Round The Wonderful World - free ebook by G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton

UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME

A BOOK OF DISCOVERY By M. B. Synge THE WORLD'S STORY By E. O'Neill...

9 minute read

Read Chapter

AUTHOR OF "THE BOOK OF LONDON" "IN THE GRIP OF THE WILD WA" ETC.

WITH 12 DRAWINGS IN COLOUR AND 120 IN CRAYON BY A. S. FORREST LONDON: T. C. &amp; E. C. JACK, Ltd. 35 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. AND EDINBURGH...

13 minute read

Read Chapter

JIM

CHAP PAGE I. Which Way ? 1 II. Really Off! 20 III. Fiery Mountains 36 IV. The Strangest Country in the World 51 V. The Highway of Egypt 65 VI. A Mighty Man 75 VII. The City of Kings 85 VIII. On the Nile 95 IX. A Million Sunrises 109 X. A Walk about Jerusalem 120 XI. The Country of Christ's Childhood 139 XII. An Adventure 147 XIII. The Gateway of the East 153 XIV. The Depths of the Ocean 168 XV. A Tropical Thunderstorm 179 XVI. A Sacred Tree 192 XVII. Unwelcome Intruders 203 XVIII. The Capital of

2 minute read

Read Chapter

PLATES IN COLOUR

The Mighty Seated Figures at Abu Simbel Frontispiece FACING PAGE She is on the point of leaving her Country, perhaps for ever 24 English Soldiers climbing the Pyramids 56 Jews' Wailing Place, Jerusalem 128 Swaying its lean unlovely Body to and fro in Time with the Tune 200 A Carpet Shop, Delhi 224 The Golden Pagoda 256 A Burmese Play 288 A Village built on Piles, Sumatra. Little Brown Boys play about and fish 312 Our Dinner in a Japanese Inn 336 Indians as they are now 376 The Falls of Niagara 3

1 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER I

When you have noticed a fly crawling on a ball or an orange has it ever occurred to you how a man would look crawling about on the earth if seen from a great height? Our world is, as everyone knows, like an orange in shape, only it is very much larger in comparison with us than an orange is in regard to a fly. In fact, to make a reasonable comparison, we should have to picture the fly crawling about on a ball or globe fifty miles in height; to get all round it he would have to make a journey of

26 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER II

It is exciting to start on any journey, even if it is only one we have done before, but to go off round the world that is a real adventure! There are many lines of steamers we could choose to go by, but we will select for this first part of the journey the Orient Line. The choice really lies between that and the P. &amp; O., as we have already decided, and for many reasons it is best to begin with the Orient and join the other later. The main reason being that I want you to see a little of a

22 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER III

Do you learn Physical Geography? I did when I was in the schoolroom, but it is quite likely to have been given up now, or perhaps it is called by some other name. It sounds dull, but is not really, at least there was one part of it that interested me immensely, so much so that that particular page was thumbed and dirty with being turned over so many times. This was the page on which volcanoes were described. I never thought I should see a volcano, but the idea of these tempestuous mountains, see

21 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER IV

Looking down from the deck of the Orontes it seems as if we were peering into the folds of a black gauze curtain, between which demons from the pit rush yelling to and fro. These men are black from head to foot, with the exception of the gleaming white teeth which show between their open lips. They are black to begin with by nature, and are further covered, scanty clothing and all, with a thick coating of coal-dust, which sticks to their oily skins and dirty rags. They are digging frantically in

17 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER V

Of course you have been in a cinematograph theatre, and there, seated comfortably, have watched the various scenes pass before you. The great charm of these scenes is that the people really did do the things which we here see them doing, even down to the smallest gestures. But often the pleasure is spoilt by knowing that the actors were only making these gestures for the purpose of being photographed; also the scenes are sometimes disconnected and scrappy, and seldom indeed is it that they are r

