 Preface of Around the World with the Children by Frank G. Carpenter. This is a LibriVox recording. While LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Betty B. Around the World with the Children by Frank G. Carpenter. Preface. This book is an introduction to the study of geography. Its aim is to give the child his first view of the world as his home. To instill into him a lively interest in people and things outside his own environment. And thereby to prepare his mind for geography as a serious study. The plan of the work is educational throughout. The pupil studies first his own home where he finds that his chief wants our food, shelter and clothing. He then goes out to visit his little brothers and sisters in other parts of the world to see their homes. And to learn how their wants are supplied. The pupil acquires his knowledge by observation. He learns something of the size and shape of the earth as he travels over it. He learns about the poles in the equator when he visits the children who live near them. And as he passes through the several zones he learns about their climates and plants and animals. In the same way he acquires information concerning some of the world's chief physical features. He learns of islands in Japan and the Philippines and of plains and the flatlands of China and Holland. He is taught the nature of the desert as he rides over the Sahara and of mountains and valleys as he ascends the Alps. He learns about oceans as he crosses the Pacific and the Atlantic and about rivers by following the Rhine from its source to the ocean. By the use of the globe he learns the location of the continents and oceans and of many other land and water forms. He visits the children of each of the great races and finds that they are not mere curiosities but live boys and girls whom he is glad to know as his world brothers and sisters. He has shown that their wants are the same as his wants and that many of the things they use are made in his own country and sent over the ocean to them. He learns also that he is dependent upon the people of other countries for many of the things that he uses and that every part of the world is more or less closely related to him. Throughout the book the definitions of some of the more important geographic terms are here and there given and in this and in other ways the child is prepared for his future study of geography. End of Preface Chapter 1 of Around the World with the Children by Frank G. Carpenter. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. Chapter 1. Around the World with the Children. The great ball on which we live. The world is our home. It is also the home of many, many other children, some of whom live in far away lands. They are our world brothers and sisters. Some of them live in countries that are hot all the year round. Others have homes where for most of the year the water is frozen and the land is covered with snow. There are still others who live in places where it is neither too hot nor too cold. Suppose we make a journey to some of these countries in order to see the strange things that are there and to learn about the people. But before we start we must know something about the world as a whole and something about homes. The earth, as we sometimes call our world, is round like a ball. It does not seem round to us. It seems more nearly flat. Think of a tiny ant crawling about over a large balloon. It can see only a very small part of the surface and the balloon certainly does not seem round to it. The earth on which we live is many millions times larger than any balloon. And so, although we know that the earth is round, every place seems more or less flat to us. The earth is so big that if we should try to go around it on foot we should be years on the way. The boys and girls who stayed at home would be far along in the high school before we could get back. But can people walk all the way around the earth? They might go on for a while but no matter which way they went they would in time come to a great body of water called the ocean. The world is made up of water and land and when people really go around the earth they must travel much of the way upon the water. In ships. Food, shelter and clothing. What must any part of the world have in order to be a good home for man? What does every person need in order to live in comfort? Let us imagine that we are far out in the fields. The air is bitter cold and the wind is blowing. Snow is falling and by and by it will turn to sleet and rain. We are almost naked. We have had nothing to eat and are suffering from hunger as well as cold. Suddenly the queen of the fairies floats down from the clouds and offers us three wishes. What shall we choose? I shall wish for food because I am hungry, says Peter. I shall choose clothes to keep out the cold, says John. And I shall ask for a house to shelter me from the wind, the snow and the rain, says little Nell with the shiver. Now everyone needs food, clothing and shelter. The lives of most men on the earth are spent in getting these things. In our travels we shall wish to learn what our world brothers and world sisters eat and where their food comes from. We shall wish to see the houses they dwell in and how they are built. We shall wish also to know what clothing they use to protect themselves from the heat and the cold. The United States as our home. Let us now find where our country lies on the earth. We can learn this by looking at the globe. The globe is a ball covered with a map of the earth. It shows where the great bodies of water and land are. The great bodies of water are called oceans. There are five oceans, the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian, the Arctic and the Antarctic. The great bodies of land are called continents. There are seven of them, North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and the Antarctic continent. Our country is a part of the continent of North America. Its name is the United States of America. On both sides of it there are oceans and over them ships can easily go to other parts of the world. United States is a big country. It contains almost everything needed for food, shelter and clothing. In the United States there are thousands of farms with cattle to supply us with meat and grain fields to give us our bread. There are also great fields of cotton and broad pastures for the sheep that furnish the wool for our clothes. Great forests and mines in parts of our country furnish the wood and iron that are needed to make houses. Our country produces so much that is good for food, shelter and clothing that it supports millions of people. In it are many cities and villages and there are railroads from one place to another. There are thousands of homes and these homes are of many different kinds. Homes in country, village and city. Suppose we should ask some of our boys and girls to describe their homes. One boy who comes from a farm says, My home is a house made of wood. It is in the country and is surrounded by green fields where our horses, cattle and sheep are feeding. There is a big barn near the house with a great haymow where we children sometimes play. And there are piles of straw in the barnyard. There are fences around the farm and in front of it is a wide road that leads to the town and to the school. Much of our food comes from the farm but we also buy a great deal at the store. The next one to tell us about a home is a girl from a village. She says, Our house has a green yard in front of it and a garden behind it. There is a fence between the house and the street. The house is made of wood. It is painted white and has green window blinds. A friend of mine lives in a brick house next door and just across the street there is a house built of stone. The children who live on our street often play together outside the houses and yards but each family has a house and yard of its own. We raise vegetables in our garden and buy some of our food from the farmers but we get most of it at the store. All of our clothing comes from the store. Now let us hear from a boy who lives in the city. He says, My house has no fields about it. It has no yard in front or garden behind. I have to walk or ride a long way through streets lined with houses before I can see gardens or farms. My home is in an apartment house. I live high up in a brick building as tall as the tallest tree of the forest. Our home is so high above the street that we always ride up and down in an elevator. The elevator is moved from story to story by machinery. There are many other families who have their homes in the building. Some live on our floor, others live above us and still others live below us. They also ride up and down in the elevator. Our flat has eight rooms all on one floor. There is a kitchen, a dining room, bedrooms and a parlor. There is one little room where we children play. These rooms are our home. We get everything we eat and wear from the stores. We often ride on the streetcars when we go shopping and we play in the parks or public playgrounds. End of chapter one. Chapter two of Around the World with the Children by Frank G. Carpenter. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. Chapter two. We go to the cold lands. Let us go this morning to visit some of our brothers and sisters of the cold lands. The people called Eskimos live in lands that are very cold. We will visit them. Their homes are far away in the northern part of the world. By looking at the globe we can see where they are. How should we go to Eskimo land? It is so far away that no one can walk there. It is so far that it would take us days and weeks if we could use cars and steamships. But there are no railways in Eskimo land and near the shore the ocean is covered with ice for most of the year so that ships cannot make their way through. Let us however pretend we are there. We put on our winter clothes, then we shut our eyes and try to believe that we have flown in an airship to the northern part of the world. Now we open them. Behold, we are in Eskimo land. How cold it is. We have put on thick furs, our frost is biting our noses, and our breath comes forth like steam. The sun is shining but it is so pale that we can look at it without blinking. Its rays are not warm at this time of the year. It is low down in the sky and can be seen only a few hours each day. Is this not a strange land? Everywhere we turn we see snow and ice. The mountains are white and the low bushes on them are loaded with snow. On the plains there is no ground to be seen. Where the snow has been blown off by the wind we see only thick silver gray moss. The earth below the moss is frozen many feet deep. The rivers are frozen and the ice covers the ocean far out from the land. This is so everywhere in Eskimo land during more than half of the year. In the short summer only the snow melts and flowers and grass come. Ikwa and Tuki As we stand in the snow we see a white mound some distance away. It is twice as high as our heads and it looks like half of a mighty snowball. Not far away are some furry creatures rolling about. They are playing with four big shaggy dogs. We hear them laugh and shout. Those are Eskimo children and the white mound is one of their winter houses. It is made of snow blocks which have been cut out and piled up in a ring. They turn smaller as the house rises until at last a round block of snow forms the top. The cracks are then filled with loose snow and all is soon frozen hard. Now we are closer to the children and we can see their rosy yellow faces peeping out from their thick fur clothes. Their slanting black eyes are twinkling with fun. Their white teeth shine as they throw back the long black hair from their faces. Or with laughter as they romp with the dogs in the snow. The Eskimos are a merry people and they laugh a great deal. At length the children see us. They drive the dogs back and come towards us. The boy tells us his name is Iqwa and that the child beside him is Tuki, his sister. Both are dressed in thick furs. Both wear fur coats called parkas with hoods sewed to the back. Tuki has the same kind of long fur boots as the brown trousers that her brother wears. They show us how they can draw their hoods together over their faces when the weather is bitter cold. By pulling a string they can make them so tight that only a crack is left through which they can see. The children ask us if we should like a ride over the snow. They call up their dogs and hitch them to a long, low sled. The sled has runners made of pieces of wood and bone tied together with skin strings. They are made of strips of raw hide cut from the skins of wild animals. Iqwa has a long whip of seal skin. The dogs gallop with us down to the ocean. Iqwa and Tuki race along with them over the ice and then bring us back to the house and ask us to enter. We look for the door. There is none such as our