At Home and Abroad; or, first lessons in geography

Preface

. In offering this little work to a very young public, it is not, perhaps, out of place to urge on all teachers, whether in home or in public schoolrooms, the para mount necessity of good large maps, to be hung up or pinned against the wall. Small maps try the eyes ; maps lying on the table try the chest and back ; thoroughly good wall-maps, sufficient for all the pur poses of this book, eau be procured at a very low price, and are better suited to the wants of a child than the best and most costly atlas. In the latter chapters, I have referred freely to the globe ; this should be as large as convenient, — one of twelve or eighteen inches diameter will do very well ; — but even a little one, of three or four inches, is better than none. In teaching geography, a child's attention should be, at first, more especially directed to those places with whose names he (or she) is already familiar, — places where family friends live, places where pre-

PREFACE.

. VIII sents come from, places about which he has a certain sense of reality. The fog that, in the mind of the young, accompanies distance, has, in the first place, to be cleared away. If the circuit of a couple of miles from home is the range of a child's conception of distance or locality, what possible good — as a means of education or even instruction — can there be in teaching him about distant countries and foreign people ? From this point of view, a first book on geography ought to be considered merely as a frame work, to be filled up by the teacher at discretion ; and what I have here chiefly aimed at is to make a practical protest against the absurd system of teach ing which has hitherto too much prevailed, — a pro test against the oblate spheroid, the elliptic orbit, the nine hundred mdlions of inhabitants, and other words without meanings, which have long been the bogies and the bugbears of young children.

The plan I have adopted has been indeed, though somewhat vaguely, recommended by several eminent writers on educa tion, from Canon Moseley downwards ; but apparently no one has felt, like me, driven to try and carry it out. How far I have succeeded in my attempt, it is for the public to determine. J. K. L. Greenwich, 1878. CONTENTS.

Part I

— AT HOME. CHAPTER PAGE I. Great Britain 1 II. The Cardinal Points 6 III. Great Britain 10 IV. England 18 V. England — continued 24 VL England — continued 28 VII England — continued 34 VIII. England — continued 37 IX. England — continued 40 X. Wales 44 XI. Scotland 48 XII. Scotland — continued 5 6 XIII. The Small Islands CONTENTS. X CHAPTER PAGE XIV. Ireland 68 XV. Ireland — continued '** XVI. Ireland — continued 77 XVII. England, Scotland, and Ireland 80

Part II

— ABROAD. XVIII. The Continent 85 XIX. Norway, Sweden, and Denmark 89 XX. Germany 95 XXI. The Netherlands 103 XXII. France and Switzerland 109 XXIII. Spain and Portugal 121 XXIV. Egypt and Palestine 126 XXV. Turkey and Greece 131 XXVI. Italy 136 XXVII. Austria and Russia 145 XXVIII. Asia 154 XXIX. Africa jg4 CONTENTS. XI

Part III

— ROUND THE WORLD. CHAPTER PAGE XXX. The World is Round 171 XXXI. America 178 XXXII. The Pacific Ocean, Australia 191 XXXIII. The Rotation of the Earth 204 XXXIV. Latitude and Longitude 209 XXXV. The Size of the Earth : Maps 216 XXXVI. Recapitulation ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Stonehenge 31 Fingal's Cave 64 Vesuvius 1459 Rotundity of the Earth 174 The Arctic Sea 184 Geysers 187 Outline Map op Great Britain 5 Outline Map of Ireland 70 Outline Map of Great Britain and Ireland

Chapter I. Great Britain

A very long time ago a tribe of people who called themselves Angles or English, and other people with them, some of whom were called Saxons, came into this country, the name of which was then Britain or Britannia, but has since been, after the name of the new comers, Angle -land or England. The people who lived here before were Britons, but our forefathers, the English, forced their way in and fought against the Britons ; killed a great many of them, made slaves of a great many, and drove the rest away from their pleasant fields and villages into the wild parts of the country, amongst mountains and swamps, where it was not easy for strangers to follow them. I must tell you that mountains are very big hills ; and, as you know how difficult it is to run up a steep hill, even on a good road, you will understand that to B run up a mountain, where there is no road at all, is very difficult indeed.

