[Aryan_]

Poland

All children who have read the Bible, know that the Jews were once called Israelites, and that they once lived in the land of Canaan. Where do they live now? In all lands; but more Jews live in Poland than in any other country. They have eyes like the hawk and noses like its beak. They are fine-looking men – such as you might imagine David and Solomon were.

The rich Jewesses wear bright turbans, adorned with diamonds and rubies. But all the Jews are not rich. Some are miserably poor.

The Jews are very troublesome in Poland. They follow travellers about, offering to help them, and will not go away when they are told. The Poles speak very rudely to the Jews, and think themselves much better; but the Jews bear rudeness with great patience, because they are accustomed to be ill-treated. The Poles love talking, and they speak so loud they almost scream; and they are proud of this, and say that the Germans are dumb.

Holland

There is no people in Europe as clean as the Dutch. If they did not rub and scrub a good deal, the damp would cover all their brass pans with rust. The poor children at school are much cleaner than English children.

The Dutch are very industrious. The king will not allow big boys to stand idle in the streets. The policemen take up idle ragged boys, and send them into the country to drain the marshy grounds; so there are very few thieves, and hardly any beggars. The Dutch children do not make as much noise at school as our children do. You hear no noise outside the school-house, and when playtime comes the scholars go out quietly. They cannot help making some noise with their feet, as they wear wooden shoes – and wooden shoes, I think, they must need to keep them out of the wet.

Denmark

This is the capital. There is not so regular and handsome a town in all Europe; but as the ground is at, it cannot be as beautiful as Edinburgh.

If you like a quiet city, you would like Copenhagen. It is so still and so silent, that you might almost think there was nobody in it.

Norway

The men are tall and strong; the women are handsome. They are a simple people – kind and good-natured, and particularly honest. In summer nights, which are quite light and very hot, the people leave their doors open, and no thief comes in, not even in the towns. Bars and bolts are of no use in Norway.

The greatest fault of the Norwegians is drunkenness. They are too fond of a spirit called finkel – something like gin, only it is made from potatoes. On every little farm there is a machine, called a still, for making it. O who can say how much mischief is done by that still!

The poor are ignorant, and not fond of reading, though they can read. They are not like the Icelanders, who drink little and read much.

Turkey

The king of Turkey is called the Sultan, or the Grand Seignor. He has a palace by the water-side where his wives live. They are all slaves brought from distant parts, and chosen for their beauty.

The Grand Seignor does what he pleases. He orders any one who offends him to be killed.

It is one of the wicked customs of this dark land to murder the boy-babies of the king's brothers. The reason is lest they are grown up any of them should try to make himself Grand Seignor.

Greece

The Greeks do not know how to bring up their children. I will relate an anecdote of one spoiled child. An English lady was in a ship not far from Athens. When it grew dark she went down into the cabin. There she saw a Greek lady lying on the floor, twisting her hands in her long hair, weeping and lamenting aloud, and crying out, "If the ship do not return to Athens immediately, I do not know what I shall do!" "What is the matter?" asked the English lady. "Oh," said she, "I have a little daughter of seven years old, and she wishes to go home; and when we told her she could not, she began to scream violently, and is still screaming so loud that I fear she will go into fits."

The English lady tried to quiet the naughty child by giving her cakes and sugar-plums. This plan succeeded. If the child had not been spoiled ever since she was a baby, she would not have been so wilful and passionate at seven years old.

Arabia

The three Evils of Arabia.

The first evil is want of water. There is no river in Arabia: and the small streams are often dried up by the heat.

The second evil is many locusts, which come in countless swarms and devour every green thing.

The third evil is the burning wind. When a traveller feels it coming, he throws himself on the ground, covering his face with his cloak lest the hot sand should be blown up his nostrils. Sometimes the men and horses are choked by the sand.

These are the three evils: but there is a still greater – the religion of Mahomed: for this injures the soul; the other evils only hurt the body.

Kurdistan

The fiercest of all the people in Asia are the Kurds. They are the terror of all who live near them. Their dwellings are in the mountains; there some live in villages, and some in black tents, and some in strong castles. At night they rush down from the mountains upon the people in the valleys, uttering a wild yell, and brandishing their swords. They enter the houses, and begin to pack up the things they find, and to place them on the backs of their mules and asses, while they drive away the cattle of the poor people; and if any one attempts to resist them, they kill him.

The reason why the Armenians live in holes in the ground is because they hope the Kurds may not find out where they are. The Kurds have thin, dark faces, hooked noses, and black eyes, with a fierce and malicious look.

Persia

Very often you may see a large company of pilgrims, some on foot and some mounted on camels, horses, and asses. They are returning from Mecca, the birth-place of Mahomed. What good have they got by their pilgrimage? None at all. They think they are grown very holy, but they make such an uproar at the inns by quarrelling and fighting when they are travelling home, that no one can bear to be near them.

China

If you were to sit by a clock, and if all the Chinese were to pass before you one at a time, and if you were to count one at each tick of the clock, and if you were never to leave off counting day or night – how long do you think it would be before you had counted all the Chinese?

Twelve years. O what a vast number of people there must be in China! In all, there are about three hundred and sixty millions!

If all the people in the world were collected together, out of every three – one would be Chinese. How sad it is to think that this immense nation (except a few) knows not God, nor His glorious Son!

All the religions of China are bad, but of the three, the religion of Confucius is the least foolish.

The religion of Taou teaches men to act like madmen.

The religion of Buddha teaches them to act like idiots.

The religion of Confucius teaches them to act like wise men, but without souls.

We must allow that the Chinese are very clever. They found out how to print, and they found out how to make gunpowder, and they found out the use of the loadstone. What is that? A piece of steel rubbed against the loadstone will always point to the north. The Chinese found out these three things, printing, gunpowder, and the use of the loadstone, before we in Europe found them out. But they did not teach them to us; we found them out ourselves.

It is a common thing to stumble over the bodies of dead babies in the streets. In England it is counted murder to kill a babe, but it is thought no harm at all in China.

Hindostan

There is no nation that has so many gods as the Hindoos. What do you think of three hundred and thirty millions? There are not so many people in Hindostan as that. No one person can know the names of all these gods; and who would wish to know them? Some of them are snakes, and some are monkeys!

Siberia

If their taste in dress is laughable, their taste in food is horrible, as you will see. A traveller went with a Samoyede family for a little while.

One day the traveller saw a Samoyede feast. A rein-deer was brought and killed before the tent door; and its bleeding body was taken into the tent, and devoured, all raw as it was, with the heartiest appetite. It was dreadful to see the Samoyedes gnawing the flesh off the bones; their faces all stained with blood, and even the child had his share of the raw meat. Truly they looked more like wolves than men.

Japan

They are a very polite people, – much politer than the Chinese – but very proud. They are a learned nation, for they can read and write, and they understand geography, arithmetic, and astronomy.

But Japan is exposed to many dangers, from wind, from water, and from fire – three terrible enemies! The waves dash with violence upon the rocky shores; the wind often blows in fearful hurricanes; while earthquakes and hot streams from the burning mountains, fill the people with terror.

But more terrible than any of these is wickedness; and very wicked customs are observed in Japan. It is very wicked for a man to kill himself, yet in Japan it is the custom for all courtiers who have offended the emperor, to cut open their own bodies with a sword. The little boys of five years old, begin to learn the dreadful art. They do not really cut themselves, but they are shown how to do it, that when they are men, they may be able to kill themselves in an elegant manner. How dreadful!