houses have but Iqwa and Tuki lead the way to a thin block of ice leaning against a snowdrift. They pull down the block and the hole in the snow. The block is the door and the hole is the entrance to a tunnel that leads into the house. The Eskimo children then pull their hoods over their heads. They get down on their hands and knees and crawl into the tunnel. We get down on our hands and knees and crawl after them. We soon find out why they pulled up their hoods over their heads for some snow from the roof of the tunnel falls down on our necks. What a queer home to live in. Iqwa calls it an igloo. It seems as if we were inside the half of a large eggshell. The walls and floor are of snow and a long ledge across one side of the room is built up of snow. It is covered with many soft skins of seals, polar bears and reindeer or caribou. That snow ledge is the bed on which all sleep at night. It is also the sitting place in the daytime. The inside comes in through a piece of thin white skin which is frozen tight in its place over a hole in the ice wall. The skin has come from the inside of a whale. An Eskimo family can build a snow house in an hour or two. After living in one place a few days they may move on and build another igloo where the hunting or fishing is better. But most of the time in the long winters they live in a hut of the same shape this hut is made of stones, earth, snow and skins. The air is warm in our Eskimo house although there is no stove to be seen. In place of a stove there is a big bowl made of stone in which seal oil is burning. This forms a lamp which is used for cooking and for warming the house. The flame comes from a ring of dried moss that runs around the inside of the bowl. The moss is the wick of the lamp. The flame makes a smoke and the soot falls upon us. Our hands and faces are soon smuddy and so are ikwas and tukis. Clothes of the Eskimos After we have been a short while in the igloo the father and mother crawl in. They are dressed in furs like the children. The father drags a big seal behind him. He has just caught it through a hole in the ice. Tuki and ikwa shout when they see it for the seal means a good dinner. The father drops the seal on the floor. He then takes off most of his clothes. Ikwa and Tuki take off their clothes too for the Eskimos go almost naked when inside the house. We now see that each person wears two suits, one over the other. The outer suit is made with the fur outside. The other suit is finer. It is made of soft skin with the fur inward. Ikwas inside trousers and stockings are made of the skin of a young reindeer. Tuki's inside parka is a bird skins. Before Tuki throws her clothing aside she takes some things out of her pockets. See? Her pockets are two pouches sewed to the shoulders of her outside parka and two little bags one sewed on each of her boots. When the pockets are full they make her seem very large. Now look at the mother who is standing beside us. Her parka has a great lump on her back. She turns around and we see that the lump is a baby. Its red face is peeping out of the fur behind its mother's neck. When it wakes up and sees us it does not know whether to laugh or cry. An Eskimo baby is always carried that way. The mother's coat is made very full and it has a long bag of soft fur at the back. The little one is put into the bag and held up by a belt which its mother has tied tightly and sometimes the baby lies naked in the soft fur. Sometimes it wears only a little fur shirt and a cap. An Eskimo dinner. While we play with the baby the mother skins the seal and boils the meat over the lamp. She uses a pot half filled with snow water. She has had to melt snow to get water for there is no rain and all the springs and small streams are frozen. But see the mother is stirring the pot down. The water is boiling and the fat seal meat bobs up and down. She has poured the blood of the seal into the pot and the stew is now as thick as pea soup. Tukey lays some skins on the floor and we sit down upon them around the pot and eat dinner. We use our fingers to put the seal meat into our mouths and to hold the bones while gnawing the flesh off. Our friends give us the pieces that have the most help to keep them warm. There is no salt in the soup and none is used in the cooking. The Eskimos eat little else than meat and they do not like salt. After the meat is all gone we drink the soup from cups made of the horns of musk oxen. We then finish our meal with some berries which the Eskimos have dried during the short summer season. The Eskimos often make pemmican. This is dried reindeer meat ground with fat. It will keep good a long time. They use the flesh of the bear, the fox, the wolf and the muskrat for food and they sometimes catch beavers and wild birds and eat them. In the short summer wild currents blueberries and strawberries are found here and there. The Eskimos dry the blueberries and store them away. They also dry meat and fish for winter use. Now and then they kill a walrus and they are so big that one will supply the winter food for many Eskimos. Long nights and long days. After our meal we go out of the igloo and find that the sun has gone down. It is only 2 o'clock in the afternoon and Tukey tells us that night has begun and the sun will not rise again until 10 o'clock the next morning. Still it is not dark. The twilight lasts a long long time after sunset and it will begin again long before sunrise. It is now winter in the cold lands and the sun shines but a few hours each day. We see the dogs at the back of the hut. Each dog is curled himself around like a ball with his nose hidden under his great bushy tail. The children harness them to the sleds and we take a merry ride over the ice and snow. We play games and run races. We hitch one another to the sleds and play the Eskimos call it playing dog. They have never seen any kind of horse. After a while we crawl back into the igloo. We sit down on the skins and Iqois's father tells us that the days are growing shorter. Soon the sun will not rise at all and we shall have night all the time for several weeks. When daylight comes again it will be at first for only a few minutes a day. Then the days will grow longer and longer and the nights will grow shorter and shorter. By and by when summer comes there will be darkness for only two or three hours in each 24. A little later there will be no night at all for the sun will shine all the time. During that season Iqois and Tuki can sleep in the light as soundly as we do in the darkness. As the summer comes on in Eskimo land the sun's rays grow warmer and part of the time it is hot. Then the snow melts except high up in the mountains. The ice breaks up on the rivers and fields of ice blocks float crashing down to the ocean. In mid-summer this cold northern part of the world is wonderfully beautiful. The bright warm sun causes plants to spring up. There is green moss on the lowlands. The banks of the rivers and the sides of the mountains are covered with wild flowers. There are wild roses, dandelions, wild peas and blue violets. There are butter cups and forget-me-nots. The grass grows fast in the long sunlight. Later in the season there are wild blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, raspberries, salmon berries and currants. The Eskimos go out in boats to catch fish. They have one kind of boat which they call the kayak. It is made of wood and bone covered with skins. In the top of the boat is a hole in which an Eskimo sits and paddles. Iqois shows us his kayak. When he sits in it the cover is so tight around his waist that he can turn over and over with the boat. He does this so quickly that only a little water gets in. There is plenty of game in the summer and the children help their parents in shooting and trapping. There are wild birds that come to eat the berries and there are deer and other animals that feed on the grass, moss and bushes. There are also mosquitoes and gnats and the air seems full of living things flying about. In the summer, the Eskimos often sleep out of doors. The warm weather lasts for several months then the sun begins to drop lower and lower. The days grow shorter and shorter and soon the country once more has its long nights. Jack Frost comes again and the Eskimos move back to their huts of earth and stones. But when they go trough and trough and trough and trough and trough and trough and stones. But when they go traveling they build igloos of snow like the one we are now in. We go, a hunting. It is morning again. We have slept soundly between the soft skins on the snow ledge. The sun is lighting up the snow house. The rays come in through the little window of skin. Another short day has begun. Iqwa's father tells us he is going to hunt seal and that he will take us in Iqwa and Tuki along. The seal goes to the sled and we are soon gliding over the ice and snow. The seal swim about in the water under the ice but they must have air to breathe so they break holes in the ice with their noses and come to these holes now and then. Sometimes they crawl out through them and lie on the ice. They hide their little seals under the snow on the ice near the holes. Iqwa's father knows where some of these breathing animals are. He is quiet while he stands near it with his spear in his hand. By and by the water in the hole moves and a white nose pokes its way through. The Eskimo throws his spear and it goes deep into the seal. It catches in the flesh like a fish hook. There is a long skin line tied to the spear and the man has the other end of this line in his hand. We all catch hold of the line and help him drag the seal out on its flippers. Iqwa's father calls out to us to keep the line tight. Then with a bone club he strikes the seal on the nose and kills it. It is a fine fat seal covered with silver gray fur. We bring up the dogs and load it on the sled. On the way back home we overtake Iqwa's mother. She is hooked to large fishes through a hole in the ice. She is also a beautiful fox in one of her traps. As we feel the software of the fish we wonder whether its skin will not be sent to our country. Perhaps it may be made into a warm muff. We put the fox and the fishes on our sled and Iqwa's father cracks his long whip. The dogs start off with a howl. We follow behind and are soon back again in our little snow home. During our stay in this cold land of the far north we go hunting or fishing almost every day. One morning we see several walruses on the ice not far far. These animals look a little like seals but each is as big as an ox. The walrus has a great head and a wide mouth with a long tusk hanging down on each side. His tusks are as big around as a man's wrists and about two feet in length. He uses them to break the ice. The tusks are of ivory and bring a good price. A walrus has so much meat on him that a single one will make a meal for a whole village. At another time we see a white polar bear in the distance and run to tell Iqwa's father. The Eskimos set out to hunt it but it has too long a start and they do not catch it. We see also musk oxen and herds of caribou which look much like reindeer. The children tell us much about the habits of the wild animals. Iqwa has learned how to hunt and Tuki knows how the skins and fur should be cured so that they can be made into clothing. There are no schools in these far away cold lands. The children do not know how to read or write although they can carve figures on ivory and make pictures on pieces of skin. Toys and games in the cold lands. The Eskimo children are fond of sports. They are as strong as we are and can run quite as fast. If one of our boys should wrestle with Iqwa he would soon find himself flat on his back in the snow with a furry face looking at him out of its black twinkling eyes. Iqwa brings out his bow and arrows and the boys shoot at a mark. They throw spears and play at seal hunting. They also play at deer shooting. This is great fun. Our friends have many deer horns from the animals their parents have killed. They stick these deer horns in two rows in the snow on the side of a hill. Then they drag their sleds to the top and coast down between the rows of deer horns with their bows and arrows as they fly past. They try to hit as many horns as they can and sometimes they turn around and shoot back. In this game they play that the deer horns are really live animals and the one who shoots the most deer wins the game. Iqwa can stand upright on his sled and shoot as he coasts down the hill. He always hits two or three deer on the way. These children have another game which they often play inside the woods during the long winter nights. This is the pin and stick game. The stick is a bone. It has many holes in the sides. A string is tied to it and there is an ivory pin at the other end of the string. The game is to swing the stick up by the string and catch it on the pin in one