13 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER VI

Our beds face the windows, which open like high glass doors, French fashion; before retiring we set them wide, and close outside the long shutters made of slats of wood. In the morning we are awakened suddenly, almost at the same instant, by a red flame glowing between the slats as fire glows between the bars of a grate. Springing from our curtains we fling open the shutters, expecting to see a great conflagration, and behold, it is the sunrise! The sun does not greet us in such boisterous fashi

13 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER VII

I think this is the gayest scene I have ever looked upon in my life. See those mahogany-coloured boatmen in their brilliant scarlet and white striped jerseys and blue petticoats, grinning so as to show all their milk-white teeth. The boats are apple-green and scarlet, and they are reflected in the clear still water, and the dragoman, who marshals all the party into them, is a very splendid person indeed, in a long overcoat of turquoise blue cloth as soft and fine as a glove, with a striped gown

13 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER VIII

In my ears is the sound as of the tuning up of a thousand fiddles! I hear the agonising scrape of strings, the squeal of the bows! I have heard it all before at many a concert, but this time it is intensified a thousandfold and penetrates even into my dreams. I imagine I am in a concert hall and spring up wildly with the intention of getting outside until the music begins, but the movement wakes me, and behold I am not at a concert in London on a dim Sunday afternoon, but in a brilliantly white

18 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER IX

It is very cold and quite dark when I wake. The steamer is anchored close up to the bank and not a sound comes from the still water. My blankets are very comfortable; it can't be time to turn out yet. It is an effort even to stretch out a hand and strike a light to see my watch—5.15! Yes, we ought to go! You take some waking, and only my threat of, "You'll never get another chance in your life," brings you out of your bunk at last. If you've ever done anything nastier than trying to dress agains

13 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER X

We have passed along the south coast of Europe and have been into a corner of Africa, and now we are going to set foot on a new continent—Asia. From Port Said, before we go on eastward, I want you to see just a little of the Holy Land—the scene of the Bible. The Holy Land stands by itself, apart, and though it is in Asia it doesn't seem to belong to it. Someone once said that it is to the world what a church is to a town—the centre of religion. Anyway, it is curious and interesting to notice tha

27 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XI

If you only knew how funny you look! Perched up on a dirty, thin, white horse which scrambles along somehow, while the great iron stirrups, shaped like shovels, dangle far below your feet. Aha! I thought so, one has fallen off. I try to pull up quickly to dismount and help you, and my bridle, which is made of worsted, like the toy reins children play with, breaks suddenly and my noble steed comes a cropper! By the time I recover and get to you I find our guide, who looks more like a bundle of ra

8 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XII

We are late, very late, the moon is rising and I must confess I am just a wee bit uneasy. When we reached Haifa safely last night, coming from Nazareth, and found we couldn't get a steamer till to-morrow it seemed the best thing to drive across the bay and get a look at Acre, that celebrated town which has spent its existence in the turmoil of sieges and assaults. It is a great fort built out into the sea, and nearly everyone who wanted to get possession of the Holy Land has tried first to take

7 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XIII

The anchor is up and we are in a stately ship moving on slowly into the Suez Canal. When we arrived at Port Said—how many weeks ago was it? It seems to me like a year—we were on the Orontes , of the Orient Line, and we steamed into the harbour past a long breakwater like a thin arm; standing upon it is a statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the man who made the Suez Canal. That meant nothing to you then, for the canal was merely a name and not of any special interest, but now that we are actually pas

21 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XIV

Now we are right out in the Indian Ocean, and it is a bright day with a certain freshness in the air, instead of that horrible muggy heat that made us feel so languid when we were in the Red Sea. Look over the ship's side and watch the rainbow in the spray; that is one of the prettiest things to see on board. As the vessel cuts through the water she raises a frill of foam on either side—what the sailors call "a bone in her mouth." The frill, rising to a continuous wave along the side, catches th

