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springs of water; and the Arabs live in tents, and go from one green spot to another.

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THE Red Sea flows between Arabia and Egypt; Egypt is in Africa.

Egypt is a long, narrow country; the river Nile runs quite through it. Every year the river overflows its banks, and covers the land with water; and for several weeks you see the houses and trees standing in the midst of water. The mud which the waters leave upon the land makes every thing grow so fast, that the people of Egypt get three or four crops from their fields every year.

Between Egypt and the sea, on the western side of Africa, the land is a great

desert, like those I told you of just now in Arabia, only this is much larger. Many persons have died of thirst while trying to travel across it. There are

some wells of water; but it is a long way from one well to another.

Below this Great Desert is Negroland, where all the people are black, and have woolly hair. The most southern part of Africa belongs to the English: we call it The Cape; but between Negroland and the south, there is a very great deal of land which we do not know much about.

Those persons who have seen any part of it say that there are thousands of wild beasts roaming about there; some are very beautiful, and harmless also, but others are very fierce. There are great numbers of lions, and troops of elephants; and the men who dwell in that land are wild and cruel, and fight terribly with one another.

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You see on the map, how very far America stretches from north to south. In the middle it becomes narrow; and in one part there is only a narrow neck of land between the two seas.

This divides America into two parts: the part on the north of that narrow neck of land is called North America ; and the part on the south of it is South America.

It was a very long time before the people who lived in Europe, and Asia, and Africa knew that there was another large portion of the world, lying far away

from them, beyond the sea. At last, in the year 1492, a clever man, called Columbus, who thought there must be more land in the West, sailed out across the sea till he found America.

When the people of Europe heard that there was another great land, with plenty of rivers, and trees, and fruits, and that gold and silver were to be found there, many persons went over the sea to settle in America.

not find gold there, pleasant country, and the men who

People went from England, and settled on the eastern side of North America. They did but they found a covered with woods; were living in the woods, spent their time in hunting, and fishing, and clothed themselves with the skins of beasts.

By little and little the English people cut down the woods, and spread themselves over the country, and built towns and villages. At this time the greatest part of North America belongs to people who speak English, and live much in the same way that we do.

Part of the country looks very much

like England, and is full of corn-fields, orchards, and pastures for cattle; but a great deal of the land is still covered with forests.

There is a long line of mountains all along the western side of America; and in some parts, both of North and South America, a great deal of gold and silver is found amongst the mountains.

South America is very warm, because a great deal of it is in the middle part of the world. It is famous for great rivers, and there are thick forests of very large trees, and also very large, flat plains, which are covered with long grass.

In the forests great climbing-plants, with very bright, gay flowers, climb up the stems of the trees, and hang so thickly about their branches, that they form a kind of green wall, and men are often obliged to cut their way through with a hatchet.

The trees are full of monkeys, and of parrots and other birds, which keep up a constant screaming and chattering; and many kinds of wild beasts live among these forests.

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