of the holes when it comes down. We try again and again but we cannot get the pin in the holes. When Iqwa plays he catches the stick almost every time. She keeps her playthings in the pockets on her shoulders or in those in her boots. She has a toy woodpecker on a quill which she makes peck by pulling a string and also a toy bear and two toy dogs harnessed by their tails to a sled. All of Tukey's playthings are made of bone. The Eskimo girls have much fun when they play housekeeping together. Tukey shows us how she can dress and undress her doll and what a funny baby Tukey's doll is. Her body is a piece of walrus tusk. Her father has carved out a head at one end of the tusk and put in a black line for the mouth and two black dots for eyes. The doll has a pair of bone legs with boots of fox skin and trousers of fur. It has a little fur coat with a hood just like the one Tukey wears. Its home is a pouch inside Tukey's coat and she carries it wherever she goes. Our trade with the Eskimos have gone with Iqwa and his family to their home in an Eskimo village on the shore of the ocean. There is great excitement here this morning. A trading ship is fast in the ice not far away. It is manned by Americans who have come to these cold lands of the north to shoot whales and to trade. They have knives, fish hooks, needles, axes and guns. They have cloth of bright colors, glass beads, pocket mirrors and other things which are the delight of brothers and sisters. Our Eskimo friends bring out their beaver skins and fox skins and skins of muskrat, mink and other wild animals. They load them on the sleds and drive the dogs down to the ship. This is the first time they have ever seen so large a ship or one that has so many goods and they are anxious to trade. Tukey's mother wants to get thread and cloth and needles of steel. She says that our needles are better than the bone needles of Eskimo land and our cloth is easy to sew. All of the skins used for clothing have to be chewed soft to allow the bone needles to go through. The chewing is done by the women. It takes so long that Tukey has to work a whole week to make one suit for her doll. Iqwa trades a white fox skin for a hatchet and a four-bladed knife and Tukey gets a looking glass and a piece of red ribbon for some bird skins she has cured. Iqwa's father gets many kinds in exchange for his stock of furs. The Eskimos are delighted with their new tools and supplies and the sailors are glad to get so many fine skins. The ship will carry the skins to the United States and perhaps the furs that we shall wear next winter will be made of these very skins. End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 of Around the World with the Children by Frank G. Carpenter This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. The Poles and the Equator How cold it is here at the northern part of the earth. If we were to fly clear around this part of the world we should find snow and ice everywhere. It is also very cold in the far southern part of the earth. The most northern and the most southern places in the world are two points called the Poles. By looking at the globe you can see where the Poles are. The North Pole is the most northern place on the earth. The South Pole is the most southern place. The hottest parts of the earth are midway between the two coldest parts. They are in a great hot belt that lies on both sides of the Equator. The Equator is a line around the earth just half way between the two Poles. You may see where it is by looking at the globe. There are many countries on or near the Equator and they are all countries. There are some very hot regions in the continent of Africa. Let us now imagine that we are making a visit to one of these countries. We have said goodbye to Iqwa and Tuqi and our other Eskimo friends. We have left the cold parts of the world near the North Pole and have come into the hot belt near the Equator. We are in the middle of Africa far back from the coast. How warm the sun is. It was so pale and weak in Eskimo land that we could look at it without blinking. Here it's rays blind our eyes. It rises like a great ball of fire and grows hotter and hotter. It makes us warm even to think of the furs the Eskimos wear. We put on the thinnest of cotton clothing and have thick hats on our heads to protect them from the fierce sun. At noon it is so hot that we go into some shady place and stay there several hours. In the coldest parts of the earth much of the year the sun can be seen but a few hours each day. In mid-summer it can be seen all the time and in mid-winter it does not rise at all. But in the hot belt the sun rises and sets at about the same hours all the year through. At the Equator there are always 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness. In Eskimo land the sun is low in the sky all day long, but in the hot lands it seems to move straight up into the sky and at noon it is directly overhead or so nearly above our heads that we can scarcely see our shadows. You remember the long twilight in Eskimo land? Here the twilight is very short. The sun seems almost to jump out of the darkness when it rises and when it sets night quickly comes on. Near the Equator during a part of the year it rains every day. The water pours down in torrents in the afternoon. The lightning flashes and the thunder roars. It rains also a part of the night but the mornings are clear. We can go about in the mornings and also in the afternoons between the showers. The hot lands have no summer and winter such as we have. Instead there is a wet season and a dry season. The weather is warm all the time except perhaps during the night. At night the earth cools and the mornings may be pleasant. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of Around the World with the Children by Frank G. Carpenter This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Recorded by Betty B. Chapter 4 In the Hot Lands The part of the hot belt which we are visiting is near the Equator in one of the wildest parts of the continent of Africa. You can find the place on the globe. What a change from the cold lands near the North Pole. There is no snow or ice to be seen. The ground is covered with green. There are wildflowers everywhere. We see tall palm trees and tree ferns with their lace like green leaves. There are banana plants and trees loaded with oranges and the other fruits of the hot lands. In the open country the grass is sometimes three times as high as our heads. In the forests the trees are tall and they are so bound together with vines that they shut out the sun. We see monkeys of many kinds. Some are as big as a man. Others are so small that we could put them in our pockets. They jump from branch to branch and chatter at us as we go by. There are herds of elephants in the woods and in some places there are giraffes antelopes and other wild game. In the swamps and streams there are crocodiles and hippopotamuses and now and then we may find huge rhinoceroses with horns on their noses. There are gray parrots that whistle and birds of bright colors that sing as sweetly as our birds at home. There are also eagles, vultures and hawks and crows with white breasts. Now and then an ostrich runs along over the highlands and herds of striped zebras may be seen on the plains. As we travel through these warm countries we shall find that the world is full of life. There are insects in the woods. There are flies that glisten like gold and bugs that shine at night as if they had lamps in their heads. There are butterflies with bright colored wings and snakes large and small. Ants of many kinds are to be found everywhere. There are black ants half an inch long, yellow ants as small as a pin head and big white ants that build houses of clay. The ant houses are shaped like mounds large as they would fill a school room. There are ants that bite leaving a poison like the sting of a bee and others that go about in armies eating all living things in their way. The five great races. In this country that we are now visiting there are many towns of thatched huts in which live dark skinned men, women and children. We meet some of the children and two of them act as our guides and show us their names are Lim Wichae and Isa. Lim Wichae is a boy nine or ten years old and Isa, his sister is a year or so younger. The children wear hardly any clothing. Lim Wichae has only a strip of bark cloth around him and Isa has on a dress of bark cloth which falls from under her arms to her knees. Lim Wichae has a brass band around one ankle. Isa has bracelets of wire and necklace of beads and about her ankles are rings of ivory cut from the tusk of an elephant. See how dark color they are? Lim Wichae's skin is almost as black as your shoes and Isa's is very dark brown. Lim Wichae's head is covered with tight black curls. Isa's curly hair is twisted and put up in many little rolls which hang down on her forehead and over her cheeks. These people are called black hair which curls almost like wool. They belong to the black race. All of the people of the world are divided into five different races named according to the color of their skin. Our skin is white. We belong to the white race. Iqwa and Tuqi have yellow skin. The Eskimos belong to the yellow race. There are also people with brown skin who belong to the brown race. Some of them live in the Philippine islands. We visit some of the Indian children. Their skin is a reddish brown. They belong to the red race. The home of Lim Wichae and Isa. We tell Lim Wichae and Isa that we are traveling over the world to see how people live. Lim Wichae asks us to visit his home. The house is a round hut with a roof like a haystack. It is so small that it would not have fill a school room and so low that its roof would not reach to the ceiling. Its walls are of poles stuck into the ground with thin strips of cane woven in and out through them. The framework is plastered on the outside with mud and the floor is made of clay pounded hard. The roof is of grass or leaves tied to poles and so put together that it forms a tall round pointed cap resting on the walls. The roof comes out and it is so thick that it keeps out the ring. It is dark inside the hut. The only light comes through little holes in the wall under the roof. These holes are the windows. Both the holes and the ceiling are black from the smoke of the fire that burns in a hole in the center of the floor. The fire hole takes the place of a stove and upon it the cooking is done. The fuel is wood from the forest nearby. The food is roasted boiled in a clay pot which rests on three big stones over the fire. Sometimes the food is cooked out of doors. We look about for the furniture. There is none to speak of. That pile of mats over there is the bedding. All the family sleep on the floor. Each child has his own mat and lies on it without any covering. The children sit on the floor. Those two little wooden stools about a foot high and as big are for the father and mother. There is no other furniture except some clay pots, bowls and pans and a basket or two. That basket at the side of the fire is for milk. It seems strange to keep milk in a basket but it is so tightly woven that the milk cannot leak through. Food in the hotlands. As we wait the father and mother and the other children come in. The mother takes the pot off the fire and prepares to serve dinner. She asks us to stay and have a meal with them. The food is only a pot of cornmeal mush and some soup, but to that we are made welcome. Before eating Limouiche and Issa go out into the garden and bring in some big leaves. They lay some on the floor as a tablecloth and give us each one for a plate. We seat ourselves on the floor around the green tablecloth. At the same time the mother puts a great bowl of soup on the leaves. The father takes his knife and divides the mush into as many parts as there are persons to eat. He puts some on each leaf. We wait a moment expecting spoons, knives and forks. There are none and we watch our friends to see how they eat. Limouiche's father shows us. He takes up a little of the mush and squeezes it tight into a ball just big enough for one bite. He then dips the ball very daintily into the soup and puts it into his mouth. He does not drop a bit of the grease. Limouiche and Issa do likewise and at last we try to eat in the same way. The food tastes good. By the time the mush is all eaten the soup bowl is empty. We ask the children what else they have to eat. Limouiche smiles. He says they have so many kinds of food it would take a long time to tell about them all. They have bananas and oranges and other fine tomatoes and corn. They have also cassava, a root much like the sweet potato which they cook and grind into flour. They have beans and they roast green corn on the coals and eat it from the cob just as we do. Fish and meat are almost the only food of