16 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XV

We have really arrived in the East! We are in Colombo, the capital town of Ceylon, the great island which lies swung like a pendant from the southernmost point of India. We are sitting in the shady verandah of one of the largest hotels, the Grand Oriental, called G.O.H. for short, and as we sip lemon-squash we look out over a scene so full of interest that it is difficult to take it all in. This is quite different from Port Said. There it was bright and clear, but there was not the wonderful sme

18 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XVI

Do you remember that just about this time last week we were crouching in a hole in a muddy bank waiting for the thunderstorm to pass on? How different now, though we are still in Ceylon and, as crow flies, not so many miles from the Hunters' mountain-side. It is a gorgeous tropical afternoon, the bits of sky we can see through the feathery-leaved trees are of the deepest blue, and we are resting, because it seems too hot to move a limb. In front of us there stretches a sheet of limpid water whic

15 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XVII

India at last! We have come up the west coast from Ceylon and are now approaching Bombay. It is night-time, and far ahead we see a great yellow light which appears and disappears, and is visible for twenty miles out at sea. It seems to blink at us in greeting, peeping every few seconds to see if we are still there. Then at last we ride into the harbour, and such a harbour! We cannot see it now at all, and even if it were daylight we couldn't see more than a very small part of it, for it is fifte

20 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XVIII

Delhi! If you draw a line across the map of India from the north to the south at the greatest length, and another from east to west at the greatest breadth, the two will form a cross of the usual shape, with the cross-bar high up. Just at the point where they intersect stands Delhi, the chief city in India since the King-Emperor's proclamation in 1911. Before that Calcutta was the capital, but Calcutta, like Bombay, is a city of trade, and has practically no historic memories. Delhi is full of t

21 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XIX

A curious building, isn't it? I mean that one right in front of us. It is something like a very large and many-sided crown, built of stone and set upon the ground. The sides are pierced with windows of the same sort as those seen in churches, and on each of the angles there is a little pinnacle. It rises up serenely against the soft blue sky of this early morning. We are far from Delhi now, having arrived at Cawnpore late last night, and we have come out here first thing this morning. It is only

8 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XX

Surely you have never before seen anything like this, there is nothing to be seen like it anywhere else! We are at Benares, the sacred city of the Hindus, which stands on their sacred river, the Ganges. We have taken a boat and have floated out into the current, and are looking up with amazement at the spectacle before us. The city rises high on the banks, and towers and minarets and domes of a curious long-drawn-out shape, glittering in the sun like gold, arise out of the flat roofs. Down to th

10 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XXI

It is hot and still, we have passed across a place of broken tangled undergrowth and come out into a rather untidy courtyard, where some sneaking yellow pariah dogs barked at us until I cut at them with my stick, when they ran away and barked again from a safe distance. There seems to be no one else here but ourselves. A great tree covered with glorious magenta flowers stands on one side. It is our old friend the bougainvillea, but here it grows into a great tree instead of a creeper. It is back

19 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XXII

We are lucky! No sooner have we returned to the hotel than a gorgeous man, over six feet high, dressed in white, with a red sash, in which is stuck a tasselled dagger, greets us. He is a chuprassie , or messenger, and has come from Government House with a note inviting us to a garden-party there this afternoon. What a day of it! This is the result of my having been up there yesterday to write our names in the book kept for the purpose, while I left you to rest. That is the way people do here ins

8 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XXIII

"This butter is uneatable, Ramaswamy." "I wash him, Master." He takes away the dish of nasty, yellow, tinned butter and presently returns with it fresh and white, with much of the disagreeable taste and smell gone. Good! Now we know. We are sitting on a broad verandah of dark wood with a roof overhead. It is so wide that it is just like a room, only the outer sides are open. We look out over a moat filled with water and covered with leaves and pink flowers. These are the celebrated lotus flowers

9 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XXIV

Did you ever see anything like it in your life? I never did. We are on a steamer coming down the Irrawaddy River from Mandalay, and it is our first evening on board. We are not the only passengers, there are also a widow lady and her daughter, a girl a few years older than you, but still in pigtails, whose name is Joyce. We were all four sitting very comfortably after dinner on the deck, which is roofed in, making a fine open room like a verandah, when a few large, light-coloured moths appeared;

