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BIG PEOPLE AND LITTLE PEOPLE OF OTHER LANDS

by

EDWARD R. SHAW

Dean of the School of Pedagogy
New York University

New York  Cincinnati  Chicago
American Book Company

1900







PREFACE

This little book is designed to meet the child's natural desire to
learn or hear of other people than those living in the part of the
world about him.

It has been thoroughly proved in our newer pedagogical practice that
the child in the first school year is much interested in descriptions
of the Indian and the Eskimo.  Whenever descriptions of the Indian and
the Eskimo have been given him, they have not only fulfilled their
purpose in furnishing material for reading and the interrelation of
several activities of expression, but they have revealed to him the
fact that there are other people in the world, who differ very much
from those he has seen.

His interest in different peoples at this time is in their physical
appearance, their dress, their ways of living, their customs, their
manners, and it arises chiefly from the contrast which descriptions of
these afford to familiar customs, conditions, and physical
characteristics.

The child is not interested, at that stage of his intellectual
development which falls in the first or the second school year, in the
situation of countries.  It does not matter to him exactly where,
geographically, the people about whom he reads live.  He is satisfied
if some general statement is made to the effect that they live far away
to the north, where the cold countries are, or in the south, where it
is warm and sometimes hot, or on the other side of the world.

His desire, at this period, for new impressions and ideas gained from
descriptions and accompanying pictures is as keen as his desire for
sense impressions gained from the world of nature and activity about
him.  This wider range of information and ideas, it is believed, he may
in some measure gain from this little book.


DRESDEN, July 15, 1899.




PEOPLE OF OTHER LANDS.


CHINA.

On the other side of this great round world is a country called China.
When it is dark here, and we are going to sleep, the sun is just waking
up the children in China and telling them it is morning.  When we get
up in the morning they are just bidding the sun good night.  When it is
light here it is dark there.  So they have day when we have night.

Chinese children look like little men and women, for they dress like
their fathers and mothers.  Boys and girls dress nearly alike.  They
both dress in silk or cotton trousers.  They wear over these long gowns
reaching nearly to their feet.  They wear odd-looking shoes with thick
white soles.  The boys' heads are shaved, except a small part on top.
There a lock of hair is left.  This lock of hair is braided and hangs
down the back.  A queer name is given to it.  It is called a "queue."
Girls in China do not go to school, but all day long they are busy;
they help their mothers keep house; they tend the babies; they sew, and
help with the cooking.

[Illustration:  Chinese Women and Children.]

The schools in China are only for boys.  The boys make a great deal of
noise in school.  A Chinese teacher thinks the boys are idle if they do
not study their lessons out loud.  So each boy shouts as loud as he
can.  When the boy has learned his lesson, he goes up and gives his
book to the teacher.  Then he turns his back to the teacher, and shouts
out the whole lesson to show that he knows it.

The boys are taught to count.  They learn by using balls set in a
frame.  The frame is like the frame of a slate.  The balls slide on
wires.  With the balls they learn to add and subtract.

They also learn how to write, but they have no pens or pencils.  They
write with small brushes dipped in ink.  Each boy makes his own ink.
He puts some water on a stone and then rubs a cake of ink in the water.
This makes a fine black ink called India ink.  Then the boy fills his
brush and begins at the top, right-hand corner of the paper.  He writes
toward the bottom of the sheet.  He puts one word under another instead
of beside it as you do.  Then he begins a new line at the top, and
writes to the bottom again.

[Illustration:  Chinese writing.]

Chinese books are printed in the same way.  Where do you think a
Chinese book begins?  A Chinese book begins where our books end.

In China many girls and women have very small feet.  When they are
babies their feet are bound up tightly.  They sometimes wear iron
shoes.   Then their feet never grow, but are so very small that they
can hardly walk.  Poor parents know their girls will have to work hard,
and so do not bind their feet.

Chinese girls make beautiful paper flowers.  They paint pictures.  They
sing and play.  Some of them pick the snow-white cotton in the fields.
Some of them take care of the silk-worms that spin the soft silk.

But they do not work all the time.   They play many pretty games.
Chinese boys, too, have many kinds of games and toys.   One game is
like battledoor and shuttlecock.  They use their feet to strike the
shuttlecock.  They do this so fast that the shuttlecock hardly ever
falls to the ground.  The Chinese are fond of flying kites.  Even old
men fly kites.  They fly their kites in the spring-time.  Chinese kites
are of all sizes and shapes.  Some are like birds.  Some are like fish.
Some are like butterflies.

[Illustration:  Chinese Kite.]

 There is no other such land in all the world
for lanterns as China.  The lanterns there are made of paper in the
shape of balls, or flowers, or animals.  Some of the lanterns have a
wheel inside.  When the candle is lighted, the draft of air makes the
wheel go round very quickly.  When the wheel begins to move inside, the
figures on the outside of the lantern begin to move.  Then men are seen
fishing or fanning.  Sometimes children are seen dancing.

The Chinese are so fond of lanterns that every year they have a "Feast
of Lanterns."  On that day and night lanterns are to be seen
everywhere.  Bridges and houses and trees are covered with lighted
lanterns.

They have fireworks, too, that look like stars and trees and flowers.

A Chinese dinner begins in the wrong way.  They have fruits and nuts
first.  After this comes rice.  They eat more of rice than of anything
else.  Then they drink tea without either milk or sugar.  They use
neither forks nor knives.  Instead they eat with small sticks of wood
or ivory.  These are called "chopsticks."  They hold them between the
thumb and first two fingers.  They use them to carry their food to
their mouths as you use a fork or a spoon.

[Illustration:  Chopsticks.]

Do you know how they catch fish in China?

They have a bird which swims and dives into the water.  This bird lives
on fish.  Every time he dives he catches one.  He is trained to bring
the fish to his master.  A tight ring is put round the bird's neck.
This is to keep him from swallowing the fish.  When enough fish have
been caught, the bird is given some to eat.  This bird is called a
cormorant.

A Chinese fisherman lives in his fishing boat.  But China is a very
crowded country.  So other men as well as fishermen live on small
flatboats in the rivers near the big towns.  Ducks and other fowls are
raised on these boats.  The people on the water are as busy as the
people on the land.

In China houses are one story high.  They are built of wood.  The roofs
slope, and are made of sticks woven together.  The churches are called
pagodas.  They are not like our churches, but are tall, like towers.
They are usually nine stories high.  They have little bells hung all
around the roof.   These bells ring when the wind blows them back and
forth.

[Illustration:  Chinese Boats and Pagoda.]

Between the houses are narrow streets without sidewalks.  There are no
wagons.  If a lady goes to make a call, she sends for a sort of covered
chair.  This has long poles on each side.  The chair is set on the
ground before her door.  After she gets in, men lift the poles to their
shoulders.  In this way they carry her.  Baggage and heavy articles are
also carried on the shoulders of men.

[Illustration:  Covered Chair with Poles.]

But perhaps the most wonderful thing in China is the Great Wall.  It
was built by kings a long time ago.  They wanted to keep savage people
from coming into the country.  The wall is built very high and very
wide.  It is so wide in some places that eight horses can be driven on
top of it side by side.  It is hundreds of miles long.  The people of
China think it is very wonderful.  They think there is nothing so
wonderful in all the rest of the world.

[Illustration:  The Great Wall.]

China seems a curious country.  Boys shout out loud in school.  They
read and write backward.  Men fly kites, like boys.  Women have feet as
small as babies' feet.  At dinner nuts and fruits are eaten first.  Men
work like animals.  There are many ways in which the Chinese are
different from the people in our country.




JAPAN

[Illustration:  Japanese Children.]

How would you like to ride in a wagon drawn by a man instead of a
horse?  That is the way people ride in Japan.  Japan is a country a
long way off, near China.  You would think that a man could not run
very fast drawing a wagon.  But in Japan some men can run as fast as
horses.  The wagon is like a buggy, but it has only two wheels.  They
call this wagon a jin-rik'i-sha.

[Illustration:  A Jinrikisha.]

The streets in Japan have no sidewalks.  The houses are only one or two
stories high.  They are built of wood.  They have no windows or doors.
Strange houses, you will think.  The walls outside and inside are made
like sliding doors.  They slide back so that the people can go in and
out, and from one room to another.

The Japanese have very little furniture in their houses.  They have no
chairs.  They do not need any, for they sit on cushions on the floor.
They also sleep on the floor.  When it is time to go to bed, they
spread soft quilts on the floor, one over the other.  The last quilt on
the top is the cover.  These beds are very nice.  But you could never
guess what kind of pillows they have.  The pillows are blocks of wood
the size of a brick.  You would not think them nice at all.  But the
Japanese seem to sleep very well on their wood pillows.

[Illustration:  A Japanese Bed.]

Many of the things in the houses in Japan are made of paper, They have
paper fans, paper lanterns, paper hats, paper cups, paper umbrellas,
paper napkins, and paper screens.

They have no stoves.  Instead of stoves they have boxes lined with
brass.  In these boxes they burn charcoal to heat their rooms.  But
they do not cook their food in these brass boxes.  They cook in little
ovens made of clay.

When it rains in Japan the people look very funny.  The men wear rain
coats made of rice straw.  They also have big straw hats and paper
umbrellas.

[Illustration:  A Rain Coat.]

They wear blocks, three inches high, fastened to the soles of their
shoes.  These keep their feet dry.  So on a rainy day everybody looks
three inches taller.

In Japan they do not wear shoes in the house.  When they go into their
houses they take them off.  Their shoes are made of wood or straw.
Some of the people have shoes with gold braid.