the cold lands. In the hot lands the people sometimes have meat and fish but for the most part they eat grain, vegetables, fruit and nuts. Limouiche shows he also traps locusts and ants and some kinds of caterpillars and roasts them over the coals. Issa says the roasted locusts taste like roasted nuts. In this country as we have seen there are many kinds of game that run wild in the forests. Limouiche smacks his lips as he tells us we should taste an elephant's foot steamed or baked in a fire hole. Issa says she likes the flesh of a young monkey better and that rats and beetles which are sometimes cooked in the ground when the great fires burn the grass in the fall are delicious. As we are talking Limouiche takes a white lump out of his waist cloth and offers to let us suck it. One of the boys does so and makes a rye face. It is salt. We hand the lump back to Limouiche and he and Issa take turns at it. The children of the hot lands are fond of salt. They like it as well as we like candy like Iqwa and Tuki like fat. We remember that Iqwa and Tuki would not eat salt. In this part of the hot lands everyone needs salt so much that it brings a high price in the market. We now leave the house and go out for a walk. There is a garden or yard about the hut with the high fence made of cane woven together much like the walls of the house. In the garden we see many large plants with wide green leaves that reach as high as the roof. We know what they are by the bunches of green bananas hanging upon them. Nearby are orange trees loaded with fruit. The oranges are so near the ground that we can easily reach them. Issa tells us to take all we can eat. But see Limouiche is pointing to a tall palm which leans over the fence. He asks us if we would not like a drink of coconut milk. He starts to climb up the tree. He first takes a long piece of lime and ties it so that it forms a loop around the tree. He steps inside the loop lifting it up until it rests against the small of his back. He presses his bare feet on the trunk of the palm and leans backward against the hoop. He then steps upward hitching the hoop higher and higher. At length he reaches the top of the tree where the nuts grow. They are half hidden in the long leaves which spread out like so many plants. Limouiche gathers the nuts and throws them down. Each nut is as big as one's head. It is as green as grass. Issa picks up the nuts one at a time. With a knife she chops off the husk at the top and makes a hole in the shell about as big around as a scent. The shell is full of a white juice like water. This is the coconut milk. Issa lifts one of the nuts to her mouth and drinks. The milk of the green coconut is cool and sweet and it tastes good under the thirsty sun of the hot lands. As we are walking around the garden we see a large basket shaped like a barrel high up on poles. Limouiche tells us it is the family corn crib and that it is full of peanuts, dried beans and corn. He says that his father has a cornfield nearby and that his mother and sisters hoe the corn and gather it when it is ripe. The women and girls also grind the corn into meal. We ask where the mill is and Limouiche points to a big round block of wood near the crib. It has a hole in the top forming a deep bowl or cup. Limouiche calls his older sister to come out and show us how they grind the corn. The girl shells several ears and puts the grain into the hole. She then pounds the corn with the end of a long wooden club until it is crushed into meal. After a while she pours out the meal upon a flat work tray. Issa shakes the tray and the coarse part of the meal comes to the top. This is taken off and what is left is put back into the hole in the block of wood. It is pounded and cleaned again and again. It is ground still finer by rubbing it between stones till finally it is fit to be made into porridge or dumplings or cakes. We visit a market. We have left Limouiche's home and are taking a stroll through the village. Most of the streets are only paths from one little hut to another. There are palms and other great trees everywhere. The trees shade the houses and keep off the sun. We meet many children and our guides tell them who we are. They all have dark skin and most of them have the same kind of clothing as Limouiche and Issa. The small children were hardly anything but strings of beads and many babies have on nothing at all. Some of the men have bark cloth or a strip of white cotton wrapped around their wastes. Others have on aprons made of cow skin. Many of the women wear short skirts of grass hung to a string around the waist. Some have little petticoats of goat skin with the hair on. Nearly every woman carries a baby. It is tied to her bare back and a sling made of skin or cloth. Its little black head and legs bob up and down as she walks. We have given a fresh coat of oil every day. Their heads are kept shaved and they shine with the oil. Some of the babies have wire collars and some have bright beads around their necks. We look about in vain for the school house. There is none in the village. Limouiche and Issa have never seen books and even their parents do not know how to read. There are no stores. Limouiche tells us that the buying and selling is done at the market which is held one day every week. At that time the people from the country about come here to trade. On certain days Limouiche's people go to the markets which are held near other towns. Today is the market day for Limouiche's village. The market is held several miles from the town. It is in a grove of large trees with widespreading branches. The paths leading to it are crowded. There are men, women and children carrying heavy loads on their heads. They are taking their wares to the market to trade. They sing as they go and now and then we can hear the cry of a baby jolting along on his mother's back. As we come nearer the market there are more and more people. The noise grows louder until at last the din is so great that we can hardly hear ourselves speak. All around us are half-naked dark-skinned people who are laughing and shouting as they buy and sell. There are hundreds sitting flat on the ground wares on straw mats spread out before them. Some of the traders are men, some are women and many are children. Each has his own place and a straw mat serves as the counter. We stop before a boy who is selling peanuts. The nuts have been hauled and are laid in piles on the mat. There are twelve nuts in each pile. We ask the price. The boy takes two little white shells from a bowl at his side and shows them to us. These shells are the small money of this place. At some of the other markets in the hotlands of Africa the people use strings of beads for money. In some places they use brass rods and in some places they use coins of silver and copper. Here all the merchants have some shells on their mats and they will change shells for coins. We can get twelve shells for one cent. We change our silver money into shells and receive so many in return that each of us has to carry his share in a bag on his back. The peanuts we buy cost one sixth of a cent. A little farther on we find a man selling bows and arrows and near him is one who has drums and spears. Other merchants have rude iron hose made by the Negro blacksmiths. Still others are selling bark cloth and we buy a piece to take home. The bark cloth looks like a blanket. This is the way it is made. The bark is soaked from the tree in wide sheets and soaked for a while in cold water. It is then pounded with a wooden mallet so that the bark spreads and grows longer and wider. It becomes softer and softer until it is almost like cloth. It can then be dried and used as a blanket or made into cloths. Our trade with the hotlands. As we go on through the market we see that some of the merchants are selling goods that came far away from the United States but its people buy many things that we make or raise and we buy many things of them. Near the men who have the bark cloth is a merchant selling long strips of white cotton like the kind we use for bedsheets at home. That cotton cloth was made in the United States and sent from America across the Atlantic Ocean to Africa. A yard of it costs several double handfuls of shells. Now look at huge ivory tusks on the ground over there. They came from an elephant. The man who killed the great beast has brought the tusks to this market and sold them to a white trader. They will be carried to the sea coast and shipped to our country by way of Europe. Near the tusks are some beautiful feathers from wild ostriches and not far away is a pile of black lumps of India rubber. The feathers and rubber will go to America. India rubber is made from the juice or sap of certain vines and trees that grow only in hot lands. The rubber tire of John's bicycle may have been made of sap gathered by Limouiche only last year. And the rubber and the band around Nellie's hair may have come from a tree that Issa knows well. The beads around Issa's neck were made in our country and so was that anklet of brass which Limouiche prizes so highly. Going on the other things that have come from Europe or from the United States here they are selling our kerosene oil for lighting. There they have knives and further on a woman offers us pins, needles and thread all of which were made in the United States. The pins and needles are too precious to be sold in papers as we sell them. Two pins will bring a handful of shells and only two or three needles are sold at one time. The thread is not sold by the people for only a rich girl could buy a whole spool of thread. It is cut into short pieces and sold at so many shells for each piece. Some strange animals. We spend several weeks in the hot lands. There is plenty to see and a great deal to learn. We go out in the morning and evening when it is cool. In the middle of the day we stay in the hut or keep in the shade of the trees. Limouiche lends us his bow and arrows and we try to catch some monkeys and parrots. He shows us his traps for birds and other small game and his nooses for catching rabbits and rats. We fish in the river and go in swimming close to the bank. As we travel through the forest we see now and then an elephant or a hippopotamus and learn much about them and other wild beasts. Limouiche says it is hard to get near a rhinoceros. The rhinoceros cannot see far but he has such a keen sense that he can scent an enemy a long distance away. He is also warned of the approach of a man by the little white birds that sit on his back and eat the flies and other insects upon him. These birds fly off with a shrill cry whenever a man comes in sight and this shows the big animal that danger is near. We also learn how rhinoceroses are trapped in pits. The men dig holes in the earth and cover them with sticks and grass. A walking or running along falls into a hole. He cannot get out and so the people are able to kill him. We are warned to be careful of our steps as we go through the woods. There are hidden traps here and there and we must find out where they are if we would not be hurt. One kind of elephant trap is made by fastening a spear to a heavy stone. The stone is then hung above the path to some watering place so that the spear hangs the string that holds the stone runs over a frame and down to the ground where it is stretched across the path and a few inches above it. When an elephant comes along his big leg strikes the string. It breaks and the stone falls driving the spear into the elephant's back. Toys and games in the hot lands. The children in these hot lands have many games. They play tag, they fly back and forth through the air on the ground. They have one game that is much like our hide and seek. It is called owl and wolf. The owl is the boy who hides. He has to call out now and then who, who, who? The boy who catches him is the wolf. The wolf pretends to eat the owl and the owl cries, the wolf has caught me, the wolf has caught me. In this game there is one place called home. If the owl can get there first he is safe and cannot be caught. The children of home do not play football or baseball although they have balls of rubber with which they play other games. They roll pumpkins downhill kicking them with their bare feet to make them go this way and that. They have battles in which they choose sides and throw corn cobs at each other. They play horse and run races from one ant hill to another. The muiche shows us his tops. They are made of corn cobs and pieces of gourd shell with sticks for the stems. In one game two boys fight a battle with their tops and corn cobs. They play that the corn cobs are soldiers. The cobs are placed on end in two long rows and the two fighting tops are set spinning between them. The boy whose top knocks down the most of the other boy's soldiers wins the game. Issa takes her best doll out of the leather sling in which it is