natives for furs, sealskins, dried fish, and the down of the eider duck. Some of them have little gardens where they raise lettuce, cabbages, and radishes in the few summer months.

The Eskimos usually live near the shore. They have little huts of stone or turf and, in the winter, of snow and ice blocks. They are hunters and fishers, catching seal and walrus, the latter animal furnishing a great part of their food. They net ducks and other birds, and sometimes kill musk oxen and even polar bears. They drink melted snow water, and do much of their cooking in a rude way, with fish oil and blubber. They rely chiefly upon their clothing to keep warm, sleeping in fur bags at night.

The men and the women have much the same dress, both wearing stockings and trousers of sealskin, with the

fur turned inward, and also skin stockings and boots. The men have jackets and hoods of fur, and the women sometimes have pouches or pockets sewed to the back of their garments; in these the babies are carried until they are old enough to walk.

The Eskimos make boats of driftwood, covered with sealskin, and also sleds formed of bone, wood, and skin, in which they travel over the frozen ice, drawn by dogs. They are all together of a low grade of civilization, and of not much importance in the work of the world.

Iceland is not so cold as Greenland, although it lies only a short distance to the eastward; for its climate is tem

others on which hardy horses are reared.

Iceland is about the size of Ohio. It is very mountainous, and it has enormous volcanoes which have thrown out so much lava that they have covered about one tenth of its surface. There are all together more than one hundred volcanoes and many hot springs, notwithstanding that the country is so far north, and that it has great glaciers and vast fields of snow.

We are especially interested in Iceland, because it was

one of the homes of the Norsemen, a people who, it is claimed, discovered America almost five hundred years before Columbus made his first voyage across the Atlantic. The country is now ruled by Denmark, and is peopled largely by Danes. Most of the natives live by rearing cattle and sheep, and by fishing. The capital is Reikiavik (ri'kě-ȧ-vik), a thriving little city on the west coast. Here the governor general lives, and here the little parliament which makes the laws has its sitting. Reikiavik has good

schools, a national library, and a museum.

Not far from Iceland are the Faroe Islands, twenty-four in number, inhabited by people similar to the Icelanders, who devote themselves to sheep rearing and fishing. Not very far away from the Faroes are the Shetland Islands, noted for their beautiful ponies; and nearer Scotland are the Orkneys and Hebrides, belonging to that country.

Farther northeast of Greenland, and inside the Arctic Circle, are Spitzbergen, Franz Josef Land, and, nearer the Russian and Siberian coast, Nova Zembla, the New Siberia Islands, and others.

Most of the latter islands have no permanent inhabitants, but they are visited by hunters from Siberia, who cross over with their reindeer to take advantage of the short grass, moss, and other kinds of stunted vegetation found there. They also go to hunt the bears, foxes, and other animals which live on the islands.

Passing on eastward and going through the Bering Strait, we find some large islands lying between Asia and North America. The Alaskan archipelago has many islands and islets; the Aleutian chain and the Kuril Islands, which are largely volcanic, are of considerable

extent, and the great island of Sakhalin (så-kȧ-lyēn'), off the east coast of Siberia, is six hundred miles long, and at one place more than one hundred miles wide. This island has valuable coal beds, oil fields, and gold mines. It has luxuriant forests, a climate in which grains and potatoes will grow, and the waters surrounding it are so rich in fish that it is said the fisheries there will some day be the most important of the whole world.

Sakhalin is now largely a prison settlement of Russia, inhabited chiefly by the political exiles and convicts who have been sent there to work in the mines. It is a cold and dreary land, covered most of the time with fog, rain, or snow, and the condition of the prisoners is a sad one.

62. ISLANDS AROUND AND ABOUT SOUTH

WE

AMERICA

E shall take one more trip before we close our explorations of the great island world. As we look over the globe we see that we have visited the waters about Australia, Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America, but have passed South America by.

South America has, however, but few island groups near it, and none of very great importance with the exception of the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego about its extreme southern end, which we visited during our journeys in South America.

There are a few islands, however, which are deserving of mention. The Galapagos Archipelago, lying on the

Equator almost directly west of Ecuador, is a little group especially noted for its large turtles, and the Guano Islands, farther south along the coast, are famous for the millions of birds which roost upon them and live and die there, making a valuable fertilizer, which is sent by the shipload to Europe and the United States.

The Guano Islands are masses of volcanic rock rising out of the ocean opposite the great desert of western South America. The rain never washes them, and they are bare of everything green. The birds live on the fish of the waters about. Many of them are pelicans which have great bills with pouches under them, in which they scoop the fish up out of the water, eating until they can eat no more. They then climb upon these islands and lie about until they have digested their food. There are