[Illustration:  Japanese Shoes.]

Perhaps you would like to know how they dress in Japan.  Boys and girls
dress very much alike.  Both wear long gowns, like skirts, of blue or
gray cotton or silk.  These gowns are open at the neck.  A sash is worn
around the waist.  The girls tie their sashes in a bow at the back.

The children of Japan are very strange looking, not at all like you.
They are like the Chinese.  Their skin is yellow, and their eyes are
slanted.  Their hair is black and straight.

You will wish to know what they eat in Japan.  The food is much the
same as in China.  They eat a great deal of rice.  They have fish, and
they drink tea.  They use chopsticks in eating, as the people in China
do.

The people in Japan are very fond of flowers.  Every house has a garden
around it.  The boys and girls walk and play in these gardens.

[Illustration:  Interior of a Japanese House.]

Boys and girls in Japan have many nice toys.  One of their toys is a
little oven with real fire in it.  Peddlers go round with these ovens
and with sweet dough to bake in them.  For five cents the boys and
girls can get the use of an oven, and dough enough to bake little
cakes.  They often make cakes shaped like animals.  The peddler makes
the letters of the alphabet in dough.  Then he bakes them in the oven
for the boys and girls.  With these cake letters they often learn their
a, b, c.

The boys in Japan, like the boys in China, are very fond of kites.  But
in Japan they have fighting kites.  They mix broken fine glass with
glue, and rub it on their kite strings.  When the strings become dry
they are hard and sharp.  Then the boys fly their kites.  One boy tries
to cross and cut the string of another boy's kite with the string of
his own.  The boy who cuts down a kite gets it as his prize.

In Japan they have a day like our Flag Day.  On this day the boys have
toy soldiers with swords and guns.  They form these soldiers into
armies, and have battles.  Then the parents and teachers tell the boys
about the great soldiers of their country, and the great battles they
fought.

The girls have a day for themselves.  They call it the "Feast of
Dolls."  Every girl has a set of dolls.  On that day they take out
their dolls and doll houses.  Then the girls play with them, and show
them to one another.

[Illustration:  Japanese Girl and Doll.]

They have schools in Japan just as we have.  The boys and girls must go
to school until they are ten years old.  Some of their lessons are very
hard.  They have forty-seven letters in their alphabet, instead of only
twenty-six, as we have.  Don't you think it must be hard for the boys
and girls to learn to read?

They go to school very early in the morning.  Before they enter the
school they take off their shoes.  When the teacher comes, they bow
down their heads nearly to the ground and draw in their breath.  This
is their "good morning."  The teacher also bows to the boys and girls.

Then the children sit on the floor.  They put their books on their
knees and begin their lessons.  They have no pens or pencils.  They use
little brushes instead.  They write in lines from the top to the bottom
of the sheet of paper, instead of across from side to side as we do.
This is the way, you remember, they write in China.  The books in Japan
are also like the books in China.  The last page in our books would be
the first page in books in China and Japan.  So their books begin at
what we would think the end.  How queer this seems to us!

There are newspapers in Japan, but they are not much like ours.  The
lines run up and down just as Japanese writing does.  They read back
from what we would call the last page.

[Illustration:  Japanese Carpenters at Work.]

A great many things that we use in America come from Japan.  We get
silk from Japan, and beautiful vases and mats and screens and basket
work.  The boys and girls in Japan help to make these things.  For they
are bright and learn quickly how to do very nice work.




ARABIA.

Have you ever heard of the Arabs?  They are people with brown skin and
dark eyes.  They live in a country called Arabia.  It is a very warm
country.  There is never any snow in Arabia.  A great part of it is
covered with sand.  For miles and miles you would see nothing but sand.
Often the sand is so hot that you could not walk on it in your bare
feet.  Those great tracts of sand are called deserts.

[Illustration:  Arabs.]

In many parts of Arabia water is very scarce.  It rains very seldom,
and in some places there are no rivers.  The people get water out of
wells.  They carry the water, in bottles  made of leather.  Glass
bottles would not do.  The heat is so great that it would go through
the glass.  Tins would make the water warm.  But the leather bottles
keep the water cool.

[Illustration:  Arab Water Carrier.]

Some of the Arabs live in towns.  They have walls around their towns.
At some parts of the walls there are towers.  Both walls and towers are
made of earth.

In every large town they have an open market place with shops around
it.  In most of the shops they sell food.  In a few of the shops they
sell cotton cloth and other dry goods.  Many of the shops are kept by
women.

The streets are swept every day.  Every family sweeps the street in
front of its own door.

The houses in the towns are made of stone.  They have flat mud roofs
and small windows.  The Arabs have no chairs or beds in their houses.
They sit on mats or carpets spread on the floor.  They also sleep on
mats.

The chief room in an Arab house is the coffee room.  It is a large room
with a furnace or fireplace at one end of it for making coffee.

Many of the Arabs live in tents.  They move about from place to place.
Sometimes they cross the desert to come to the towns.  They must often
cross it to find water and grass for their horses and camels and sheep.

[Illustration:  Arabs and Tent.]

The camel is very useful to the Arabs.  Perhaps you have seen a camel.
It is much larger than a horse.  It has a great hump on its back.  It
has large feet with broad, flat soles; and it can walk or run over the
sand without sinking.

The camel can carry a very heavy load.  It gives milk which is good to
drink.  Its hair is made into cloth.  Its flesh is good meat.  It can
bear thirst and heat far better than a horse can.  It can travel and
carry a load in the desert for three or four days without drinking.
This makes it very useful to the Arabs.

[Illustration:  A Camel.]

But the Arabs have horses also.  They are the finest horses in the
world.  An Arab is very proud of his horse.  He loves him almost as
much as he loves his children.

Did you ever hear the story that is told of Hassan and his horse?
Hassan was an Arab who had a horse which he loved very much.  And the
horse loved Hassan very much.

One day Hassan was riding on his horse in the desert with some other
Arabs.  They were met by a party of men called Turks, who made them
prisoners.  The Turks tied the feet of Hassan and his friends with
leather straps.  They tied the horses also.  They planned to carry them
off next morning.

During the night Hassan heard his horse neighing.  He crept up to him
and said in a low voice: "What will become of you, my poor horse?  You
will not be happy with these Turks.  Go home to my tent.  Tell my wife
that she will never see me again.  Lick the hands of my children with
your tongue, as a token of my love."

He then bit off with his teeth the cords that tied the horse, and set
him free.  The horse looked at his master for a minute or two.  Then he
caught him with his teeth by the belt and ran off with him into the
desert.  On and on across the sand he ran.  He never stopped until he
had laid Hassan down beside his wife and children.  Then, worn out with
his long run, he dropped dead at his master's feet.

All the people around wept when they heard the story.  Arab poets made
songs about Hassan and his horse.

The Arabs do not eat very much.  Their chief meal is supper.  They have
supper in the evening.  They are very fond of coffee.  Did you ever
hear of Mocha coffee?  It comes from Mocha, a town in Arabia.  Most of
the Arabs take their coffee without sugar or milk.

They always make their bread in thin cakes.  Then they bake the bread
on hot iron plates or in an open oven.  They also have ground wheat
cooked with a little butter.  Arabs who are rich have mutton or camel's
flesh, and also rice.  All eat vegetables and fruits of various kinds.

There are many kinds of fruit in Arabia.  But the greatest and best of
all is the date.  This grows on the date-palm tree.  The date palm
grows very high.  The Arabs are very proud of it.  Every part of it is
of use to them.  Its fruit is the chief food of many of the people.
You have seen and perhaps you have eaten dried dates.  They are not
nearly so sweet or so good as the fruit when taken off the tree.  The
trunk of the date palm is good for making furniture.  Its leaves make
roofs for houses.  Parts of its branches make firewood.  From some
parts of the tree cords and ropes are made.

The Arabs do not wear very many clothes.  They do not need heavy
clothes, because the weather in Arabia is almost always very warm.  The
men wear long light dresses like shirts.  They have a belt, or girdle,
around the waist.  They wear a handkerchief on the head.  This is tied
around with a band or string.  On their feet they wear sandals.  Do you
know what a sandal is?  It is a shoe with only a sole, and straps going
across the foot and round the ankle.  The Arab women also wear a long
shirt.  Over it they have a large, wide piece of blue cloth.  This blue
cloth covers them from head to foot.

[Illustration:  Arab Woman and Child.]

[Illustration:  An Arab Sandal.]

But what about the Arab boys and girls?  What do they wear?  Most of
the boys run around without shoes or stockings.  But some of them wear
little red shoes turned up at the toes, and others wear small sandals.
They also wear loose trousers and jackets and little red caps.  The
girls commonly wear cotton dresses that are made very plain.  Sometimes
they have veils over their heads.  In the country places the girls do
not wear veils.

[Illustration:  Arab Girl with Veil.]

Only the boys go to school.  Before they enter the school they must
take off their sandals.  They have no seats in their schools.  They all
sit on the floor.  Their lessons are not like your lessons.  They have
only one book.  It is called the Koran.  The Koran is the Arab Bible.
The Arab boys must learn the Koran by heart.  At school, they all shout
out together when they are learning their lessons.

[Illustration:  A School in Arabia.]

But the Arab boys learn many things at home.  They learn to read and to
write.  They also have plenty of time to play.  They play ball.  They
fly kites.  They ride ponies.  Often they play with old guns and
swords.  Thus they learn to be soldiers.