hung on her back and shows it to us. The doll is a corn cob with some short threads pasted on top for hair. It has two white beads for eyes and its dress is a little bark shirt tied on with a string at the waist. Issa shows us how the children make playhouses and doll furniture out of the clay of the ant hills. These hills are built up bit by bit by the white ants. The ants chew the clay and this makes it sticky so that it can be molded like wax or putty. If dry clay from the hills is wet with water it also can be molded into any shape. The girls mold the clay into doll babies and sometimes into little clay women with babies on their backs. They make clay pots and spoons and also clay doll huts which they roof over with grass. The boys mold clay oxen and sheep and men. They will not play with the dolls but will sometimes help the girls build their doll houses. The children also play market and the things they sell then are made of clay. Some of these black children have pets. Then Weche shows us his pigeons. He has five pairs which he keeps in the queerest of houses. Each house is a hollow log as big around as a saucer and about five feet long. The log is stopped up at the ends and it has a hole in one side just big enough for the pigeons. They go in at this hole and make their nest in the log. The logs are hung to a tree by means of grapevines. One log rests on top of another so that the five logs form five houses with the door holes in the middle. Then Weche calls to the pigeons and scatters a few grains of corn. The birds fly down around us. One of them lights on Isa's shoulder and eats out of her hand. Isa has a pet lamb. It follows her wherever she goes and comes when she calls it by name. In this village there are cows, sheep and goats. The boys do the milking and they drive the sheep and goats into their pens every night. End of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 of Around the World with the Children by Frank G. Carpenter. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. The Five Zones of Climate Before we go farther in our travels let us review some of the things we have learned about our world home. We now know that the weather or climate upon the earth is different in different places. We have found that in the countries near the poles the climate is cold and that in the lands near the equator the climate is hot. We have learned also that the people of the cold lands have food, houses and clothing different from those of the people of the hot lands. We can easily see why. Suppose Isa and Tuki could change clothes for a day. Isa would roast in Tuki's fur parka and skin trousers and boots. How Tuki's bare legs and arms would freeze stiff if she were dressed in Isa's short bark petticoat. The snow house of the Eskimos would melt in a day if it were brought near the equator. A big dinner of fish and fat seal meat which the Eskimos like so well would make the children of the hot lands sick. The people of the cold lands must have their own ways of living and those of the hot climates must have theirs. Let us now learn the names of the cold parts and of the hot parts of the earth. The cold region lying around the north pole is called the north frigid zone. A zone is a wide ring or belt of the earth's surface. Iqwa and Tuki live in the north frigid zone. The cold region lying around the south pole is called the south frigid zone. Nobody lives there. In the frigid zones it is cold nearly all the year. The hot places of the earth are in the torrid zone. The word torrid means hot. The torrid zone is the wide belt around the middle of the earth. Limweiche and Isa live in the torrid zone. There are also two wide belts of land and water around the earth between the hot belt and the cold belts. In most of the lands in these belts or zones it is cold in the winter and warm in the summer and mild and pleasant in the spring and fall. It is usually neither too warm nor too cold. Such a climate is called temperate. And so we call these two belts the temperate zones. The temperate zones are the best places in which to live. We live in the temperate zone north of the equator so our zone is called the north temperate zone. There are millions of other children who live in the same zone as we do. Thus the yellow children of Japan have a climate that is much the same as ours although their homes are on the other side of the earth. You may learn by the globe where their homes are. First look for the United States then turn the globe around and on the other side of it across the wide Pacific Ocean you may see the continent of Asia with Japan and China about halfway between the equator and the north pole. Our next travels will be to visit the children of those countries and learn how they live. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of Around the World with the Children by Frank G. Carpenter This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. Chapter 6 The Islands of Japan Leaving the home of Limweichi and Isa we go back to the coast and sail on a ship many miles east and north. At last we come to some beautiful islands not far from the east coast of Asia. Do you know what an island is? An island is a body of land with water all around it. There are islands in rivers and in lakes and there are many islands in the great oceans. The islands of Japan are in the Pacific Ocean near the continent of Asia. They contain many mountains and valleys. There are streams everywhere and the waves of the sea dash up on the shore. The air is bracing and neither too warm nor too cold for these islands are in the north temperate zone. Japan has four seasons, summer, autumn, winter and spring. It is sometimes very warm in summer but not so hot as at the equator where the heat lasts all the year through. Most of Japan is cold in the winter but it has nothing like the long dark cold of Eskimo land. It's autumn and spring or mild just as in our own country. The islands of Japan are in the spring. The farmers are at work in the fields. Some of them are setting out green stocks of rice. Others are sowing grain or making their vegetable gardens. They will cultivate the crops during the summer and will harvest them in the fall. Spring in Japan is wonderfully beautiful. In the mountains there are forests of trees that are just coming into leaf and the fields are green with the fresh sprouting crops. The cherry trees are in blossom and we can see men, women and children walking about under them. The Japanese have a great festival when the cherry trees bloom. The Japanese love flowers so much that they name certain parts of the year from the times of the flowers. They have a plum blossom season and a cherry blossom season in the spring. The chrysanthemum season is in the fall and the maple leaf season comes when the leaves are brilliant with color and ready to drop to the ground. A Japanese City This morning let us take a walk in a Japanese city. The streets are narrow. They are lined with houses of one and two stories. Most of the houses are made of wood and roofed with black tiles. There are no windows like ours but the walls are so made that they can be pushed aside during the daytime. We can look through the houses and see what the people are doing. We enter a street walled with stores. Here is one where we can buy queer looking candies. Next to it is one filled with toys. And farther on is a shop where Japanese shoes are for sale. The shoes are sandals made of wood and straw. They are tied to the sole of the foot. Many of the streets are lined with workshops. In some of the shops people are sitting on the floor making fans or umbrellas. In others they are putting together lanterns of bright colored paper. And farther on they are carving beautiful things of wood and ivory. Many of these things will go on ships to other countries for sale. In other places they are weaving cotton and silk or painting the beautiful china that is sent to our country. Japan is a busy country and its fine goods are used in all parts of the world. We buy silk goods from Japan and the Japanese buy our cotton for use in their factories. Japanese children wear cotton that was grown in our country and some of us even now are wearing ribbons or neckties made of silk that came from Japan. Most of our grocery stores have Japan tea for sale and a great deal of United States flour is sold in their stores. Japanese children see how the children have gathered around us. They are bending almost to the ground and bowing in Japanese fashion and say Ohio which means good morning. All are polite and good natured except one bad boy at the back of the crowd who cries out, see the furry headed foreigners, they have white skin and eyes like a cat. We look more closely at the Japanese children and we do not wonder that we seem strange to them. They have light yellow skin and their eyes are a trifle, a slant and do not open as wide as ours do. The Japanese slant eyes and yellow skin are just right and that our straight eyes and white skin are ugly. The Japanese belong to the yellow race. About one third of all the people in the world belong to the yellow race. Most of the people of that race live on the continent of Asia. The Chinese are of the yellow race. We shall see them by and by. The Japanese boys wear their hair short. It is black and it stands up like the bristles of a shoe brush. The girls have long hair and the older ones wear it combed up in rolls on the top of the head. After a girl is about nine years of age, she often has a hairdresser to put up her hair. She is careful to keep from musing her hair at night but that is easy because the Japanese pillow is not like ours. It is a block of wood about as big as a brick with a roll of soft paper on top. It is placed under the neck. How Japanese children dress. We are interested in the clothes of the Japanese children. They are different from ours but they look very pretty. See Haruko-san over there playing ball? She has a beautiful kimono with blue and black stripes. It is like a long dressing gown folded over in front and it falls from her neck to her feet. It is tied at the waist with a wide silk sash called an obi. It has a very full sleeves which hang down on her legs. They are partly sewed up at the wrist. Haruko-san uses her sleeves as pockets. Haruko-san is barefooted now but if you will look at that tree over there you will see her shoes and foot mittens lying near it. Most of the children about us have their shoes on. The everyday shoe is a wooden block held to the foot by two cords. These cords come up through a hole in the wood run between the first two toes and over the step and are fastened to the block at the sides. The foot mittens take the place of stockings. They end just above the ankle and each has a pocket for the big toe. Haruko-san wears fine shoes with her best clothes and she has rough shoes for rainy days. The rain shoes have soles of wood set upon thin blocks about three inches high. When Haruko-san wears them she appears to be walking on stilts. She seems to be three inches when she goes out in the rain. All Japanese children dress much alike. Look at Taro who is coming towards us. His kimono is not so full as a girl's. Its sleeves are smaller and it has only a narrow sash or cord at the waist. He has a cap on his head, wooden shoes on his feet and a stick in his hand. He will act as our guy during our stay in Japan. Behind him are other boys bareheaded but dressed the same way. See those children with babies tied to their backs? Is that not a queer way to carry the little ones? At four or five years of age almost every Japanese girl helps her mother by acting as a nurse. Her little baby brother or sister is tied to her back and she carries it about wherever she goes. The baby often sleeps while the child nurse is playing. The Homes of Japan Taro's home stands in a beautiful garden by a stream of clear water. The house has many rooms. The roof is of black tiles. The outer walls are of wood turned gray by the weather. They are made in sections which move in grooves so that they can be shoved back into a little cupboard at each corner. When this is done the fine inner walls of lattice work filled in with many paper panes can be seen. These walls also can be moved. They can be slid back and forth in many rooms into one. We look at the floor. It is entirely covered with soft white mats so clean and fine that no one would think of stepping upon them with dirty shoes. So we do as everyone does in Japan. We take off our shoes, leave them outside the house, and walk on the mats in our stocking feet. Taro takes us through room after room. At last he bows low and asks us to sit down. There are no chairs on the surface, but he points to the floor and brings us some cushions. The Japanese sit on the floor. There are no beds in the rooms that we have seen, and we ask Taro where he sleeps. He goes to the wall and