Swamps are places where there is a great deal of water, not lying deep, but soaking into the ground till it is like a wet sponge, and any one who tries to go across it without knowing the way is apt to get into a soft place and sink in. As the English drove the Britons into the mountains and swamps, it came about that all the lowlands, plains, fields, lands which could be cultivated, and were therefore valuable, were occupied by the English, aud all that part of the country came to be caded England ; but the mountain country, where the Eng lish did not care to follow, was occupied by the old inhabitants, the Britons, whom the English called Welsh, which means strangers ; and the part of the country the Welsh lived in they called Wales : or by the Scotch, who had themselves only lately come into the country ; and the part they lived in was called Scotland.

When you are a little older, and read history, you will learn more about these people, and about the fierce wars which they waged with each other before they agreed what parts of the country be longed to the English, what parts belonged to the Welsh, and what parts belonged to the Scotch ; and you will, I hope, remember, from what I am now telling you, that England is, for the most part, a country of plains and cultivated fields ; that AVales is a small country, and very mountainous ; and that a great GRE A T BRITAIN. 3 deal of Scotland is also very mountainous, though in the course of time, many of the English people living in the lowlands, near the Scotch mountains, became friends with the Scotch, and subjects of the Scotch kiug, so that their part of the country likewise got the name of Scotland.

But as years passed away, these three parts of the country became united under one king or queen ; and the kingdom so made, which was not England, or Scotland, or Wales, but all together, as it had no name, was called by the old and half-forgotten one, Britain, or, to mark the greatness of the united country, Great Britain. Now, Great Britain is a country of itself, distinct from all others. England, Scotland, and Wales were, long ago, different countries ; but only because the people who lived in them were not friends, and were constantly fighting ; the boundaries between their countries were such as were agreed on by themselves, which might be altered whenever they chose, and which were altered very often. Such boundaries, you must remember, are called political ; for they are fixed by the Governments of the countries, and whatever belongs to, or is done by, the Government is said to be political.

But Great Britain does not join on to any other country ; there is no other country from which it is separated only by a political boundary. It is separated from all other countries by the sea. It is entirely surrounded by the sea. It is an island. I wonder if you have ever seen the sea. It is a wide-spread piece of water, stretching out far, far away, much farther than you can see ; like a very large pond, only you can see to the other side of a pond, but the sea is much larger, and you cannot see to the other side of it. The water of the sea is salt, and very nasty to taste ; but a great many fishes live in it, some little, some big ; and men make boats and ships, and sail over it, and go away to countries a long way off, to do business or to see friends. So the sea does not separate people who want to see each other; but it does separate the countries between which it lies, and is a division between those countries which no agreement of the people or their Government can alter.

The shores of the sea are therefore said to be natural boundaries ; when a country is an island, that is, when it is entirely surrounded by the sea, its boundaries are natural, and they are but little likely to be changed by any treaty or agreement for other boundaries which would be only political. Great Britain is an island ; I have drawn its shape on the opposite page, and I want you to copy it on your slate : if you don't make it very like at first, try again, and again, until you know it by heart, and can draw it without looking at the book. GREAT BRITAIN. s outline map of great Britain.

Chapter II. The Cardinal Points

Now, if you have learned to draw the outline of Great Britain, you must learn how to place it ; you must learn which is its top and which is its bottom ; for though an island has no top or bottom, and if it was only small enough, you might look at it from whichever side you liked, and it would still be the same island, it is convenient when we have to draw the outline of it on paper or a slate, to call one part of it the top and the opposite side the bottom ; so that we may know how to place it, and remember its shape more easily. The outline which shows you the shape of any country, whether an island or not, is called a map : what you have just been drawing on your slate is a map of Great Britain ; and when a map is properly drawn, and properly placed, The top of the map is called the north The bottom of the map is the south ; The right hand side is the east ; and The left hand side is the west.