The Arab girls do not go to school.  But they do not play very much.
They must help their mothers do the work at home.  The mothers grind
corn to make bread.  They spin and weave cloth for clothes.  They grind
the corn with two flat stones.  One of these stones is placed on top of
the other.  There is a hole in the middle of the upper stone.  They
pour the corn into this hole.  The upper stone is then turned round by
a handle.  So the corn is ground between the two stones.  The girls
often have to turn the stone around.  They must also take care of the
baby.  They help to carry home water from the well.  They carry the
water in earthen jars.

[Illustration:  Arabs Grinding Corn.]

You will say, then, that the Arab girls have a hard time.  But they do
not work always.  They have some time for play.  They have very funny
dolls.  Would you not laugh if some one gave you two sticks joined like
a cross, and told you it was a doll?  That is the kind of doll the Arab
girls have.  And they are very fond of their dolls.  They dress them,
and take great care of them.

The Arabs are very fond of tales and stories.  Perhaps you have heard
of a book called the "Arabian Nights."  It is full of wonderful stories
about kings and giants and witches, and other strange things.  This
book came from Arabia.  When you are older you will read the "Arabian
Nights."  In it you will learn many more things about Arabia and the
Arabs.




KOREA.

What funny hats they wear in Korea!

But, you will ask, where is Korea?  It is near Japan, a country you
have read of in this book.

The people of Korea look a little like Chinamen.  They have yellow skin
and slanting eyes.  Their hair is long, straight, and black, and they
wear it in a very strange way.  The boys and girls wear their hair down
their backs in braids tied with ribbons.  The men and women have their
hair in little topknots that stand straight up.

[Illustration:  A Korean.]

But I must tell you about the strange hats they have.  Some of the men
wear hats that go down over their shoulders.  This is the kind of hat
they wear when they are in mourning, after the death of a father or
mother.  Some wear hats made of straw.  These hats look like large
flowerpots turned upside down.  Some have hats made of horsehair.

But the hats made of straw and the hats made of horsehair do not keep
the rain out.  So they have umbrellas.  Their umbrellas are as funny as
the hats.  They are made of oil paper, and have no handles.  They look
like fans.  When it rains, the people open their umbrellas and tie them
on top of their hats.

The boys in Korea wear loose jackets, and wide trousers which go under
their stockings.  The stockings are padded with cotton, and are tied at
the ankle.  The girls wear very pretty little jackets, sometimes red,
sometimes pink, and sometimes green.

The shoes they wear in Korea are of many kinds and shapes.  Some are
made of leather.  Others are like the wooden shoes the Chinamen wear,
which turn up at the toes.  The funniest shoes they have are made of
paper.  The paper is very thick and strong, and so their paper shoes
last a good while.  But the shoes that are worn by most of the people
in Korea are made of straw.  They are like sandals, and they are worn
so that the large toe is not covered.

The people in Korea have a strange way of keeping themselves cool in
hot weather.  They have something like a basket made of rods of bamboo.
This basket is round and long, and open at the top and bottom.  They
put their heads through this basket, and it hangs downward from their
shoulders around their bodies.  Then they put their clothes over it, so
that the basket is inside.  It is next to their skin.  How would you
like to have such a summer dress?

The boys in Korea go to school when they are very young.  The girls do
not go to school.  They stay at home to help their mothers.  But girls
whose parents are rich have teachers at home to teach them reading and
writing and other things.

In school, the teacher sits on a straw mat on the floor.  The boys also
sit on the floor on straw mats.  They say their lessons out loud.  They
write their lines from the top to the bottom of the page.  The people
in China and Japan, as you know, write in the same way.  The boys of
Korea learn to count on a _chon-pan_.  The chon-pan is much like the
counting box they have in the schools in China.  It is made of little
balls on a frame of wires fixed in a box.  The boys also learn by heart
the wise sayings of great men.

The boys in Korea have some very nice toys.  But the best playthings
they have are their kites.  They make their kites fight battles in the
air, just as the boys do in Japan.  Every boy tries to tear down every
other boy's kite.  This is done by pulling the strings across one
another.  Sometimes the sky is full of beautiful kites, which jump and
dash about as if they were alive.

The boys also have fine, large pinwheels.  They make these pinwheels
whirl around in the wind.  The boys also spin tops, and they play
"seesaw," and jump the rope.

The boys in Korea are fond of fishing.  Nearly every boy has a fishing
rod and goes fishing whenever he can.  Sometimes the boys have great
fun going around dressed like their fathers.  They wear wooden swords
and little bows and arrows like soldiers.  They make straw figures of
men, and with their swords they strike off the heads of these straw men.

But the boys have to work as well as play.  Many of the peddlers in
Korea are boys.  They sell candy and other things.  The girls do a
great deal of work at home.  The first thing they learn to do is to sew.

Would you like to know how the women iron their clothes?  They wrap
each piece around a stick and lay it on the floor.  Then they sit down
and beat the piece on the stick with wooden clubs.  In this way they
make the clothes as smooth as a Chinaman makes the linen which he irons.

[Illustration:  Korean Girls Ironing Clothes.]

The houses in Korea are one or two stories high.  They are made of wood
or clay, and sometimes the roofs are of straw.  The windows are high,
and the doors are often so low that the people have to stoop down to go
in.  The rooms are very small and have hardly any furniture.  There are
no chairs.  The people sit on mats on the floor.  The walls between the
rooms are made of paper, and the floor is made of stone.

[Illustration:  Korean Houses.]

They have a strange way of heating their houses.  They have no stoves
or fireplaces.  But under the floor they have a cellar like an oven.
In this cellar a fire is always kept, and the rooms are sometimes so
hot that the people can hardly walk on the stone floors.

People who are poor sleep on mats on the floor.  They sleep in their
clothes. People who are rich have mattresses.  The mattresses are laid
on the floor at night, and are taken up in the morning.

The people of Korea eat a great deal of rice.  But they have other
kinds of food.  They have meat and fish and eggs and also fruit.  You
would think that they would use a great deal of tea, as they live so
near China.  But they do not drink tea.  They drink rice water instead.
The rice water is water that rice has been boiled in.

At their meals the men always eat first and the women wait on them.
When the men have eaten as much as they want, then the women and
children eat.

The tables they have are very low.  It would not do for them to have
high tables, as they sit on the floor.

They have no knives or forks.  They eat with spoons, and they use
chopsticks, as the Chinamen do.

They have no water-pipes in their houses.  In the towns men carry water
in pails.  They have no gas.  For light at night they use candles.

They have only one kind of coin.  It is a small piece of copper.  It
has a square hole in the middle.  They put these coins on strings and
carry them around their necks.  It would take many such coins to make a
dollar.

[Illustration:  Korean Money.]

There are farms in Korea, where they grow wheat, rice, rye, tobacco,
cotton, watermelons, and many kinds of fruit.

If you were in Korea, you would think it the strangest country in the
world.  They do many things very unlike the way we do them.  With us
bright-colored things are worn by women.  In Korea the men wear bright
colors.  They have a funny way of selling eggs there.  They place ten
eggs end to end in a row, and put straw around them.  Then they tie
strings around the straw between the eggs.  This is called a stick of
eggs.  When people go to buy eggs, they ask for one or two sticks, or
as many as they wish.  One stick of eggs costs less than five cents.

[Illustration:  A Stick of Eggs.]

Instead of a president they have a king.  The king lives in the largest
town.  There is a thick, high wall all around this town.  There are
gates in the wall, and these are shut at night.  After the gates are
shut, no one can get in or out until they are opened in the morning.

The people show very great respect for the king.  When they go to speak
to him they throw themselves down on their faces before his throne.
The people love their country very much.  They think it is the most
beautiful country in the world.




INDIA.

How would you like to go to school at six o'clock in the morning?  That
is the time many children go to school in India.  India is a large
country in Asia.  The children stay in school till nine o'clock.  Then
they go home for breakfast, and go back to school at ten.  At two
o'clock they go home for dinner.  They go back again at three to stay
till evening.  You will think that this is a long time to be at school.

[Illustration:  Hindoo Children at School.]

In some of the schools they have no desks or chairs, but the boys and
girls sit on the floor.  In other schools they have long tables instead
of desks.

They do not learn their letters as we do.  The teachers write five
letters in sand on the floor.  Then the boys and girls write the
letters in the sand.  They write the letters many times, until they
know them well.  Then the teachers write five more letters, and so on
until the children know all the letters.  When they can make the
letters in the sand, they next learn to write them on palm leaves with
pens made of wood.  The last thing they do is to write them on slates
and on paper.

[Illustration:  Native Children of India.]

In some of the large towns they learn to read and write English.  But
English is not the language that most of the people speak.  They have a
language of their own.

[Illustration:  A Hindoo Family at Home.]

The people of India are called Hindoos.  They have dark skin, dark
eyes, and dark hair.

It is so warm that most of the people wear very little clothing.  Many
of the boys and girls wear no shoes.  The girls are very fond of
jewels.  No matter how poor a family is, they try to buy some jewels
for their girls.  So the girls in India always have jewelry to wear.

They have no Christmas in India.  They have what they call the "Feast
of the Cakes."  At the Feast of the Cakes they have three holidays.
Then they have cakes of all kinds.

The boys are very fond of swinging.  They are also very fond of
swimming.  In some places they have diving wells.  The boys plunge from
a high bank down into the water below.

[Illustration:  A Tiger.]

The rich people have very fine houses, with gardens and flowers and
fountains.  There are carpets, cushions, and tables in the houses, but
no chairs.  They sit on cushions on the floor.