slides back a door showing a little cupboard in which are several soft comforters and also little blocks of wood the size of a brick. Each block has a roll of paper on top of it. The comforters are the beds and the wooden blocks are the pillows. Taro brings out some of the bedding. He spreads it on the floor and asks us to try it. We lie down on it and find it quite soft, but the pillows are not comfortable, so we decide to roll up our overcoats and use them instead. We are pleased with this Japanese house. Everything is so pretty and the white mats are so clean. We slide the paper walls back and forth as we walk from one room to another. We ask Taro how the house is lighted and he shows us some beautiful paper lanterns. We ask him how the house is heated in winter and he points to a fire box on the floor. The fuel used is charcoal which has been made by partly burning wood. He takes us into the kitchen where the stoves are stone boxes with charcoal burning in them. He also shows us the bathroom where another charcoal fire heats the water in a large wooden tub. Here each member of the family takes a hot bath in the kitchen. The Japanese are a very clean people. A Japanese dinner. During our visit at Taro's home dinner is served. It is brought to us as we sit on the floor and each of our party has its own table. This table is about a foot high and it looks much like a tray. The food is served in tiny dishes by a little maid servant who kneels down and bows low when she hands it to us. The meal begins with a soup made of wheat and then we have several kinds of fish, raw and cooked. We have vegetables cut into blocks and made into a stew. We have roasted eels and pickled eggplant and after that colored cakes and queer candies and green plums rolled in sugar that make our mouths water. There's plenty of rice for rice takes the place of bread in Japan. It is so cooked that each grain is whole and is white as the snow of Eskimo land. Taro is served in a big round wooden bucket. We are urged to eat more and more as the dinner draws to a close. The Japanese say that no one who has plenty of rice needs to go away hungry. The tea is served without milk or sugar in tiny cups about as big as those used for doll tea parties at home. Taro tells us that this is a feast in our honor. His everyday meal is very simple. He usually has some soup and vegetables with plenty of rice. He also has pickles to eat with the rice. We drink our soup from little bowls sucking it in with a loud noise to show that we like it. This is the Japanese way although it would not be good manners for us to do so at home. We have great trouble in eating the fish, rice and vegetables. There are no knives or forks and we use chopsticks instead. Chopsticks are sticks of wood or bone a little longer than lead pencil. Each person has two of them and holds them in one hand. With them he picks up his food and puts it into his mouth. When we try to use the chopsticks we are very awkward at first but when Taro shows us how to use them we get along very well. The Japanese people have plenty to eat. Their land has a rich soil and they raise much rice and other grain. They have all kinds of vegetables and many fine fruits. Their country is made up of many islands and as the water is everywhere near they always have plenty of fish to eat. They raise but few cattle or sheep and eat but little meat. Much of the tea we use at home comes from Japan. It is made of the leaves of bushes about as high as our shoulders which are grown in tea gardens. The leaves are picked off and dried in hot ovens. They are rolled about with the hand while they are drying and this turns them into tiny rolls sold in our stores. Taro's father has a tea bush in his garden. He gives us some of the leaves to press in our notebooks and take home. A school in Japan. In the Japanese cities we see many boys and girls going to school. They are carrying their books in their arms. Some of them have their ink bottles tied by the neck to a string. They swing the bottles to and fro as they walk along. All the schoolboys of Japan were wearing plaited skirts of a gray color. The skirts extend from the waist almost to the ankles. The schoolgirls have plaited skirts of the same style as those of the boys only longer and fuller. The girl's skirts are red or dark blue. Here are some schoolgirls busy with health exercises. The Japanese have good schools and every child must attend them. If one is absent a policeman is sent to his home to ask for help. The Japanese have many books and also maps and globes for their geography work. The books seem strange to us. The letters are different from ours and the lines run up and down the page instead of across it from left to right as ours do. In arithmetic they use blackboards and paper for their figuring but they also use counting boxes. When we visit a school room we see the children at work with them. The counting box has many wooden buttons and wires. A child moves the buttons up and down on the wires and with them can multiply, add and subtract very quickly. Games and toys in Japan. There are many cities and towns in Japan and we can go on railroads to all parts of the country. We also write about in gin rickashaws which are little carriages pulled by men. Each of us has his own gin rickasha and our man horses pull us up and down laughing and talking as they show us the strange sights along the road. There are some carts pushed by men and others hauled by horses and oxen shod with straw shoes. There are boy jugglers who walk on their hands, twist themselves into curious shapes and do all sorts of tricks. There are also men who go about carrying little cookstoes which they rent to the children for half an hour or more at a time. The men have dough which the children like to buy and make into cakes. They cook the cakes on the stove. For each cooking they have to pay two sen which is equal to about one cent of our money. Now and then we meet a man peddling candy. He has a bowl of soft taffy into which he dips a pipe stem and blows out candy men and animals just as we blow soap bubbles. He will blow you a doll baby and paste on the legs and arms while you wait. He will blow a chicken or duck or a camel or cow. The air soon cools the taffy and you can play with this candy toy as long as you please and then eat it. We stop at the toy stores and find many play things strange to our eyes. The doll houses, doll furniture and toy dishes look queer to us because they are just like the things used by the Japanese people. For the girls there are many doll babies beautifully dressed and for the small boys a little animal made of cardboard that seems to be half dog and half cat. Taro calls it the puppy cat. As we are looking at the toys Haruko-san tells us about the doll festival that takes place on March 3rd all over Japan. This is the girls day when everything is done to make the girls happy. Every girl then has a new doll and all the old dolls of the family are brought out to be played with. Each family has special dolls and these are put away when the doll festival is over and carefully kept until the next year. Haruko-san tells us she likes March 3rd the best of all the days of the year and she is much surprised when we tell her that we have no such girls day at home. Yes, says Taro, but we Japanese boys have a better time on our day. You may know the day by seeing the boys carry paper fishes on poles and also by the big paper fishes that hang poles in front of each house. The fish is the carp because it is noted for its spirit and strength. The boys day comes on May 5th. It is known as the feast of the flags. We boys then show what we hope to do for our country. We choose sides and fight sham battles with wooden swords. We have presents on that day. Our parents give us flags and toys and nearly every boy gets a new kite. There are many kites in the toy stores. They are made of paper pasted to a framework of bamboo splints. They are of all shapes, colors and sizes. Some kites look like great fishes. Some look like hawks and eagles with wings that flap in the air and make a shrill sound. Some will turn somersaults when you jerk at the string. There are also kites that whistle and kites that fight. The fighting kite may be as tall as a man. It is made of tough wood and strong paper. The string next to the kite is covered with glass, pounded fine and mixed with glue. The bits of sharp glass dry on the string and it cuts like a saw. There are two or more kites in each fight. The boys try to bring the kites together and to make the strings cross. They jerk them this way and that and one string soon cuts the other in two. The boy whose kite stays up the longest is the winner. In some fights he has the right to the kite that falls to the ground. The Japanese children have many other games. The boys are always playing soldier and marching about. They are drilled in school with real guns. The school girls have health exercises. The children have mechanical toys and quite as many play things as we have in America. End of chapter 6 Chapter 7 of Around the World with the Children by Frank G. Carpenter. This LibriVox recording is in the public recording by Betty B. Chapter 7 The Great Plane of China. We have now said goodbye to Japan and have gone westward to China. We are still in the north temperate zone for China is about the same distance north of the equator as our own country and Japan. We are on the mainland of the continent of Asia far away from the ocean and upon a great plane. The land here is flat and level. Land that is level or nearly so is called a plane. A place where the land rises a little above the other land about it is called a hill. A very high hill is a mountain. The low land between two hills or mountains is called a valley. In the Great Plane of China where we are now, the country is flat. It is divided into many small fields. There are no fences of wood or wire, but each field has a mud wall around it. On some of the walls grass and wild flowers are growing. The people often walk on the walls to keep from spoiling the crops. Here is a rice field. Over there is a field of green beans and beyond is a great thicket of little mulberry trees. The mulberry leaves are the food of silkworms. The silkworms spin cocoons of silk and China thus produces a large part of the silk that is worn. Many of stores have for sale ribbons, neck ties and dress goods made of silk that has been sent from China across the ocean to us. China was the first country in the world to make silk. It was also the first to use tea. Some of the best tea in the world comes from bushes that grow in China. The leaves are picked by boys and girls and carried to factories where they are dried. They are then packed in boxes and shipped across the Pacific Ocean to us. The ships take back to China American flour and cotton and many other kinds of goods. How the Chinese are dressed. On every side we can see villages of mud huts. There are also towns and cities with houses of brick. The fields seem alive with men, women and children at work and the roads and paths are lined with people. The children look much like our little Japanese friends but their clothing is different. There are men and black eyes, a trifle, a slant and their hair is jet black. To what race do they belong? The yellow race is one of the most important races on earth. We saw millions of this race in Japan and there are many millions more here in China. Most of the children we meet are dressed in cotton but now and then we pass one wearing silk. The boys wear long gowns and the girls wear coats and pantalettes. Most of the boys wear their hair as is now the fashion in China. The little girls have their hair cut short just over the forehead while the rest is allowed to grow long and is put up in a roll on the head. Many of the boys wear little round silk caps with red silk buttons on top but most of the girls are bare headed. The children at work in the fields have on straw hats as big around as a parasol. They are bent over and some have tucked up their clothes so that we can see the yellow legs and their big hats. They look like huge birds in the green fields. The roads are crowded with men, women and children dressed in bright colors. There are men in big hats and blue cotton clothes each carrying boxes or baskets on the two ends of a pole which rests on his shoulder. There are boys without hats carrying burdens on poles trotting behind. There are men with loads on their backs and men bent half double pushing wheelbarrows loaded with goods. There are rich men in gowns of bright silk or satin and boys dressed in the same way. Here comes a little girl riding in a chair. She wears clothes made of red satin. The chair is carried by men dressed in blue cotton. It is held up between two long poles that rest upon their shoulders. It bobs up and down as they trot along. Behind