But remember that these names, north, south, THE CARDINAL POINTS. 7 east aud west, belong to the directions in which the parts of the country lie, and not merely to the top or bottom or sides of the map. Scotland is north of England ; England is south of Scotland ; Wales is west of England ; England is east of Wales ; and the position of England, Scotland, and Wales, with respect to each other, does not in any way depend on what we choose to call the top or bottom of the map, which we may change just as we like ; but is fixed, unchangeable, and always the same. North, south, east, and west, are therefore names which we must learn to give to the parts of the country, without a map at all ; and you will remember them in this way, by watching the sun. In the morning the sun rises ; he comes up as if out of the ground, but of course it is from behind the farthest part you can see.

He gets higher and higher, till, just before your dinner time, he has got as high as he can. This time, when the sun is at the highest, is called noon ; it is the middle of the day ; and the sun immediately begins to go down again, and keeps on going down, till he goes out of sight behind the distant ground ; he is said to set. Little boys and girls who live in large towns will not be able to see this so well as those who live in the country ; but those who do live in the country, and more especially those who live near the sea, will, AT HOME AND ABROAD. I daresay, have often seen the sun as he gets up in the morning, and have watched him as he sweeps across the sky to noon and to evening, when he sets in a brilliant display of beautiful colours, crimson, purple, green, and gold. And this goes on day after day, and year after year, whether clouds hide it or not, whether you see it or not; and by it, by this daily journey of the sun, the directions, north, south, east, and west, are fixed.

Each day at noon, the suu is in the same direction ; he gets higher up some days than others ; he gets much higher up in summer than he does in winter; but he is in the same direction every day when he is at his highest. Now you must notice this for yourself: watch the sun; see how high he gets up ; see where he is just before you come in for dinner; try and stand so that you see him in the line of a tree-top, or a chimney-pot, or the corner of a house, or a church-steeple ; and having so fixed him once at noon, you may see him in the same direction, over the same tree-top, or chimney, or church-steeple, every day of your life. And till you get old enough to have a watch, you can tell by the sun's coming into that position that it is noon ; and if you pay attention and use your eyes and your understanding, you will soon be able to tell what o'clock it is by the distance the sun is away from that position.

THE CARDINAL POINTS. 9 Now that direction that I have been speaking about, the direction that the sun is in at noon every day, is south. If then at noon you face the sun, the south is straight before you : the north is at your back. If you turn your back to the sun at noon, you face the north ; your shadow points towards the north ; if you stretch out your right hand, it points to the east ; if you stretch out your left hand, it points to the west. If you stand so that the sun at noon is broad on your right hand, you are looking towards the east ; if the sun at noon is on your left hand, you are looking towards the west. Now if you quite understand what I have been saying, you wdl understand that if you are in England, and you stand with your back to the sun at noon, you are looking towards Scotland ; or if you are in Scotland, and you face the sun at noon, you are looking towards England; and you will be able to understand how people in Scotland or England, or in any other country can tell that they are looking in the same direction, just as surely as if they were side by side, although they may be many miles or hundreds of miles apart.

Chapter III. Great Britain

I daresay you have often heard of the Queen ; per haps, indeed, you have seen her. The Queen is the head and chief person of the Government of Great Britain, but she herself does not govern ; she governs by her councillors, a number of gentlemen whom she appoints to consider everything that can be done for the good of the country. There are, besides, a great number of gentlemen, chosen by the people in the different towns and in different parts of the country, who meet and talk over the business of the country, and advise the Queen's Councillors, in a large room which is called the House of Commons ; for the common people are the com mons, and these gentlemen are chosen by the commons. There is another room which is called the House of Lords, and there the Lords talk over the business of the State, and consider what tlicy should advise the Queen and the Queen's Councillors to do.

The Lords arc not chosen by the people, but are made Lords by the Queen, because she thinks them fit men GRE A T BRITAIN. 11 to advise her ; or else their fathers, or ancestors, were chosen by former kings or queens, aud they sit in the House of Lords because the privilege has descended to them ; they have inherited it, just as if it was property, and they will leave it, in the same way, to their eldest sons. You must remember, then, that the Government of Great Britain is carried on by the Queen and her Councillors, who are advised by the members of the House of Lords and of the House of Commons ; and that the House of Lords and the House of Commons together are called the Houses of Parliament. The Houses of Parliament, and the offices where the Queen's Councillors work, aud the State House, or palace, where the Queen sometimes lives, are all in a very big town which is called London.