The beds are very low, and the legs are often of silver or gold or
ivory.  They have no sheets or pillow cases, but covers of velvet or
satin.

The people who are poor live in houses made of dried mud, with roofs of
bamboo poles and straw.  They have hardly any furniture.  They sleep on
mats made of palm leaves.

[Illustration:  Cobras.]

In many of the houses they have no tables.  They eat off of leaves on
the floor.  Their food is mostly rice.  All the family do not eat
together.  The father of the family always eats first.  When he has
eaten, the mother and children sit down to eat.

The women do most of the work.  So the girls have to learn to work.
But the men and boys do all the sewing.  How queer this seems!

[Illustration:  An Elephant Piling Lumber.]

There are a great many wild beasts in India--tigers, leopards, cobras,
and crocodiles.  The tigers are very fierce.  They sometimes come into
villages at night and carry off men, women or children, and kill and
eat them.  There are logs.  They do work of many kinds.  An elephant is
much stronger than a horse.  He can carry a far heavier load.
Sometimes all the family ride on one elephant's back.

[Illustration:  Riding on an Elephant.]




LAPLAND.

Jingle! jingle! jingle!  Where does the merry sound come from?  It
comes from a sleigh drawn by a reindeer.  The sleigh is called a
"pulk'ha."  It is made of birch wood.  It has no runners.  It goes on a
little keel like that on the bottom of a boat.  The sleigh is very low.
It is pointed at the front like a rowboat, and is flat at the back.
There are no seats in it.  The driver sits in the bottom.  The reindeer
draws the sleigh, and goes very fast.  If the driver is not very
careful the sleigh may be upset.

It is in Lapland that you may see this kind of a sleigh.  The people
who live there are called Lapps.  They are short and stout.  You would
think the men and women were boys and girls.

It is very cold in Lapland.  The summer is short, and the winter is
long.  So the Lapps have to wear warm clothes most of the year.

The men and women and boys and girls in Lapland dress much alike.  In
the winter they wear a long outside coat called a _kap'ta_.   It
reaches below the knees.  It is made of reindeer skin with the hair
left on.  Under the kapta they wear warm clothes made of wool.

[Illustration:  A Lapp's Tent.]

Their shoes are also made of reindeer skin.  They wear two pairs of
thick woolen stockings.  When they put on the stockings, they wrap
their feet in dry grass.  Then they put on their shoes.  The grass
helps to keep their feet warm.  They also wear two pairs of mittens at
the same time.  One pair is made of wool.  The other pair is made of
reindeer skin.  Their hats or caps are also made of reindeer skin.
They are lined with eider down.  Perhaps you do not know what eider
down is.  It is the soft, fine feathers of a bird called the eider
duck.  A great many of these ducks are found in Lapland.  Their down is
very soft and warm.

Sometimes the Lapps have to go long distances in the snow.  Then they
put on skees.  If you saw a pair of skees, you would think that a
person could not walk with them.  They are flat pieces of wood, four or
five inches wide, and very long.  Some skees are six feet long.  Some
are ten or twelve feet long.  They are turned up a little in the front.
In the middle of each there is a hollow place.  The shoe is strapped to
the foot there, as you see in the picture.  When the Lapps go on skees,
they do not raise their feet from the ground.  They slide along, one
foot after the other.  They have a long pole, or staff, in their hands
to beep themselves from falling.  They can go very fast in this way.
Sometimes they go ten or fifteen miles an hour.

[Illustration:  Skees.]

In some parts of Lapland the people live in houses made of earth and
stone.  Each house has only one room.  The Lapps have no carpets.  They
have no tables or chairs.  They cover their floor with twigs of trees.
They eat and sleep on skins spread on the twigs.  They burn wood for
fires.  The fire is made on the ground in the middle of the floor.  The
smoke goes out through a hole in the roof.

[Illustration:  A Lapp Family at Home.]

The Lapps do not all live in the same way.  Some of them are called
mountain Lapps.  In summer the mountain Lapps live in tents among the
hills.  Their tents are made of reindeer skin.  They have a great many
reindeer.

The reindeer is very useful to the Lapps.  It gives them milk.  It
draws their sleighs.  Its flesh is good to eat.  They make clothes of
its skin.  They make knives and spoons of its horns.

In summer the reindeer eat the soft shoots of shrubs and trees.  In
winter they feed on moss called lichen.  They get the lichen
themselves.  They would not eat it if it were gathered for them.  In
winter they dig down through the snow with their feet to get at the
lichen.  They dig first with one fore foot and then with the other.
The snow is often so deep that the reindeer has to dig a hole so large
that its body is almost hidden.

The reindeer are not put in stables.  They like to be out in the cold
and snow.  They are able to take care of themselves.

The Lapps eat a good deal of meat.  Their meat is the flesh of the
reindeer.  They are very fond of fat.  All people who live in very cold
countries eat a great deal of fat.  It helps to keep them warm.  The
Lapps also have milk and cheese.  They eat rye bread and fish and
berries.  They drink coffee.

[Illustration:  A White Bear.]

In winter they have to melt snow in a pot over the fire to get water.
The rivers and lakes are all frozen.

The Lapps cook their food in a large pot over the fire.  They sit
around the fire to eat.  The father takes a piece of meat out of the
pot.  Then he serves a piece to each.  The Lapps use no forks.  They
use their fingers instead.

In some places they have a funny way of storing their food.  They make
a little log house on the top of a post.  They have a ladder to go up
to it.  In this little house they store cheese and milk and other
things.  Then wild animals cannot reach them.

[Illustration:  A Lapland Wolf.]

There are bears and wolves and foxes in Lapland.  These animals are
sometimes very fierce.  They would come into the people's tents and
houses at night, were it not for the dogs.  Nearly every person has a
dog.  Even the hoys and girls have dogs.  The dogs are very brave.
They are not afraid to attack wolves or bears.

But you will wish to know about the children in Lapland.  You have
heard about the old woman who lived in a shoe.  The Lapp baby has a
cradle shaped like a shoe.  It is made of a single piece of wood.  It
is lined with moss and other warm things.  The mother often carries it
in her arms.  Sometimes she carries it on her back, slung from her
shoulders.  The baby plays with strings of buttons or glass beads.

When a baby is born in Lapland they give it a reindeer.  If the
reindeer has any young ones, they keep them for the baby until it is a
man or woman.  They also give a reindeer to the person who is the first
to find that the baby has cut a tooth.

The Lapp boys and girls have very few toys.  The toys they have they
make themselves.  The boys make willow flutes and play on them.  When
the boys go on the water they have long, narrow boats like canoes.
Some boys also make sleighs.

Many of the boys and girls go to school.  They learn to read and write
and count.

There are towns near the sea and by the rivers and lakes.  In these
towns they have schools and churches.




GREENLAND.

Very strange people live in Greenland.  They are called Eskimos.
Greenland is a country very far north.  It is always cold there.  So
the children need warm clothing.  Their stockings are made of birdskin.
The soft feathers keep their little feet very warm.  Their shoes are
made of sealskin.

An Eskimo girl does not wear skirts.  Her clothes are like her
brother's.  Her trousers are made of white bearskin.  Her jacket is
made of fur.  When she goes out sleigh riding, she puts on fur mittens.
Do you know what a fur boa is?  This little girl wears one around her
neck.  It is made of the tail of a fox.  The strings to it are made of
long pieces of skin.

[Illustration:  An Eskimo Girl.]

Perhaps you think the Eskimo children are white.  No, they are brown.
Their faces are round and fat.

Our babies ride in carriages, but an Eskimo baby rides on its mother's
back.  The mother wears a coat with a pocket on the back of it.  The
pocket is lined inside with soft reindeer skin.  This makes a nice warm
nest for baby.

[Illustration:  Eskimo Mother and Baby.]

In Greenland all the boys and girls have sleds.  The runners of the
sled are made of bone.  The top is made of strips of sealskin.  It has
a back for the boy or girl to lean against.  Dogs draw the sled across
the snow.  But the Eskimos also have sleds made of ice.  I think you
would like an ice sled.  Oh, how fast it runs over the snow!  The boys
and girls have fine fun with these sleds!

They play a nice game in the snow with their sleds.  I will tell you
about it.  Do you know what a reindeer is?  It is like a deer, but it
has long, branching horns.  The horns are called antlers.  When the
Eskimos kill a reindeer for meat, the boys and girls get the antlers.
They set these antlers up in the snow on a hillside.  They leave spaces
between the antlers.  Then the boys and girls get on their sleds and
slide down the hill.  They must go between the antlers, but must not
touch them.  Sometimes the boys and girls have bows and arrows.  They
try to hit the antlers with their arrows.  This is very hard, but it is
great fun.  Do you think you could do this?

The boys have boats made of long, thin bones covered with skins.  These
sail very well on the water.  The boys use paddles to move the boats.
A paddle is like an oar.  The boys sometimes go in their boats to help
their fathers catch fish.

Eskimo children cannot read or write.  They do not go to school, for
the Eskimos have no schools.  They are very fond of stories, but they
cannot read them in books.  So their mothers tell them stories.  The
mothers cannot read, either.   The stories they tell are what they
heard from their mothers.  Are you not happy that you can read stories
for yourself?

Perhaps you think the Eskimo children are unhappy?  Oh, no!  Though
they cannot read books, they play all kinds of games.  There is a funny
game they play in the house.  All the children get on their knees in a
ring.  Then they hold their toes with their hands and move along by
jumps.  The one who goes the fastest wins.

