilder shores.
通过特权、耐力和不接受“不”的回答，确实向荒芜的海岸扬起了风帆。
In 1860, Marianne North, an amateur gardener and painter,
1860年，玛丽安娜·诺斯，一位业余园艺师和画家，
crossed the ocean to America with letters of introduction, an easel, and a love of flowers.
带着介绍信、画架和对鲜花的热爱，漂洋过海来到美国。
She went on to travel to Jamaica, Peru, Japan, India, Australia.
接着她前往牙买加、秘鲁、日本、印度、澳大利亚。
In fact, she went to every continent except Antarctica in pursuit of new flowers to paint.
事实上她去了除南极洲以外的各大洲，寻求新花作画。
"I was overwhelmed with the amount of subjects to be painted," she wrote.
“我简直不敢相信绘画题材的数量”，她写道，
"The hills were marvelously blue, piled one over the other beyond them.
“山丘蓝得美不胜收，座座相连，绵延不绝
I never saw such abundance of pure color."
我从未看过这么丰富的纯色。”
With no planes or automobiles and rarely a paved street,
当时没有飞机或汽车，也少有平坦的道路，
North rode donkeys, scaled cliffs, and crossed swamps to reach the plants she wanted.
诺斯骑着驴，翻过悬崖，越过沼泽，找到她想要的植物。
And all this in the customary dress of her day, floor-length gowns.
而且她都穿着当时传统的服装，拖地长袍。
As photography had not yet been perfected,
因为当时照相技术还不成熟，
Marianne's paintings gave botanists back in Europe their first glimpses of some of the world's most unusual plants,
玛丽安娜的画作让欧洲植物学家第一次有机会一瞥世上罕见的植物，
like the giant pitcher plant of Borneo, the African torch lily,
例如婆罗洲的猪笼草，非洲火炬花
and the many other species named for her as she was the first European to catalog them in the wild.
还有其它以她命名的物种，因为她是第一位在大自然记录这些植物的欧洲人。

Meanwhile, back in London, Miss Mary Kingsley was the sheltered daughter of a traveling doctor
与此同时，回到伦敦，玛莉·金斯利是一位游医所宠爱的女儿，
who loved hearing her father's tales of native customs in Africa.
她喜欢听父亲讲的关于非洲原始文化的故事。
Midway through writing a book on the subject, her father fell ill and died.
她父亲在撰写一本关于非洲文化的书，但是完成之前就病逝了。
So, Kingsley decided she would finish the book for him.
因此金斯利决定要为父亲完成这本书。
Peers of her father advised her not to go, showing her maps of tropical diseases, but she went anyhow,
她父亲的朋友都劝她不要去非洲，并给她看了热带疾病的分布图，但她还是去了，
landing in modern-day Sierra Leone in 1896 with two large suitcases and a phrase book.
在1896年，她带着两个大皮箱和一本词组书，抵达了现在的塞拉利昂。
Traveling into the jungle, she was able to confirm the existence of a then-mythical creature, the gorilla.
她进入了丛林当中，证实了当时传说的生物--黑猩猩，确实存在。
She recalls fighting with crocodiles, being caught in a tornado,
她回忆与鳄鱼的战斗，被卷入龙卷风，
and tickling a hippopotamus with her umbrella so that he'd leave the side of her canoe.
还要用雨伞戳河马，让河马远离她的独木舟。
Falling into a spiky pit, she was saved from harm by her thick petticoat.
她曾掉进充满尖刺的地洞，幸好她厚厚的衬裙救了她。
"A good snake properly cooked is one of the best meals one gets out here," she wrote.
她写道：“一条烹煮得恰到好处的蛇，是你在那里可以吃到的最棒的料理。”
Think Indiana Jones was resourceful? Kingsley could out-survive him any day!
你觉得印第安纳·琼斯足智多谋？金斯利随时都胜过他！
But when it comes to breaking rules, perhaps no female traveler was as daring as Alexandra David-Neel.
但真要说到打破成规，恐怕没有一位女性旅行家能和亚历山德拉·戴维-尼尔一样大胆。
Alexandra, who had studied Eastern religions at home in France,
她曾在法国家乡研究过东方宗教，
wanted desperately to prove herself to Parisian scholars of the day, all of whom were men.
她很渴望能向当时的法国学者--他们清一色都是男性--证明自己的能力。
She decided the only way to be taken seriously was to visit the fabled city of Lhasa in the mountains of Tibet.
她认定唯一能让大家认真看待她的方式就是亲自到传说中的城市--隐身在群山间的西藏拉萨。
"People will have to say, 'This woman lived among the things she's talking about.
“人们会说：'这个女人亲身体验了她一直在诉说的一切。
She touched them and she saw them alive,'" she wrote.
她碰触过，也亲眼看过，'”她写道。
When she arrived at the border from India, she was forbidden to cross.
当她从印度抵达西藏边境时，她被禁止进入西藏。
So, she disguised herself as a Tibetan man.
因此她打扮成了一名西藏男子。
Dressed in a yak fur coat and a necklace of carved skulls,
穿着牦牛皮做的大衣，戴上雕刻骷髅项链，
she hiked through the barren Himilayas all the way to Lhasa, where she was subsequently arrested.
她攀越贫瘠的喜马拉雅山脉，一路来到拉萨，但她随后就被逮捕了。
She learned that the harder the journey, the better the story, and went on to write many books on Tibetan religion,
她体会到旅程越艰辛，故事就会越精彩，她持续写了很多关于西藏宗教的书，
which not only made a splash back in Paris but remain important today.
不但在巴黎造成广大回响，至今也仍然非常重要。
These brave women, and others like them, went all over the world
这几位勇敢的女性和许多其他一样的人，都走遍了世界，
to prove that the desire to see for oneself not only changes the course of human knowledge,
证明想亲身见识世界的渴望，不仅改变了人类知识的进程，
it changes the very idea of what is possible.
还改变了什么是可能的想法。
They used the power of curiosity to try and understand the viewpoints and peculiarities of other places,
她们利用好奇心的力量，尝试和理解其它地方的观点和特色，
perhaps because they, themselves, were seen as so unusual in their own societies.
可能因为她们在自己的社会被视为如此的不同寻常。
But their journeys revealed to them something more than the ways of foreign lands,
但是她们的旅程带给她们的收获不只是异地的风土民情，
they revealed something only they, themselves, could find: a sense of their own self.
还有唯有她们自己才能领悟的道理：她们的自我意识。