A very great many people live in London, and among them are a very great many little boys and girls, some of whom, I hope, will read this book, and think that I am writing it just for them. It is because everybody who helps the Queen in governing this great country lives in London, or at least works in London, that London is considered the chief town or capital of Great Britain ; and because all these great and rich people, and many of the Queen's friends and attendants, live there, and the Queen often holds her Court there, London has grown by degrees to be very large and very rich. But, besides this, there is in London a very great AT HOME AND ABROAD. 12 deal of business with other countries, about which I will tell you by and by. A large river, called the Thames, passes through London and pours its water into the sea ; and as this river is very deep, great ships come up to London, and bring there all sorts of merchandise from other countries, or take away things which grow or are made in England, and which they sell to strangers.

This bringing things to England from other countries, and taking things to them out of England, buying what we want, and sed ing what we don't want, is called commerce ; and the men who make a business of commerce are called merchants. Now if.a merchant is clever and minds his business, he often gets very rich ; and as there are a great many merchants in London, there is a great deal of money ; and it is this, quite as much as the presence of the Queen and the Parliament, that makes London such a large and rich town. So, as I have told you about London and its river, the Thames, I must show you whereabouts it is. It is near the south of England, and also near the east side ; you will know, then, to look for it on the map near the bottom right-hand corner; and close to it you will see the River Thames, which flows for a great way from west to east, that is, on the map, from left to right.

At London the Thames gets very much wider, and its water gets salt from the sea, and it becomes a part of the sea. When the sea comes in GRE A T BRITAIN 13 this way into the land, that part of it is called an arm of the sea ; but sometimes, when the arm of the sea is made by a river widening out, as the Thames does, it is called an estuary; and so the wide part of the Thames below London, on the east side of London, is called the estuary of the Thames. Besides London there are a great many other towns in Great Britain which are near the sea, either on arms of the sea or estuaries of rivers, so that ships come to them, and they have a great deal of com merce, some of them as much as London. I will tell you the names of some of them, and you must try and find them on the map, and remember where abouts they are.

Liverpool is the richest and largest town in Eng land, except London ; it is on the west side, on the estuary of a river called the Mersey. Glasgow is another very large and rich town, almost as large as Liverpool ; it is in Scotland, on the west side, a long way north of Liverpool, and you will see that it is at the beginning of the estuary of the river Clyde. Bristol is in England, and also on the west side : you will find it on the south shore of a large ami of the sea which is called the Bristol Channel, and at the mouth of the little river Avon, which opens into the .Bristol Channel ; and whilst you are looking at that part of the map, you should notice that the A T HOME AND ABROAD. 14 beginning of the Bristol Channel is the estuary of the River Severn, the largest river in Great Britain except the Thames.

And just where the Severn begins to widen out into its estuary is the town named Glou cester, which has not much commerce, because the river is not deep enough for large ships to come to it. Now, if you will look along the south coast of England, you will see Plymouth ; it stands between two arms of the sea, the westernmost of which runs a great way into the land and is very deep, so that it is an excellent harbour, a place where ships can lie safely, sheltered from storms. This harbour is called Hamoaze ; the ships that lie there are almost all ships of war, whose duty it is to fight the Queen's battles in different parts of the world, and to protect our merchant ships from robbers. There is not much commerce at Plymouth ; and the merchant ships that come there do not go into Hamoaze, but into the much smaller harbour on the east side of the town.

This is called Catwater, and is really the estuary of the little river Plym, which gives its name to the town ; for Plymouth is only another way of saying the mouth of the Plym. Some way to the east of Plymouth is Southampton, which is the principal town for commerce in the South of England : its harbour is part of a large arm of the sea, known as Southampton Water, and is sheltered from all bad weather by an island wliich is just opposite to it. This island is called the Isle of GRE A T BRITAIN. 15 Wight. It is only a small island, but it is very pretty, and warm. It is a favourite place of the Queen's, and she has had a large house built there, facing Southampton Water ; it is called Osborne, and she goes to it very often when she can get away from London. Close to Southampton, a little way to the east, is Portsmouth, which also has a large harbour where ships of war lie.