The Eskimo boys play a game like the game of "cup and ball."  They have
two pieces of bone.  One is flat, with holes in it.  The other is long
and sharp like a pin.  Both are joined by a string about a foot long.
The flat piece is tied to one end of the string, and the pin to the
other end.  The pin is held in the hand, and the flat piece is thrown
into the air.  The game is to catch the flat piece upon the point of
the pin, by one of the holes.

[Illustration:  Eskimo Children.]

Eskimo boys play another game with a ball and a stick made of bone.  It
is something like shinny, one of the games yon play.  They also play a
game with a sealskin hall about as big as a baseball.  They strike the
ball with their hands and try to keep it in the air all the time.  The
Eskimo boys play football very well.  They think it great fun.   They
never touch the ball with their hands; they only kick it.

The girls have dolls made of wood, with fur clothes.  The dolls look
like the little girls themselves.

Perhaps you would like to know about the houses the Eskimos live in.
They have summer houses and winter houses.  The summer house is a tent
made of skins.  The winter house is made of stones and earth covered
with snow.  It is not much higher than a man.  They have a strange way
of getting into these houses.  A long, narrow passage leads from the
door on the outside.  They must crawl on their hands and knees along
this passage.  Then they go through a small opening into the house.
The long passage keeps out the cold.

[Illustration:  A Winter House.]

There is only one room in the house.  Everything is done in this room.
They sleep and eat and cook in it.  The beds are of sealskins, and are
made on a bench along the wall.  There are no stoves in the house.  The
Eskimos use lamps to keep themselves warm and to give them light.  They
cook their food, too, with lamps.  The lamps give great heat, and the
houses are quite warm.

When the men kill a bear they have a party.  At the party everybody
sits around the lamp The bear is cut up and every one gets a piece.
Then the children sing and dance.  The Eskimos eat a great deal of
meat.  They kill seals and bears and birds for their meat.  They also
eat berries and seaweed.

There are no tables in Eskimo houses.  A large dish is set on the
floor.  The family sit round it and eat out of it.  They cut their meat
with knives made of bone.  Their cups are made of sealskin.

Do you know what a seal is?  It is an animal with thick fur.  Sometimes
it lives on the land and sometimes in the water.  The people in the
North kill it and make clothes of its skin.  Its fur is very warm and
makes fine jackets.  The Eskimos eat the flesh of the seal.  They make
knives and other things of its bones.

[Illustration:  Seals.]

Eskimo boys and girls have a funny kind of candy.  It is the red skin
of a bird's foot soaked in fat.  You would not care for this.  But the
Eskimo children eat it and like it.  The cold weather makes them like
to eat fat.




RUSSIA.

"Your nose! your nose, sir!"  This is a cry often heard in the streets
of Russia.

Russia is a very large country.  Part of it is in Europe.  A great part
of it is very cold.  When a person in the cold part of Russia goes out
riding in winter, he has to cover his face, all except the nose and
eyes.  Sometimes his nose gets very cold, and would freeze if some one
did not cry out, "Your nose, sir!"  Why?  When one's nose gets so cold,
it becomes numb.  It has no feeling.  One would not know that it was
freezing if some person did not cry out.  The cold nose must then be
rubbed with snow.  You would think this a strange way to keep it from
freezing, but it is the best way to take out the frost.

There are many kinds of houses in Russia.  The houses have to be made
very warm.  So they are built with double walls.  In rich people's
houses they have stoves like ours.  But in the poor people's houses the
stoves are built of brick.  They always burn wood, for coal costs too
much in Russia.  The stoves are sometimes built very high.  Often they
are as high as the ceiling.  Sometimes people lie on top of the great
stove to keep themselves warm.

[Illustration:  A Russian Carriage.]

In most of the houses in the country, they have no beds.  There are
benches along the wall, which they use both for chairs and beds.  In
some houses the children sleep on the floor on pieces of felt.

Most of the people in Russia are farmers.  They raise a great deal of
wheat.  The people in many other countries get wheat from Russia.

[Illustration:  A Russian Farmer and his Family.]

The children have to wear very warm clothes because it is so cold the
greater part of the year.  Their coats are lined with fur.  In winter
the children in the towns have great fun on the ice hills.  Ice hills
are made in all the towns.

First they build a high tower, and down from the top of it they make a
steep hill.  Blocks of ice are laid on this hill and water is poured
over them.  The water freezes, and thus the ice hill is made.  On one
side of the ice hill there is a place to draw up the sleds.  The boys
and girls start at the top, and down they go with merry laughing and
shouting!  So you see they have fine sport on their ice hills.

When the children are not playing on the ice hills, they go skating or
sleighing.

In some parts of Russia they have funny ferryboats.  When the rivers
are frozen over in winter, the boats cannot sail on them.  Then the
people use chairs instead of boats.  There are warm covers on the
chairs, and men on skates push them across the ice.  It costs less than
one cent to ride across a river in one of these chairs.

In St. Petersburg they build an ice palace every winter.  St.
Petersburg is the largest city in Russia.  It is the place where the
emperor lives.  The Emperor of Russia is sometimes called the Czar.

They make the ice palace with square blocks of ice.  They put the
blocks together and pour water between them.  When the water freezes,
the wall is solid like a wall of brick or stone.  Everything inside the
palace is made of ice.  There are ice stairs and ice tables, and ice
chairs, and beautiful flowers made of ice.  Warm rugs of fur are put on
the chairs so that people who sit on them may not be cold.  Often there
are grand balls and parties in this beautiful palace of ice.

[Illustration:  A Russian Family.]

In summer, too, the boys and girls in Russia have a good time.  The
boys have wrestling matches, for they are strong.

The girls have a game like ring-around-a-rosy.  They also have a game
much like our seesaw.  A girl stands on each end of a board.  Then one
girl jumps up and comes down on the board.  This sends the other girl
up, and in her turn she comes down on the board and sends the first
girl up.  And so they play on, going up and down.  This is not an easy
game to play.  It is some time before the girls can do it well.  Some
girls are so skillful at this game that they can keep jumping a long
time without falling.

Some people in Russia have very queer cradles for their babies.  One
kind of cradle is a basket which hangs by ropes from the ceiling.
Another kind of cradle is made of cloth sewed to a wooden frame.  This
cradle also hangs from the ceiling.

In some places in Russia the nurses who take care of the babies wear
dresses to show whether the baby is a girl or a boy.  If it is a boy
the nurse wears a blue dress.  If it is a girl the nurse wears a pink
dress.

There are not schools in all parts of Russia, but in some places there
are good schools, and the children learn to read and write.

I must not forget to tell you of the great bell in Russia.  It is the
largest bell in the world.  It is in Moscow, a very old city of Russia,
and it is called the great bell of Moscow.  But it has never been rung,
for it was cracked in the side when it was being made.  It is nearly
twenty feet high, and is now used as a chapel.

[Illustration:  The Great Bell at Moscow.]

The next largest bell in the world is also in Moscow.  This bell is
hung up in a church; and when they ring it, the sound is heard all over
the city like the rolling of thunder.




SWITZERLAND.

Switzerland is a land of mountains and hills and valleys and beautiful
lakes and streams.  Every year many people go from all parts of the
world to see the beautiful Swiss mountains and valleys.

Sometimes large masses of snow and ice, mixed with earth, fall or slide
down the sides of the mountains with a loud crash.  As they slide, they
tear away rocks and trees, and bury houses and villages beneath them.
These masses of snow and ice are called avalanches.

[Illustration:  An Avalanche.]

Snow falls all the year round on the tops of the mountains in
Switzerland.  As the snow falls, it packs down hard and changes into
ice.  At last it becomes a great mass of ice, and slides very slowly
down the sides of the mountains into the valleys.  These masses of ice
are called glaciers.  They move so slowly that you cannot tell they are
moving by looking at them.  But by driving a stake down, you can see,
after a long time, that the ice has moved a little way.

A great many of the people in Switzerland live by keeping cattle and
sheep and goats.  Their houses are in the valleys.  But in spring, when
the snow begins to melt and the grass begins to grow, the men drive
their flocks up the mountain sides to feed.  There they stay till the
end of summer.  The men take with them a supply of food, and they sleep
in huts on the mountain side.

There is a kind of goat in Switzerland called the chamois.  It lives
high up in the mountains.  It is very hard to hunt the chamois, for it
can go into places where a man cannot follow it.  It can leap very
nimbly from one rock to another.  It can go up and down a rough
mountain side.

[Illustration:  Chamois.]

In the summer the chamois feeds on herbs and flowers.  In winter it
eats the shoots and buds of pine trees.  It is very fond of salt.
There is a kind of stone in the mountains that is partly made of salt.
The chamois licks these stones to get the salt.

The chamois feed together in herds of fifteen or twenty.  One of them
is always on the watch to give notice if anybody comes to hunt them.
When it sees any one coming, it stamps on the ground with its fore feet
and makes a sharp cry.  Then all start off.  They leap from crag to
crag till they are far out of danger.

The skin of the chamois is very soft.  It is made into a fine, soft
leather.  This leather is called shammy leather.  Have you ever seen a
piece of shammy leather?  The flesh of the chamois is very good to eat.

The people in Switzerland use a great deal of milk and butter and
cheese for their food.  They also have potatoes and bread and fruit.
They eat very little meat.

The Swiss houses are made of wood.  Stones are often put on the roofs.
The stones keep the shingles from being torn off by the wind.  The
Swiss are very neat and clean.  On every window sill there are
flowerpots, for the Swiss are very fond of flowers.

