Chapter 1

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THE GREAT ROUND WORLD

AND WHAT IS GOING ON IN IT

SUBSCRIPTION PRICE. MAY 6, 1897 Vol. 1. NO. 26 $2.50 PER YEAR [Entered at Post Office, New York City, as second-class matter]

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Copyright, 1897, by WILLIAM BEVERLEY HARISON.

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THE GREAT ROUND WORLD NATURAL HISTORY STORIES.

A Series of True Stories

BY JULIA TRUITT BISHOP.

Attractively Illustrated by Barnes.

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=Author's Preface.=

The stories published in this little volume have been issued from time to time in the Philadelphia _Times_, and it is at the request of many readers that they now greet the world in more enduring form. They have been written as occasion suggested, during several years; and they commemorate to me many of the friends I have known and loved in the animal world. "Shep" and "Dr. Jim," "Abdallah" and "Brownie," "Little Dryad" and "Peek-a-Boo." I have been fast friends with every one, and have watched them with such loving interest that I knew all their ways and could almost read their thoughts. I send them on to other lovers of dumb animals, hoping that the stories of these friends of mine will carry pleasure to young and old.

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=WILLIAM BEVERLEY HARISON,= =3 & 5 West 18th Street.=

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A great deal is expected of the teachers in our public schools at the present day in the way of keeping the pupils conversant with the political and scientific questions of the day. While this is as it should be, we believe that if parents would look well to the quality of reading-matter placed before their children better results would be obtained from the teachers' efforts in this line. THE GREAT ROUND WORLD, AND WHAT IS GOING ON IN IT, is the name of a newspaper for children, and without exception it is the finest one of its kind ever published. It comes in magazine form, and is overflowing with interesting subjects written in such a bright and yet simple manner that the whole household unwittingly becomes interested in it.--_Omer, Mich., Progress, Jan. 8, 1897._

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VOL. 1 MAY 6, 1897. NO. 26

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Now that the war between Greece and Turkey has really commenced, people are much interested in comparing the strength of the two armies, and wondering which side will gain the victory.

The Greek regular army numbers one hundred and twenty-five thousand, the Turkish one hundred and fifty thousand. When all the reserves are called out, it is thought that both countries can put twice if not three times as many men in the field.

The Turkish army is considered the finer of the two, because it is so well drilled, and so perfectly armed. It is said that German officers have been teaching the Turkish soldiers the modern methods of war.

The Turks, however, are the weaker in two important points: their means of providing food for their soldiers, and in facilities for carrying them quickly from one point to another.

An army that is weak in these two very important points loses a good deal of its usefulness.

As we have seen in Cuba, men cannot fight well when they are hungry. It is also a fatal thing to have no good roads or railroads, along which large bodies of men may be sent when they are needed.

The Greek army is not nearly so well drilled as the Turkish, nor so well officered. The Turks have in Edhem Pasha a splendid leader, while the Greeks have no great general to lead them, and at present no general who seems even particularly clever. But that need not worry the friends of Greece. The history of the world has taught us that every great occasion has brought with it a great man capable of dealing with it. The French Revolution brought forth Napoleon, the War of Independence gave us Washington. We can therefore trust that what has happened before may occur again, and that the Greek crisis may produce its Washington, to lead the brave little country safely to success.

The great strength of the Greeks lies in their navy, which is one of the finest in Europe. The Greek ships are modern, well manned, and well armed. The Turkish navy, on the other hand, has been the joke of Europe for many years.

Since the invention of the great guns that will send a cannon ball through the side of a wooden ship as easily as you can pierce an egg-shell with a needle, all the warships have been fitted with strong steel armored hulls and water-tight compartments, such as we told you about on page 75 of Vol. I. of THE GREAT ROUND WORLD.

Turkey has none of these new ships. She has been bankrupt for so many years that she has not had the money to buy any of them.

It is supposed that the Turks will be more successful on land than the Greeks, but that the Greek navy will win back on the sea as much as the army loses on land.

It is also said that the Turkish arrangements for feeding the soldiers are so bad, that, if the war runs on into months instead of weeks, the Turks will not be able to hold out.

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The Senate has not yet taken any action on the Cuban Bill.

Senator Morgan again brought it before the House, hoping that he would be able to bring it to a vote. He was, however, obliged to agree to hold it over for a day or two until Senator Hale should be able to be present, as Mr. Hale has some very important things he wishes to say on the subject.

From Cuba there is very little news of interest.

Much indignation is felt against General Weyler, because he has sent out soldiers to destroy the Cuban hospitals, and in the last few days several have been burned and the sick soldiers in them murdered.

The Cubans are not able to have large hospitals, because they cannot spare a sufficient number of men to protect them, so they have been in the habit of building huts in the forests, where they would leave a few wounded men, in the charge of one or two nurses.