18 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XXV

Joyce's a brick. She can do most things boys can, and we soon began racing each other along those little raised bits of earth between the beds in the paddy fields. I splashed right in once or twice and we shrieked with laughter. By and by we found ourselves through that and out on a flat place covered with thorns. They weren't very high mostly, and we didn't feel them through our shoes, but now and again one caught us on the ankles and then didn't we hop! By the time we had reached the road I su

18 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XXVI

In every long journey there comes a time when one feels a little dreary. So many new things have been seen that the mind and eye are tired. Then maybe there is just a touch of home-sickness mingled with it, and when one gets to a part less beautiful than what has gone before all at once there is a longing to turn and fly back to all that we are accustomed to. It seems to me that you and I are suffering from that now. We have left Burma behind, and for two days have ploughed down the Gulf of Mart

21 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XXVII

We are standing in front of a mysterious gate which is yet not a gate. You must have seen pictures of Japan many a time, and in some of them there must have been one of these curious erections. Yet how can one describe it? The Greek letter Π is most like it. Imagine a giant Π with a second cross-bar below the top one. In Japan this is called a Torii. The one in front of us, rising like a great scaffolding far above our heads, is made of wood, but they are often of stone or metal too. They are al

17 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XXVIII

If we received a slight shock when we saw the woman in the shop adding up by the help of beads, what about the booking-clerk at the station? He seems unable to give the simplest change without this sort of reckoning. Comic, isn't it? Picture the clerks at Euston fumbling away at their beads while an impatient throng elbowed one another before the pigeon-hole! The station is quite small, merely a shed with a wooden roof set on posts. We are going second-class and taking Yosoji with us, so that we

17 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XXIX

We dawdled so long in the quaint and charming country of Japan that it was full summer when we left. As the inverted fan of Fujiyama faded gradually into nothingness against the illimitable spaces of the sky, we said again and again sayonara , which is the musical Japanese word meaning good-bye, for we felt we were taking leave of an old friend. Japan is on the other side of the world from England; shall we ever get there again? Then came the voyage across the Pacific and the landing at Victoria

18 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XXX

We are now in the train running toward the great ridge of mountains which rises like a backbone through the country from north to south, cutting off the territory of British Columbia from Alberta, though both are provinces of Canada. The Rockies! What ideas of grizzly bears and Indians and scalps and trails the name brings up before me! I don't suppose you have anything like the same feeling about them, because you weren't brought up on Fenimore Cooper and Ballantyne and all those other writers

18 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XXXI

Do you remember your first sight of the sea? I've not forgotten mine, though it must have been many years before yours. I suppose I wasn't more than four, and kindly patronising elder brothers and sisters had tried to describe it to me beforehand, but the most I pictured was a very, very big pond, with water as flat and uninteresting as that of most ponds. No one can have any real notion of the sea before seeing it; and it is the same with the prairie. I have often imagined it, but now that we a

15 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XXXII

If we found the prairie astonishing even when uncultivated, what of this? Corn, ripened in the sun, and spreading over mile after mile on both sides of the railway line! There are no neat little fences to cut it up into fields, and it does not grow unevenly, but all at one height, so the effect is a flat and boundless plain, yellow as the desert sand. Everyone has heard of the grain fields of Canada, the great stretch of land, about a thousand miles in width, from whence corn is shipped to the r

6 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XXXIII

Supposing that some of our friends in Britain, who are expecting to greet us at home in a week, could see us now, suddenly, I wonder where they would think we had got to! Covered in borrowed oilskins, we stand in a mighty cavern, whose vast stone roof reaches up to a hundred feet or more, though in width it is comparatively narrow, like a long shelf. In front of us is a wall of water so thick and overwhelming that it resembles a curtain of giants; the roar of the falling water and the howl of th

19 minute read

Read Chapter