[Illustration:  A Swiss House.]

In every village in Switzerland there is a school.  The Swiss have very
good schools.  The boys and girls must go to school when they are six
years old.  They learn all that we learn in our schools.  There are
also schools where the boys are taught trades.  The boys and girls go
to school only eight months in the year.  So they have four months'
vacation.

After school, the boys help to take care of the sheep and goats and
cattle.  The girls help about the housework.  All find plenty to do.

But the Swiss boys and girls have some time for play as well as for
work and school.  They often have holidays.  One of their greatest
holidays is the day that the men come home from the mountains with
their flocks.  The boys and girls go out to meet them.  They sing
songs.  The bells ring, and flags wave.  Everybody is merry and happy.

The children in Switzerland have a great many pretty toys.  Some of
their toys are made to play music.  The Swiss make all kinds of music
boxes.

In Switzerland, instead of a king, they have a president, as we have.
And in past times they had brave men who fought to make their country
free.  One of their great men was William Tell.  The Swiss love his
name as strongly as we love the name of George Washington.

[Illustration:  Swiss Dog Cart.]




HOLLAND.

The people who live in Holland are called Dutch.

There are many canals in Holland.  In some of the towns they have
canals instead of streets.  There are bridges across the canals for
people to go from one side of the street to the other.  In some of the
streets they have no sidewalks, and nothing between the houses but
canals.

[Illustration:  Canals in Holland.]

In most of the houses they have no carpets.  They scatter white sand on
the floor every morning.  They keep their houses very clean.  In their
kitchens they have open fireplaces, with fires blazing brightly.  Near
the fires they have footstools made of cork.  In some houses they have
fire boxes for warming their feet.  They can carry these boxes wherever
they like.  In cold weather they take their fire boxes to church.

Wherever you go in Holland you see windmills.  When you see them far
off they look like giants with their arms stretched out.  The arms are
shaped like ladders.  The arms have sails on them to catch the wind.
It is the wind that makes the arms go round.  With these windmills the
people pump up water, and grind corn, and saw wood.  The land is very
flat and low.  There are no swift running streams to turn the mills.
So the people build windmills.

[Illustration:  Windmills in Holland.]

The great wonder of Holland is the dikes.  Holland is near the sea, and
so dikes are built along the beach to keep the water out.  The dikes
are strong walls made of earth and stones.  They are very high, and so
thick that on the top there is a road to walk and ride on.  In some
parts of Holland there are houses also on the top of the dikes.  If it
were not for these dikes, the sea would flow in on the land.  Then it
would cover the houses and towns, and drown the people.

Did you ever hear the story of the little boy and the hole in the dike?
The little boy's name was Hans.  He lived near the great dikes along
the sea.  One day his mother sent him on an errand.

When he was coming home, he saw water flowing from a small hole in the
dike.  He knew that the water came from the sea.  Then he said to
himself, "If that water is not stopped, the hole will get larger.  Then
the sea will break in, and we shall all be drowned."

So Hans went up to the dike and put his hand against the hole, and
stopped the water.  This was very hard to do.  But the little fellow
held bravely on.

When night came and Hans did not come home, his father and some of the
people who lived close by went to search for him.  After many hours
they found him at the dike, keeping the water back with his hand.  Then
his father took him home, and the men stopped up the hole in the dike.
Everybody praised Hans for what he had done.

The little children in Holland are very pretty.  They have round, fat
faces, golden hair, and blue eyes.  The boys wear wide trousers and
little round caps.  The girls wear jackets and skirts and little caps
with gold braid.

Both boys and girls wear wooden shoes.  And what a noise they do make
with their wooden shoes when they run around!  They have great fun
playing their shoes are boats.  They sit on the sides of the canals and
take off their shoes and sail them on the water like little boats.
They tie strings to the shoes so that they can draw them in whenever
they like.

[Illustration:  Dutch Girl with Wooden Shoes.]

Dutch children do not wear shoes in the house, but wear slippers.  When
they go home after playing or from school they take off their shoes.
They leave them outside the door.  Would you not think it strange to
see rows of little shoes outside the doors?

Every Saturday the children clean their shoes.  But they do not shine
them as we do.  They wash them with soap and water, and dry them at the
fire.  If the sun shines, they hang them on a bush to dry.  When they
are dry, they are almost as white as snow.

Winter is a very merry season in Holland.  Then all the canals are
frozen, and there is great fun skating.  Everybody has skates, even the
little children.  And how merry and happy the boys and girls are,
skimming along on the ice!

[Illustration:  Skating in Holland.]

The men and women go to market on skates.  Those who do not wish to go
on skates go in sleds or chairs with runners on them.  The chairs are
pushed by skaters.

But the best fun of all is on the ice boats.  The ice boats have sails,
and can go very fast on the smooth ice.

The first day of skating every year is a holiday.  There is no school
that day, and everybody goes out skating, or riding in sleds or ice
boats.  How glad the boys and girls are when Skating Day comes!  What
fun they have!  And of course they have sleigh riding, for every family
has a sleigh.  The sleighs are made like shells, or boats, or swans.
When the people go sleigh riding at night, they carry lighted torches.

The greatest holiday the Dutch have is Santa Claus's day.  It is on
December 6.  All the stores are made pretty on that day.  Santa Claus
is in the windows.  He is dressed in red with white fur, and rides a
large horse.  The streets are crowded with boys and girls to see all
this.  They have Santa Claus cakes, and gingerbread made like chairs
and tables and fishes and horses and many other things.

At night Santa Claus rides on the roofs of the houses, and drops nice
things down the chimneys for good children.  And the boys and girls
leave their shoes near the fireplace for the things to drop in.

But they do not find many toys in their shoes, for Santa likes better
to give them cakes and money.  The Dutch boys and girls have not many
toys, but they play for hours with their shoes.  They use them for
boats, baskets, dishes, or beds for their dolls.

They have fine schools in Holland, and the boys and girls go to school
and learn the same things that we learn in our schools.

Some Dutch girls go to market to sell milk or cheese.  They have
donkeys to carry the milk or cheese.  Sometimes, the girls ride on the
donkeys' backs.

Some Dutch girls also go to market to sell fruit.  They carry the fruit
on a pole across the back of their shoulders.  A basket of fruit hangs
from each end of the pole, as you see in the picture.  The boys sell
milk.  They carry it about in little wagons drawn by dogs.  They are
very kind to the dogs.  They do not make them draw too heavy a load.

[Illustration:  A Dutch Milkmaid.]

When a baby is born in Holland, some one hangs a silk ball outside the
door.  If the baby is a boy, they hang up a red ball; and if it is a
girl, they hang up a pink ball.  Is not this a good way to let their
friends know they have a new baby?




PATAGONIA.

Have you ever seen a man with pictures on his body?  Perhaps you have
seen a sailor with a picture of a ship on his arm.  In Patagonia nearly
all the men and boys have pictures on their bodies.  Patagonia is in
the southern part of the world.  It is winter in that country when it
is summer here, and summer there when it is winter here.

Patagonia is a very flat country.  There are very few hills and no
large trees or fine flowers there.  But there is plenty of good grass,
which sometimes grows very tall.

The people in Patagonia are Indians.  They have red-brown skin, long
black hair, and small eyes.  The men are very tall.  Some of them are
seven feet high.  They paint their faces red and black, and tattoo
their arms.  They do this with a needle.  They put the needle into dye,
and then prick the skin with it.

The men wear a piece of cloth around their waists and a large cloak of
fur.  They sometimes wear boots made of the skin of horses' legs.  The
women wear gowns fastened at the neck with a pin.  They also have
cloaks like the men.

[Illustration:  Patagonians at Home.]

The boys and girls wear no clothes until they are four years old.
After they are four years old they wear the same kind of clothes their
fathers and mothers wear.  The young girls wear their hair in braids.
If their hair is not long enough, they make it longer by tying
horsehair to it.

The houses in Patagonia are tents made of skins.  There are rooms in
the tents, and each grown-up person has a room.  The fire is made
inside the tent on the floor.

The people in Patagonia eat gua-na-co and ostrich meat.  Some of the
people drink a kind of tea made from the leaves of a plant.  The leaves
are first crushed fine, then put into water.  They drink this tea
through a small tube with many holes in it.  The holes are so small
that the pieces of leaves cannot come through.  This tea is very good
to drink.  It makes the people very strong.

[Illustration: Guanaco.]

The women do all the work about the house.  They make the clothes,
carry home the wood for the fire, and bring water from the streams or
wells.

The men do nothing but hunt.  They hunt the guanaco and the ostrich.
The guanaco is nearly as large as a cow, and has a head like a camel.
Its flesh is good to eat, and the people make cloaks of its skin.

[Illustration:  Hunting Ostriches.]

The ostrich is the largest bird in the world.  Its legs are very long,
and it has a long neck.  It cannot fly, for its wings are too small,
but it can run very fast.  It can run faster than a horse.  It is hard
for the hunter to catch it.  He rides on horseback, and catches the
ostrich with a bo'las.  A bolas is a rope with a stone, a metal ball,
or a lump of hard clay fastened to each end.  The hunter swings one end
of the bolas round and round his head, and then hurls it with great
force at the ostrich.  It strikes the ostrich or catches it by the legs
and throws it down.  Then the hunter runs up and kills the ostrich with
a knife.  The hunters also hunt the ostrich with dogs.  Sometimes an
ostrich will spring suddenly up from the long grass almost in front of
the hunter and his dogs.  Then the dogs can easily catch it.