them is a rude cart hauled by a mule and still farther back come three camels in single file. Each camel has two boxes of tea on each side of its home. Get out of the way of that wheelbarrow. There are two men and a boy sitting upon it. They are making a trip by wheelbarrow as we would take a taxi cab ride at home. Chinese children often ride to school that way and pay half a cent for the trip. The wheelbarrow is not like our wheelbarrow with the small wheel at the front end. This barrow has a large wheel in the middle and the passenger sit on each side of the wheel. Such Chinese wheelbarrows are used to carry not only passengers but also all kinds of goods. A boy is sometimes harnessed to the front of the barrow. He pulls while his father pushes behind. A Chinese home. As we walk along over the plane we meet Ah Chi a Chinese boy and his sister Yi Su. They have faces the color of cream and their twinkling black eyes peep out at us through their queer little lids. Yi Su's head is covered with a cap of bright beads and her long black hair is braided. It hangs down her back but is cut short at the front in a fringe that have covers her forehead. Both children are dressed in silk. Their father is a well to do merchant and they have far better clothes to wear than the children we saw at work in the fields. Yi Su wears a pink satin jacket and wide pantalettes of dark red. Her coat falls to her knees and her pantalettes almost touch her gaily colored silk shoes. Ah Chi has on a silk gown of bright blue embroidered with flowers. It falls to his knees. Under it are blue silk trousers tied tight around the ankles. He wears white socks. His shoes are a black cloth with thick soles painted white. As we come up the children bow low and Ah Chi puts his two yellow fists together and shakes them at us. His eyes are friendly or we might think he meant to fight. That is how the Chinese shake hands. We shake our fists in the same manner and are soon laughing and talking with him. Ah Chi tells us he will act as our guide. He calls some of the other boys and we walk with them across the fields to a Chinese city not far away. We walk single file in the narrow path and soon we reach the walls. There are walls around most Chinese cities. We pass through a gate. Ah Chi tells us the gates are closed every night and open again in the morning. He says the walls were built to keep out robbers. Now we are inside the city. We are moving along through narrow streets paved with bricks. The houses have walls of gray bricks with roofs of black tiles. The buildings are all low. The houses are of one or two stories. Some stand close to the streets. Others are back in large yards which have high walls around them. One yard may enclose several houses all owned by one family. We go to the home of Ah Chi and Yi Su and live there during our stay in China. The house has many rooms and some of them have lattice work walls with panes of white paper like the sliding walls of Japanese houses. The floors and outer walls are a brick and each of the bedrooms has a wide brick ledge about as high as a chair running along one side of the room. These ledges are the beds. Ah Chi shows us that there are pipes or flues under them. He says that fires are made in the pipes so that the beds can be kept warm during the night. He shows us how he sleeps there upon some matting with his bed clothes wrapped around him. His head rests on a little hard pillow. This Chinese house is well furnished. Most of the rooms have furniture of black wood beautifully carved. The tables are not low like those we saw in Japan. They are as high as our own tables at home. The chairs are like ours. Some of them are made of wicker work and others of wood. There are also wide benches with cushions upon which to sit or lie. Some families have bedsteads which they use in warm weather. Fine furniture like this is to be found only in the homes of the well to do and the rich. Ah Chi tells us that the poor people have but few comforts. Some of their houses have only one or two rooms and only a little furniture made of rough wood. The food of the Chinese. In eating our meals at the home of Ah Chi we sit upon chairs at the dining table with the family. The dishes are much like those we have in America. The Chinese use plates, bowls, and cups. The tea cups are put up to the table with the saucers on top. The Chinese eat with chopsticks but we have already learned how to use them in Japan and we get along very well. There are no napkins but after the meal a servant brings in a bowl of hot water and dips a white cloth in it. This wet cloth is then passed around the table and everyone wipes his face and hands with it. We have good things to eat. We have soup, fish, and vegetables and meats of all kinds. The meat is cut into bits so that we can pick it up with our chopsticks. We have rice and boiled bread and all sorts of stews. The Chinese have good markets and we have our choice of many things to eat. The Chinese grow apples, peaches, pears, oranges, and grapes. They grow red persimmons as sweet as honey and four times as large as your fist. They raise sheep and hogs and chickens and geese and ducks. Many ducks are raised upon boats. Duck boats are flat and one boat may hold four or five hundred fowls. The ducks feed on the low swampy banks of the streams. The owner of the boat rows it to one of these places every morning and evening. He then lays aboard from the boat to the bank and the ducks run out and pick up all the worms and snails that they can find in the mud. After they have been eating for an hour or more the captain whistles and the ducks are so trained that they run at once to the boat. They run as fast as they can for the last duck onboard always gets a sharp blow with the stick. When the ducks are grown up the owner carries them to the city for sale. The main food of the poor Chinese is rice or other grain and vegetables with fish of one kind or another. At great feasts the well to do people have a soup of birds nests or of sharks fins and many dishes of meat with vegetables, fruits, cakes, sweet sweets and candies. The birds nests used for soup are a queer kind that look like vermicelli. The chief drink is hot tea or hot water. The Chinese do not drink anything cold and they think that tea when fresh made is the finest drink in the world. New Year's Day in China. Before setting out on our journey this morning the boys and girls of our party have a talk about which day of the year they like the best. Sally says I like Christmas but then Santa Claus comes and I get presents. I like the 4th of July says John but then we all go into the country and have a picnic under the trees. But Sue says the best day of all is Thanksgiving when we have a big turkey and donuts and hot mince pie full of raisins. And now let us hear from A.C. He does not understand our Christmas or Thanksgiving or the 4th of July but he has one holiday that takes the place of the others. This is New Year's Day. Every Chinese child is considered one year older that day and he trots about calling and wishing his friends many happy returns. The Chinese New Year's is in some ways like our 4th of July. On the night before everyone shoots off firecrackers and there are fireworks of all kinds with pictures of birds, animals and fish made by the flames. On that night the children run through the streets shouting their good resolutions. One boy will go along crying out I want to sell my lazy ways and another I am ready to sell my folly and I hope to be wiser next year. New Year's morning is like our Christmas morning when we all find gifts in our stockings. The presents of the Chinese child come wrapped in red paper. This is because red is the color of good luck and everyone wants good luck for the New Year. For that reason the eggs used in New Year's Day are dyed red and many of the dinners are served in red dishes. New Year's Day and the two weeks that come after it are the great Chinese holiday season. Then everyone tries to have a good time. There are parties and dinners and feasting. There are shows in the streets and many things to eat are sold there. Games of all sorts are played. Everyone who can afford it puts on a new suit and no one works who can help it. This is because the Chinese child comes to the store to buy a toy store. Yisu's black eyes brighten as she speaks of last New Year's and tells of the toy she got then. Aichi asks us if we would not like to see a toy store and we go with him to the business part of the city. Here the streets are lined with stores in which people are buying and selling. The crowd is so great to the streets. The clerks are dressed in silk gowns and they keep their caps on. Here is a store that sells only tea. Next store is one that has beautiful silks and farther on are some that sell sugar, ginger and candies and cakes. There are hat stores and shoe stores, fur stores and book stores and stores that sell lanterns and fans and kites. There are many workshops. Here is one where some Chinese girls are spinning and boys are making things out of copper and brass and on a side street others are carving wood and painting on paper and silk. China is one of the busy lands of the world and its people make and sell almost everything under the sun. But here we are at a toy store. I am sure we have never seen such odd playthings before. There are doll babies of wood, clay or rags all dressed in Chinese fashion. There are men dolls and silk gowns and women dolls and silk trousers and tiny silk shoes. There are all sorts of toy animals. We see baby camels the size of a rat and horses and cows. Some of them so small that you can hold a dozen in the palm of your hand. And then there are little chickens with real feathers on them. They are so lifelike that we almost expect them to crow. There are tiny ducks and geese made of wood covered with dung and fuzzy little ducklings that will quack and you squeeze them. There are all kinds of play furniture of Chinese fashion so that one can buy a doll and a whole housekeeping outfit without turning around. And then there are dancing toys by the score. There are tiny men and women an inch or so high hopping about upon a brass pan. They have bristles stuck in their feet and they stand on the ends of the bristles. As we tap the pan the little figures dance up and down and go whirling around until they are really alive. In the same part of the city are kite stores and bird stores and places where books and games are sold. The children of China have as many different games as we have. They play blind man's buff and shuttlecock and a game in which they knock a ball into the air with their heels. The Chinese are fond of pets. We see boys and men going about carrying birds upon sticks. The bird is fastened to the stick by a string tied and it can fly only a short distance. Aichi keeps pigeons and he shows us some wooden whistles which he ties to their tails. As the birds fly through the air the whistle makes such a shrill sound that it scares off the hawks. Chinese schools and school books on our way home from the stores we visit a Chinese school. Aichi tells us that the teachers are great men and that we must bow low when we meet them. The children are polite. They are taught to look up to their parents and elders and are punished severely if they are not polite to their teachers. The Chinese have one schoolbook that has 3,000 roles for good manners. Another is full of stories about boys who were so good to their parents that they are now famous all over China. As we enter a school room we see that the teacher is wearing his cap and the boys at their desks have their caps on their back. The schoolbook seems strange. The lines run up and down the page instead of across it and the beginning of the book is at what we should call the back. Each letter means a whole word and a boy must learn hundreds of words before he can read. In some of the rooms the boys are learning to write. They use a little brush instead of a pen and print the letters in black ink on white paper. It takes great skill to write well. In other rooms the boys are studying arithmetic. Each boy has a brush and paper and a counting box of wooden buttons strong upon wires, like those of Japan. End of Chapter 7. Chapter 8 of Around the World with the Children by Frank G. Carpenter. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. In the Philippine Islands. Leaving the home of Aichi we travel eastward through China to the Pacific Ocean and then go southward in a great steamship. The air grows gradually warmer and by and by we pass out of the north temperate zone and are again in the torrid zone. How bright the sun shines. Its rays strike the ocean and the water seems sprinkled with diamonds. We put on our lightest clothing and wear thick hats to shield our heads from the sun. At length we come to some beautiful islands. Along their shores we see tall palm trees. What is a shore? The shore is that part of the land that is close to the water. Many of the palms are coconut trees. Beyond them are fields of green rice and tall sugar cane. There are orange trees and many patches of bananas. Far their back are hills and mountains covered with green forests. Here and there are villages of brown houses roofed with palm leaves. They are shaded by trees of dark skinned people at work in the fields and men and boys are catching fish in the streams. We see many odd looking children who are playing or working or walking along on their way to school. What is that flag floating above the schoolhouse? It really looks like our own American flag. How does it happen to be so far from the United States away out here on the other side of the world? I will tell you these are the Philippine islands and they belong to the country. The people we see are called Filipinos. They are of the brown race. The people of the brown race are shorter than we are. They have yellowish brown skin, dark eyes and straight black hair. There are many people of this race on the earth but not nearly so many as there are of the white race, the yellow race or the black race. A Philippine school. Let us go into the schoolhouse. The building has only one story and we have to go upstairs to reach the schoolrooms. A part of the playground is under the house. The schoolhouse is square. It has walls of boards and its roof is of palm leaves sewed together and tied to rafters of bamboo. The teacher tells us that some of the villages have fine new schoolhouses made of concrete. They are much like the schoolhouses in some parts of the United States. You can look to a window and find that it is a framework of lattice which can be slid back and forth. The panes in the lattice are not glass. They are pieces of seashell not unlike that of the oyster or clam except they are flat. The shell is about as thick as the nail of your thumb. These shells let in the light and they shut out the hot rays of the sun. Except when the sun shines in them the windows are always kept open. In this time the children need all the air they can get to keep cool. We first enter the primary room. Three girls are residing and about 40 other children are seated at their desks studying their lessons. The class is learning English and the girls recite well. The children look very different from the boys and girls of our school. Their skin is yellowish brown and their hair is black. The boys have short hair standing out like bristles all over their clothing is from ours. Every boy wears his shirt outside his cotton trousers. Everyone is in his bare feet or at least he only has slippers which show his bare heels. The girls have long hair combed up in a knot at the back of the head or hanging loose down the back. They wear long dresses of bright colors and some have on thin jackets made of cinname cloth which is so stiff that it stands out like wire. It is cooler than cotton. Some of the girls wear earrings and other jewelry. In another room we find girls making lace and learning to sew. Benito and Carmen. Before school is out the teacher tells the children that we have come a long way to pay them a visit. She goes to the globe and points to where we live in North America. She then calls up Benito a bright boy of 10 and Carmen who is only nine but is almost as large as Benito. She tells these two children that they must act as our guides and that they may have a holiday while we stay. She directs them to show us about and to answer our questions. Our guides ask us if we should not like to begin by finding something good to eat. They take us to a big tree loaded with yellow fruit shaped somewhat like a large pear. This is the mango one of the finest fruits in the world. It tastes a little like turpentine but it is sweet The children give us ripe oranges fresh from the trees. They also show us the papaya tree which has a fruit something like a musk melon. Benito tells us it is good for the stomach and will help one to digest if he has eaten too much. In the meanwhile Carmen has pulled some bark from a small evergreen tree nearby and asks us to taste it. We do so how it bites. It is cinnamon like that which our mothers use in minced pies and pickles. We now pass through a grove of coconut trees and we can see many green coconuts up among the leaves. As we go farther on we come to a field filled with low trees with red berries on them. The berries look like cherries but when we bite into them we find their coffee. Each fat cherry has two little beans or seeds inside. The seeds are dried and cleaned and afterwards roasted and ground. They are then ready for making coffee to drink. Bananas grow almost everywhere. There are also plants that look like bananas but Benito tells us they are called abaca. He cuts one of them down and shows us that its stem is full of long threads or fibers. He says these threads are used to make rope and that they are sent across the Pacific to our country. Another name for abaca is manila hemp. Many of our skipping ropes were once a part of abaca plants that grew in the European islands. Our next stop is in a field where men are cutting down what look like stalks of green corn. Benito picks up one of the stalks and smacks his lips as he sucks at the end. How sweet the juice is! This stalk is sugar cane. It is from the juice of such cane that much of our sugar is made. The cane is carried on carts drawn by water buffaloes to a factory where the juice is squeezed out. This juice is then boiled down until it turns into sugar. A Philippine Village We are walking this morning through a Philippine village. Most of the Filipinos live in villages and go out from their homes to work on their farms. This village is made up mostly of thatched huts. But there are also several large houses of boards, much like the schoolhouse. The huts are built of bamboo poles tied together into a framework and covered with palm leaves. The palm leaves are tied together and then tied upon the walls and the roof. The windows are holes in the walls with little doors hinged at the top to close them. It is only the big houses that have seashell panes. The floors are made of long strips of bamboo nailed or tied to the framework. Carmen says that she likes this kind of floor, for it does not need any sweeping. The strips are so wide apart that all the dirt drops through as soon as it falls. The huts are so high that one must climb a ladder to get to it. We enter Benito's home. The house has but little furniture. Benito sleeps on a mat on the floor. He shows us the bed used by his mother and father. The bed is some matting made of grass and laid on a low wood floor. The huts are made of wood. They are made of wood. They are made of wood. They are made of wood. They are made of wood. They are made of grass and laid on a low wooden framework. The pillows are small and as hard as aboard. Such beds are good for the hotlands where one wants but little bedding or covering. The kitchen stoves are big red clay bowls. They hold the charcoal fires over which the pots rest. A separate stove must be used for each dish and a large family may need a dozen stoves to cook a big dinner. One may be for fish and rice, fried bananas, sweet potatoes and other vegetables of various kinds. Our little brown cousins have plenty of food. Their streams and the ocean are full of fine fish. The people raise rice and sugar cane. They have all the fruits and vegetables that grow in the hotlands. They have coffee and chocolate to drink and there's always plenty of water from the springs and the streams. While we are in the kitchen, Carmen shows us the water bucket. It is bigger than she is and is bigger round as her neck. It is like a great pipe with a cork in the bottom. Benito takes us to visit some of his friends who live in the big houses. Here we see beds, tables and chairs much like our own and also pianos and organs. Later in the day we ride out to the rice fields upon some tame water buffaloes. The water buffalo is the beast of burden most used in the Philippine parts over the roads and it plows the wet fields. It is an ugly animal. It has big horns and thin hair which stands out all over its body like the bristles on a pig's back. Benito tells us that the water buffalo is the best work animal for the low swampy lands. It will pull the carts through the mud. It will work in the rice fields even when they are covered with water. It is interesting to learn how rice is grown. The seed grains look much like four oats. They are first sown in small beds where they sprout and grow into little plants. The plants are then set out in the muddy fields. They soon grow to a height of two or three feet. The fields are flooded from time to time for the rice plants need a great deal of water. Buy and buy the grains form at the top of the stalks and the straw turns yellow. The rice is now ready for harvest. It is cut down with a knife and the straw turns yellow. How day and night come. Let us now say goodbye to Benito and Carmen and our other friends of the brown race. We are going back to the other side of the world. We are going to the continent of North America to visit some children of the red race. But before we leave this part of the globe let us learn why it is that when one side of the earth has day the other side must have night. Just now it is midday here in the United States and it is midnight at home. We can see how this must be by turning an orange around in front of a lamp. Let us put a United States postage stamp on one side of the orange to mark our side of the world and a Philippine stamp on the other side to show the islands where Benito and Carmen live. Observe that when the stamp on one side of the orange is in the bright light of the lamp the other side is in the dark and it is all the time turning before the sun. Therefore because it is now midday in the Philippine islands it must be night in the United States. Our boy and girl friends there are fast asleep. When they start to school in the morning it will be dark in the Philippines and Benito and Carmen will be going to bed. End of chapter 8 Chapter 9 of Around the World with the Children by Frank G in the Public Domain Recording by Betty B The Five Great Oceans The great steamer on which we are to travel is now ready to start for North America. We buy our tickets go on board and start steaming eastward over the ocean. We leave the beautiful Philippine islands and within a short time are far out in the Pacific Ocean. The sky is bright blue the air is warm. The sea below us is rising and falling in long hours under the wind. On both sides of the ship we can see silvery flying fish darting through the air from wave to wave. There are schools of porpoises huge dark colored fishes which swim almost on the top of the water and dive down now and then into the deep. As we go farther north we see two great whales in the sea. They spout water high into the air. A day or so later the wind changes and dark clouds appear and the storm comes up. The waves are now very high. The spray dashes far up into the air and wets the deck of our steamer. The drops fall on our lips and low the water tastes salty. This is one of the strange things about the ocean. Its water has a great deal of salt in it. It is not sweet like that of springs, brooks and rivers. It is not fit to drink. If we should put a spoonful of salt in a glass of fresh water it would be great. By and by we ride out of the storm. The sun shines again in the mighty ocean is quiet. We see several steamers going from China on their way to our country. They are loaded with tea, silk and other goods which will be sold in America. Our own ship carries hemp, tobacco and sugar from the Philippine islands. The voyage across the Pacific is a long one and we have plenty of time in which to explore the ocean. The ocean is the ocean that covers the greater part of the globe. The earth has three times as much water as land. We have already learned that the vast bodies of water are called oceans. There are all together five oceans. Their names are the Arctic, Antarctic, Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. The Arctic ocean is about the north pole near the home of Iqwa and Tuki. The Antarctic ocean lies in the south pole. Nobody lives in that zone. Then there is the Indian ocean which is south of the continent of Asia, the home of Achi and east of the continent of Africa where Limouichi lives. There is also the Atlantic ocean west of Africa and Europe and east of North and South America. We are now traveling across the Pacific ocean which lies between our country and Asia. The Pacific ocean is the greatest of all the five oceans. It is as large as the Atlantic ocean. It is nearly three times as large as the Indian ocean. It contains almost half of all the water upon earth. End of Chapter 9