Chapter II: Part 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SWITZERLAND.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HOLLAND.

The people who live in Holland are called Dutch.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PATAGONIA.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE PYGMIES.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE INDIANS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BANGALA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE AMAZON VALLEY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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