The ostrich makes a hole in the ground under a bush for its eggs.  This
is its nest.  The eggs are very large, and they are good to eat.  Its
flesh is also good to eat.  Of course you know ostrich feathers are
pretty for ladies' hats.  The feathers for hats are taken from the tail
and from the ends of the wings.  But the feathers of the ostrich in
Patagonia are not so fine and pretty as the feathers of the ostrich
found in Africa.

There is an animal in Patagonia called the puma.  It is like a cat, but
it is much stronger.  Often it kills and eats the guanaco.

[Illustration:  Pumas.]

The boys and girls in Patagonia have very few toys, but they are merry
and happy.  As the boys grow up, they soon learn to hunt; and then they
go out with their fathers to hunt the guanaco and the ostrich.

THE PYGMIES.

Perhaps you have read in fairy tales of very little people called
dwarfs.  There are old stories which tell us about very small men who
lived a long time ago in Africa.  They were called pygmies.  They were
only one foot high, and they built their houses with eggshells.  They
lived in holes in the ground.  They had goats and sheep which were much
smaller than themselves, and they had corn which they cut down with
axes, as we cut down trees.

This is what we are told about them; but, of course, those stories are
fables.  There never were men so small as one foot high.

But there are real people in Africa called pygmies.  They are very
small.  The men and women look as if they were boys and girls.  The men
are about four feet high.

There are a great many large forests in Africa.  It is in the forests
that the pygmies live.  The forests are so dark in many places that one
could not see to read at noonday.  Only a few white men have been in
the land of the pygmies and seen them.  They are shy, like children,
and hide their faces when spoken to.

Some of the pygmies are black and some are red.  They do not wear much
clothing.  They do not need much, for the weather is always very warm
in the country in which they live.  The men and boys wear only a strip
of cloth around their loins.

Many of the pygmies have no houses.  They wander from place to place,
and sleep on the ground under a bush.  But some of them have little
houses, or huts, built in the shape of beehives and about four feet
high.  They are covered over with long leaves.  The door is only about
a foot and a half high, just high enough for the pygmies to creep in.
Their beds are made of sticks stuck in the ground with other sticks
across them.

The pygmies live by hunting.  They do not shoot with guns, as we do.
They use bows and arrows, and they are very quick and clever at
shooting.  A pygmy will shoot off three or four arrows one after the
other so quickly that the last is flying away before the first has hit
the mark.

The pygmies are also very smart in making pits to catch the animals
they wish to kill.  They dig large holes and cover them with sticks and
leaves.  The animal comes along and falls into the pit and is caught.
The pygmies can kill elephants with their bows and arrows.  They first
shoot at the elephant's eyes until he is blind.  They then keep
shooting at him till he falls dead.

[Illustration:  A Village of Pygmies.]

The pygmies eat the flesh of some of the animals they kill.  They sell
or trade the fur and skin and ivory for arrows and knives.  They also
get tobacco and potatoes for their furs and skins.

They are also very good at fishing.  They can catch large fish with a
piece of meat fastened to a string.

The pygmies do not dig the ground or plant or sow anything.  Bananas
grow in Africa, and the pygmies are very fond of them.  Often they come
out of the forests to get bananas from the trees on which they grow.
If a pygmy sees a good bunch of bananas that he would like to have, he
shoots his arrow into the stalk.  When the owner of the tree sees the
arrow he knows how it came there.  So he leaves the stalk until the
pygmy takes it away.  Sometimes a pygmy pays for the bunch of bananas
with pieces of meat.  He wraps up a piece of meat in grass or leaves,
and fastens it to the stalk where he has cut off the bananas.

A pygmy can eat twice as many bananas as the largest white man.  He can
eat as many as sixty at one meal.

Though the pygmies are small, they are very brave, and all the other
people who live near them are very much afraid of them.




THE INDIANS.

Long, long ago, before Columbus found America, the Indians lived where
we live now, There were no cities or houses then, such as we have.
There were no farms or gardens or fences or roads.  A large part of the
country was covered with trees.  The rest was great grass plains and
swamps.

The Indians built their houses where they pleased, beside the rivers or
near the mountains or on the wide plains.  What sort of houses did they
live in?  They lived in tents made of skins.  The Indian tents were
called wigwams.

[Illustration:  An Indian Wigwam.]

There were many tribes of Indians.  Each tribe had a great many men and
women and children.  Some of the tribes lived in the north, some in the
south, some near the sea.  In nearly every part of the country there
were Indian tribes.  Often some of the tribes went to war with other
tribes.  They fought with bows and arrows and tomahawks.  The tomahawk
was a sort of hatchet.  The head of it was made of a stone with a sharp
edge.

[Illustration:  Indian Bow and Arrows.]

[Illustration:  Tomahawks.]

The Indians were very cruel in war.  When they killed a man, they cut
the skin and hair off the top of his head.  This was called scalping.

When about to go to war, they painted their faces to make themselves
look very fierce.  They also wore a band around their heads, and in
these they stuck some long feathers.

There are Indians still in some parts of our country, and many of them
live in wigwams.  They sleep in these wigwams, but they cook their food
outside.  They have no coal or stoves or fire-places.  Instead of coal
they use wood and dried grass.  They make their fire on the ground.
Their food is very simple.  They have meat and fish and berries, and
cakes made of corn.  The meat they eat is the flesh of the deer and
other wild animals.

[Illustration:  An Indian Chief.]

The Indians are of a copper color.  They are sometimes called "Red
Men."  They have high cheek bones, black eyes, and straight black hair.

The Indian men spend their time hunting and fishing.  They do not have
bows and arrows now.  They shoot with guns as white men do.

The Indian women do all the work. They cook the food, make the clothes,
and plant the corn.  They also put up the wigwams and take them down.
For the Indians do not live always in the same place, but often move
about.

An Indian woman is called a squaw, and an Indian baby is called a
pa-poose'.  You would wonder if you saw the Indian baby's cradle.  It
is a bag made of skin fixed to a flat board.  It is just large enough
for baby to fit in.  The little papoose is wrapped up warm and put into
the bag.  The mother carries the baby on her back in this cradle.
Often she hangs the cradle up on a branch of a tree.  Then the little
red baby swings while its mother is cooking or working in the field.

[Illustration:  An Indian Baby.]

The men, women, and children wear clothes made of skin.  They often
wear blankets as shawls are worn by white people.  Their shoes are made
of deerskin and have no soles.  They are called moccasins.

[Illustration:  Moccasins.]

In many places the Indians now have schools, and the little Indian boys
and girls go to school every day.  Our government has sent teachers to
teach them.  They learn to read and write and count.

But the Indian boys and girls learn a great many things at home.  Their
fathers tell them about birds and beasts and trees and rivers.  And
they teach the boys to hunt and fish, and train them up to be brave in
war.

The Indian boys and girls have a great many games.  The boys play with
bows and arrows.  They play "blindman's buff," and "hunt the slipper,"
and handball and football.  The girls take part in the football.  One
of their games is the "stick and ring" game.  The ring is made of skin
and is sometimes covered with beads.  Each boy has a stick, and he
throws it at the ring while it is rolling along the ground.  The game
is to send the stick through the ring.  Every boy tries to strike every
other boy's stick to stop it from going through the ring.

The Indian boys sometimes play at fighting battles.  They form
themselves into two armies, and one army fights against the other.
They fight with balls of wet clay.  Often the battle lasts two or three
hours.

Indian girls have dolls, and they dress them and sing them to sleep.
They play "house," and often have doll-house moving.

[Illustration:  Indian Girls.]

Indian men and boys are fond of swimming, and they are very good
swimmers.  They are also fond of sailing in their canoes.   The canoe
is made of the bark of the birch tree.  The Indians paddle their
canoes.  They can make them go very fast.

Many of the Indians now live in houses and have farms the same as white
men, and they raise corn and vegetables and fruit.  They have horses
and cows and sheep as other farmers have.  And we may hope that before
long the Red Men will live in the same way as white men, and be as well
off and as happy.




THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS.

The Philippine Islands are far away on the other side of the earth,
near China.  There are a great many of these islands.  Most of them are
small.  But some of them are large islands, and many people live on
them.  The largest of the islands is called Luzon.  The largest town in
this island is Manila.

Many tribes of people live in the Philippine Islands.  Each tribe has a
language of its own.

It is very warm in these islands.  So the people need but little
clothing.  Their houses are not very high.  The highest house is only
two stories.  In some parts they have strange windows in their houses.
The panes are not made of glass, as in our houses.  They are made of
oyster shells.  But they are not like our oyster shells.  They are very
thin--so thin that the light can come through them nearly as well as
through glass.  The shell is made square, and fits in the window like a
pane of glass.  Sometimes the sides or walls of the upper stories are
made of frames, with oyster shells for panes.  The people can slide
these walls back, so as to let the cool air into the rooms.

[Illustration:  A Philippine House.]

There is one tribe in the islands called the Moro tribe.  The people of
this tribe have very strange houses.  They build their houses in the
water near the shore.  They build them on the top of long poles.  The
first stories are high above the water.  The people use ladders to go
up to them.  These houses are built of bamboo.

The bamboo is very useful in the country where it grows.  It is a kind
of reed, and grows very tall.  It has joints like the joints of a corn
stalk.  It is not solid like a corn stalk, but is hollow inside.  It is
so thick and strong that the people make houses of it and all kinds of
furniture.

[Illustration:  Bamboo.]