There is very little commerce at Portsmouth, but it and Plymouth are almost entirely naval ports; ships of war are built and fitted out there, and the business of the people who live there belongs to the navy. There are a great many soldiers there to guard the Government works and stores; and of course there are a great many sailors. Now let us look along the east coast of England, and a little to the north of the Thames you will see Yarmouth, which has no harbour, and the river Yar is a very little stream, into which only very small ships can come ; but Yarmouth is a busy place, because a great many fish are caught in the sea near there, and are brought to Yarmouth to be dried ; it is there that great numbers of herrings are made into red herrings or bloaters ; and when you hear of Yar mouth bloaters, remember that they are called so because they are cured at Yarmouth.

Farther to the north you will see Hull, on the Humber, a large arm of the sea; and beyond that Newcastle, on the river Tyne, where there is a great AT HOME AND ABROAD. deal of trade in coal, which is dug out of the earth near there. Then, if you look along the east coast of Scotland you will see a large arm of the sea called the Frith of Forth ; and near it, on the south side, is a large and beautiful town called Edinburgh, where, long ago, when Scotland was a separate kingdom, before it joined with England, the king of .Scotland and his Government used to live. In those days Edinburgh was the capital of Scotland, as London was of England, and it is often called so even now; but as there is no separate king or queen of Scotland or England, and no separate Government, there is really no capital of either Scotland or England, but London is the capital of Great Britain.

To the north of the Frith of Forth there is another arm of the sea, the Frith of Tay, which is really the estuary of the river Tay ; and beside this is the town of Dundee, a very busy and wealthy place ; and still farther north you will see Aberdeen between two little rivers, the Don and the Dee, neither of which is large enough to hold many ships, and those that do come there are not very big. Now, if you have found all these places on the map, you should try and remember their position, and what each is distinguished for ; you should try and remember the names of the rivers or arms of the sea near each, and follow the rivers back, to see what direction they run in. It is not by merely reading, or by being told, that you will ever learn to know these; you must GREAT BRITAIN. 17 learn them from the map, and then try and draw them yourself.

You have, I hope, learned to draw the outline map of Great Britain ; now try to mark on it the places we have been talking about ; never mind if you are not quite right at first, you will get better by and by ; and in this, as in everything you have to do, the first secret of success is to take pains. Now, then, take your slate, draw the outline map of Great Britain, and mark the towns : — London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Bristol, Gloucester, Plymouth, Southampton, Portsmouth, Yarmouth, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Dundee, and Aberdeen. Mark also the names of the harbours, arms of the sea, or estuaries beside these towns; and try and copy the course of the rivers wliich open out into these estuaries — the Thames, the Mersey, the Clyde, the Severn, the Tyne, and the Tay. c

Chapter IV. England

I have told you that the whole of Great Britain is governed by the Queen, as advised by her Council lors or Ministers, and the two Houses of Parliament, the Lords and the Commons ; but for the more easy carrying out the Government, every part of the couutry has a little government of its own ; and for this purpose the country is divided into a great number of parts, each of which is quite independent of the others, but is subject to the Queen's government and the Parliament. These parts of the country are now called counties, because they were formerly ruled over by a nobleman who was called a count or earl ; but they were first of all called shires, an old word which meant shares or divisions. I am going to tell you about the counties or shires : and I will begin with England. If you look at your map, you will see that the northernmost shire is Northumberland.

The river Tyne, that you have already heard of, falls into the ENGLAND. 19 sea at its southern boundary : Newcastle which is on — that is, is close to — the Tyne, is in Northumberland. I hope you remember that I told you that a great deal of coal comes from Newcastle. It is found underground in deep pits in Northumberland and in the county which is next to it, Durham. Between Durham and Yorkshire is the little river Tees. Yorkshire, you will see, is a very large county, and stretches all the way to the Humber ; it is the largest county in England, and has a great many large towns. Besides Hull, which you have already found on the map, there is York, which is the chief town of the county, and has a very large and beautiful church called the Minster; and there is Leeds, where a great deal of cloth is made ; and Sheffield, where they make knives, and carpenters' tools, and all sorts of things in steel ; and Halifax, where they make blankets ; and a great many more, whose names you may learn from the map, and which I daresay you will read about by and by.