This is the best summary I could come up with:

In a wild scramble, her editors at Cosmopolitan magazine decided to have her circumnavigate the globe in the opposite direction in an attempt to beat Bly.

Bly was a daredevil reporter perhaps best known for exposing the horrific conditions of an asylum on Blackwell’s Island, and Bisland was a literary critic and poet.

The first leg of Bly’s trip was aboard the “Augusta Victoria,” a brand-new ship with stained glass, shuffleboard games, and starlit concerts.

Bisland, too, noted war ships guarded Aden, which was “valuable; and therefore, like Hong Kong, Singapore, Penang, Ceylon — like everything much worth having in this part of the world — it is an English possession.”

A week later, a Nevada newspaper read: “The influenza is coming around the world in a good deal faster time than Nellie Bly or her rival will make.”

Nowhere was the difference more stark than the steamships, where a single meal might include soup, fish, beef, duck, potatoes, salad, pastry, cheese, and fruit.

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