The Moro men are good sailors and swimmers.  They are also good divers.
They dive into the water for pearls and coral.  They can stay under the
water for two or three minutes at a time.  The children also are good
swimmers.  They spend a great deal of time in the water.

There is another tribe called the Man'gy-ans.  These people live in the
mountains.  They have black hair and flat noses.  They are very strong,
for they spend most of their time out of doors.

Some months of the year they do not live in houses.  They sleep under
trees.  But other months of the year it rains very much.  Then they
sleep in houses.  Their houses are made of poles with roofs of leaves.

The Mangyan women and girls wear a very strange kind of dress.  It is
made of cords coiled around their waists.  The cords are narrow strips
of rattan braided together.  Rattan is the stem of a plant which grows
to a very great height.  It sometimes grows a hundred feet high.  It is
as thick as a man's wrist, and it is very tough and strong.  The people
split the rattan into thin strips.  With these they make baskets, seats
of chairs, walking canes, ropes, and many other things.

The Mangyan men are good hunters.  They hunt an animal called the
tim'a-rau.  It is like a buffalo.  They shoot it with bows and arrows.

There are a great many large forests in the Philippines, and there are
very fine trees in them.  The most useful of the plants or trees is the
bamboo.  I have already told you about it.  The cocoanut palm is also a
very useful tree.  The nuts give food and drink and oil.

[Illustration:  A Philippine woman carrying water.]

On one of the islands there is a wonderful plant called the pitcher
plant.  Its leaves are in the shape of pitchers.  Some of the pitchers
have lids, and are large enough to hold a pint of water.

In the Philippines they raise coffee, bananas, sugar, tobacco, and
cotton.  One of their most useful plants is the plant from which they
get hemp for making ropes and cords.  This plant is called "ab'a-ca" by
the people in the Philippines, and its hemp is called Manila hemp.

There is a great deal of rice grown in the Philippines.  Rice is the
food that most of the people live on.

There are buffaloes in the Philippines.  The people use them for riding
and for carrying loads.  They have also deer, goats, and hogs.

[Illustration:  A Buffalo at Work.]

In some parts of the islands they have a strange way of fishing.  They
fill baskets with a kind of mixture in which they put poison.  Then
they throw the baskets into the water.  The fish become stupid after
eating the poison.  Very soon they rise to the top of the water, where
the people catch them.

Manila is a large town with strong walls and a deep moat, or ditch,
around it.  There are eight gates in the wall and bridges across the
moat.

The men in Manila wear trousers and shirts; but they wear the shirts
outside.  The women wear skirts with long trains, and waists with very
full and flowing sleeves.  They wear scarfs or handkerchiefs around
their necks, with two of the corners hanging down their backs.  They
never wear hats.

[Illustration:  Women of Luzon.]

In a few of the islands there are schools, and the children learn to
read and write; but in many other parts there are neither schools nor
churches.  As the islands now belong to the United States, there will
soon be many more schools, and the children will be able to learn
everything that is taught in our schools.




BANGALA

Far away in Africa, near where the pygmies live, there is a great river
called the Kongo.  The land on either side of this river for many miles
is called the Kongo Valley.

There are hundreds of miles of great woods in this valley.  These woods
are not like our woods.  They are very thick with vines and plants.
There are also a great many kinds of trees.

In the woods are birds with very bright colors.  There are birds called
sunbirds.  Often green, yellow, scarlet, and purple feathers are found
on these birds.  What a pretty sight it must be to see them flit about
in the sun!

There are also many kinds of pretty flowers in the woods.  These
flowers are as gay in color as the birds.

Many tribes of negroes live in the Kongo Valley.  They live in huts
made of mats.  The mats are made of strong grass.  The grass is first
twisted into cords.  Then the cords are braided into mats.

The people also use mats for their beds; but they do not put the mats
on the ground.  They tie them to a frame raised a little above the
ground.

[Illustration:  Kongo Negroes at a Mission School.]

These negroes also make baskets, bowls, pots, and wooden spoons.  The
bowls and pots they make out of clay.

It is very warm all the year round in the Kongo Valley.  So the people
wear very little clothing.  They rub their bodies with palm oil.

They have a funny way of wearing their hair.  While they are young
their hair is braided.  Then it is twisted into all sorts of knots and
shapes.  They do not untwist it, but keep it so always.  They think
these queer knots and shapes are very pretty.

[Illustration:  A Kongo Village.]

The women do all the hard work.  They cook the food.  They do the other
housework.  They plant the corn and beans.

[Illustration:  Headdress of Kongo Women.]

The men spend a great deal of time in fishing.  They also hunt and kill
elephants to get their tusks for ivory.  There are many elephants in
the Kongo Valley.  They roam about in large herds.  It must be a hard
task to kill an elephant!

One of the tribes in the Kongo Valley is called the Bangala tribe.  The
men are tall and strong and fierce.  They are always fighting with
other tribes.  This makes the other tribes very much afraid of them.

The negroes of this tribe have a strange way of making friends with a
white man.  They will do him no harm if he is willing to be their
"blood brother."

This is the way they make a white man their blood brother.  The black
man takes a limb of palm tree which has two branches.  With one branch
in his hand, he falls on the ground before the white man.  The white
man takes hold of the other branch.  Then the black man splits the limb
into two parts with his knife.

After this is done, an old man of the tribe comes to the white man and
the black man.  He puts the white man's arm over the black man's arm.
When their arms are together, he makes a small cut in each arm.  He
makes this cut to draw blood.  Then the old man puts salt and the dust
of banana leaves into the blood, and rubs both arms together.  The
black man and the white man are then blood brothers.

These people have also a strange way of taking care of their canoes.
When they are not using them, they keep them under water.  They say
that the canoes will last longer if kept under water.




THE AMAZON VALLEY.

Perhaps you have heard of the Amazon River.  It is the largest river in
the world.  It is four thousand miles long, and more than fifty miles
wide where it flows into the sea.  This river is in Brazil.  Brazil is
far south of us.

[Illustration:  Amazon Indians.]

There are great forests along the banks of this river.  They run back
from the river for hundreds of miles.  They are the largest forests in
the world.

A great many kinds of trees grow in these forests.  Some of the trees
are very high.  Often the trees are covered with vines on which
beautiful flowers grow.

Wax-palm trees, breadfruit trees, and rubber trees are found in these
forests.  Wax is taken from the leaves of the wax palm.

We make rubber from the rubber tree.  A cut is made in the side of the
tree with a knife.  From this cut a white juice flows.  This juice is
like milk.  It is caught in a cup.  After a while the juice gets hard.
Then it is rubber.

A great many strange animals and birds are found in these forests.
There is the sloth, which lives in the trees.  It has hooked claws for
holding on to the branches.  It hangs on to a branch with its back
downward.  When it goes to sleep, it rolls itself up like a ball.  It
moves very slowly, and that is why it is called the sloth.

[Illustration:  A Sloth.]

These forests are full of monkeys and parrots.  Perhaps you have seen a
parrot.  I dare say you have not seen more than two or three parrots at
one time.  But in these forests there are flocks of parrots.  They fly
from tree to tree, and are very wild.

[Illustration:  A Parrot.]

There are many kinds of them.  Some are red, some are green, some are
blue, and some are all these colors.

Monkeys chatter and parrots screech.  What a noise they must sometimes
make!

But besides the parrots and the monkeys, there are humming birds and
butterflies.  You know that the humming bird is a very small bird, but
humming birds are found in these forests no larger than a bee.  The
butterflies are the most beautiful in the world.

The people who live in these forests are called Indians.  They do not
often let white men come among them.  Their skin is copper color, like
the Indians of our country.  Their hair is black and straight.  They
are not as tall as our Indians, but their bodies are finely formed.
They have large, full chests.  Their hands and feet are small and
nicely shaped.

They keep themselves very clean.  The men and women, the boys and
girls, are all fond of bathing.  The first thing they do in the morning
is to take a bath in the nearest river.

Strange to say, some of them paint their faces and bodies.  They take
the juice of a tree which will stain a blue black.  They pour this
juice on their heads, and let it run in streams down their backs.  They
also put red and yellow in large round spots on their cheeks and
foreheads.

The men braid their hair, and wear it long, down their backs.  They
part their hair and wear combs.  But the women do not part their hair
and do not wear combs.  They pull the hair out of their eyebrows.  They
make holes in their ears.  In these holes they wear, instead of rings,
a little piece of grass with feathers fastened to it.

[Illustration:  A Painted Amazon Indian.]

Their houses are made of logs of wood set in the ground as posts.  They
put other logs on top of these for a roof.  Then they cover these logs
with palm leaves.  There are no windows, and they use mats for doors.

They sleep in hammocks.  These they make of string.  They make the
string by twisting the leaves of a tree.

They have plenty of pans and pots, both large and small.  These pans
and pots they make of clay.

First, they soften the clay and knead it.  Then they shape it into pots
and pans.  It is then dried in the sun.  When the pots and pans are dry
they are put in a hot fire.  This makes them hard and strong.

The chief food of these Indians is a kind of flour made from the root
of a plant.  They also eat fish.  A great many fish are found in the
rivers.  These they catch and eat.  They also dry fish and then smoke
them over a fire.  The smoked fish keep good a long time.

These Indians sail on the rivers in canoes.  But their canoes are
heavy.  They are not light, as the canoes of our Indians are.  They are
not made of birch bark.

These Indians make an entire canoe out of a single tree.  The canoe is
made thick so as not to be broken by knocking against snags and rocks.