Page:Maury's New Elements of Geography, 1907.djvu/106

102 booths full of all sorts of things to be sold, and more than 200,000 people buying and selling as fast us they can.

4. Russia is an empire. The ruler is called the Czar (zar).

St. Petersburg, the capital, is his home. It is a city of palaces and line buildings.

Moscow is a splendid old city, full of churches with gilded domes and spires, from which on holidays the peals of a thousand bells ring forth.



5. Lapland is a cold, desolate region bordering on the Arctic ocean. It is the home of the Lapps, a people like our Eskimos.

The warm weather in Lapland lasts for only two months in the year. The long winters are made a little more cheerful by the aurora, which often tills the sky with long, waving streamers of white, green, and crimson light.

The Lapps make much use of the reindeer. This animal supplies them with milk and cheese. It will pull a sleigh a hundred miles a day. Its flesh is the only meat of the Laplanders. Its skin is made into coats, caps, and boots.



At the top of the opposite page five pictures of people who live in the northern part of Europe. Find the country of the Laplanders on the relief map. Like the Eskimos, they belong to the Yellow race. Their houses are made of stones and earth and sometimes of skins stretched upon poles. You may see one of these huts in the picture. Their chief wealth is the reindeer, and nearly every Lapp has a herd of his own. The people live on reindeer meat and milk, and their clothing is made of reindeer hides. You see that the reindeer is harnessed to a kind of sled. He is a very swift animal and the Laplanders make long journeys in reindeer sledges.

The girl that you see in the second picture lives in a cottage in one of the high valleys of Switzerland. Notice how the cottages are built with a protected veranda on each floor. The staircase leads to one of these outside porches. The view in the upper right-hand corner shows some Russian peasants taking tea outside of their house on an afternoon in summer. On the table is the large samovar, or urn, from which the tea is poured. The Russians are great tea-drinkers and buy more tea in China than any other nation.

The next picture shows a girl peddling milk in a town in Belgium. In that country dogs are more commonly used than horses to draw light loads. The officer is testing the milk to see whether it is pure. What country has many canals and windmills? Can you tell what each is used for? The windmills furnish power to grind grain as well as to keep the country drained by pumping the water out of the canals.

In the lower part of the picture is a party of Spanish musicians in a garden. These people are very fond of music and dancing, and the most of the houses are built with a little court, or enclosed lawn, where they can be cool and comfortable during the hot afternoons of summer. The long and narrow street is in Italy in the city of Naples. Do you think that there are any street cars or wagons passing through this street? Notice the tall houses with overhanging balconies and windows. Each one of these houses contains homes for very many families.

The last picture shows a street in Constantinople. What can you tell about the situation of this city? Most of the shops or bazaars of Constantinople are in the street. Fruits and vegetables are brought into the city in great baskets slung in pairs across the backs of donkeys. They are then peddled through the streets or placed on stands to be sold. On the left of the picture you can see a street. How very narrow it is. Hardly wide enough for the people; of course there is no room for wagons, but the little donkey can easily go through with his load. The windows of the living rooms of the house are covered with a close latticework so that no one can see through them from the outside.