These forest hospitals are not guarded. The Cubans have trusted to the woods to conceal them from the enemy.

It seems that the Spaniards have found out the secret of the hospitals, and now General Weyler has sent out parties to make a careful search for them.

As soon as a hut is found the invalids are put to death and the nurses taken prisoner.

To fire upon or in any way attack a hospital is against the rules of civilized warfare, and this new horror of General Weyler's adds one more to the long list of his crimes.

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The Mississippi River has not begun to subside yet, and the floods grow daily more serious, as fresh levees give way, and allow the waters to flow over new districts.

There is, however, some hope that the greatest height of the flood wave has been reached, and that the angry waters may begin to go back in a few days.

There is still fear that the city of New Orleans may be swept by the flood.

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The vexed question of the Bering Sea seal fisheries is coming up again.

The Bering Sea divides America from Asia, and is bordered on the American side by the State of Alaska, and on the Asiatic side by Siberia.

Up to the year 1867, Alaska, or Aliaska, as it was called, belonged to the Russian Government.

In that year it was sold to the United States for $7,200,000.

At the time of the purchase Alaska was looked upon as a very barren land; no one ever dreamt that gold and silver and other valuable minerals would be found in it. The money spent for the purchase was seriously begrudged by many people, and Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State who had made the bargain, was much blamed, people saying that it was a foolish waste of the public money.

The one source of income which Alaska was known to possess in those days was its seal fisheries. A great herd of fur-bearing seals lived in the Alaskan waters, and the Government expected to make these seals very profitable to it.

Under the Russian rule, the fur seal regions had been very carefully protected, and when the United States bought Alaska the Government decided to care for the animals in the same way that the Russians had done, allowing only a certain number of seals to be killed each year.

The fisheries were leased to a company called the Alaska Commercial Company of San Francisco, which had the entire rights to them, under certain rules and regulations laid down by the Government.

Soon after Alaska and its seal fisheries came into the possession of the United States, English and American vessels--the latter not belonging to the Commercial Company--entered the Bering Sea, and slaughtered any seals they could reach, without regard to the proper rules for seal fishing.

The Company complained to the Government, and in 1887 this seal poaching had become such a serious matter that the United States ordered her revenue cutters up to Bering Sea to protect her interests.

Several ships were captured by the revenue-officers, and most of them were British vessels.

This opened the way for the dispute between Great Britain and the United States, which has been going on ever since, and has been one of the most troublesome questions our rulers have had to deal with.

Great Britain claimed that she had a perfect right to fish in Bering Sea, and the United States insisted that she had bought all the rights to the fishing when she bought Alaska.

After the quarrel had dragged on for five years, it was finally, in 1892, decided to arbitrate it.

The Committee appointed for this purpose met in Paris, France, in 1893, and finally decided that Russia had never had any rights in the Bering Sea, beyond the usual rights which all countries have of controlling the seas for three miles out from their borders.

Beyond the three-mile limit, the ocean becomes the "high seas," and is then open to anybody.

It was decided that Russia could not sell the Bering Sea to the United States.

The matter being thus decided, the question of caring for the seals was left as unsettled as ever, and it was most necessary that some arrangement should be made, unless the seals were to be totally destroyed.

The decision at Paris made it necessary that Great Britain should be willing to agree to any plan that should be adopted.

It was therefore shown to the Committee that the seal flocks were in danger of being destroyed, and a set of laws was made that proper care might be taken of the seals. England and the United States agreed to obey these laws, and it was decided that they should go into effect at once.

As it was supposed that in course of time it might be wise to alter these laws, it was further agreed between England and the United States that they should be looked over every five years, and changed if it was necessary.

The five years has still sixteen months to run, but the American Government has thought it advisable to ask that the two countries meet and talk the subject over once more, as the laws are not strong enough to protect the seals.

The United States complains now that Canadian and British fishers are killing the seals in the same careless, ignorant way that they did before the Treaty of Paris, and that unless they are stopped there will be no seals in Alaska in a very few years.

The Government says that the habits of the seals must be studied and understood, so that they may be protected, in order that all the fur necessary for market may be obtained, without interfering with the growth of the herds.

Every year the seals arrive in flocks hundreds of thousands strong, and seek a sandy beach, or some nice sunny rocks, where they can spend the summer. In these places they establish rookeries, or villages, as they are sometimes called.

The fathers of the families come first, arriving in April to seek out comfortable quarters.

In June the mothers come to the island, take possession of the homes provided for them, and pretty soon each seal mother has a nice little seal pup to occupy her home with her.

It is a curious thing about these little seal pups that though they are going to spend their lives in the water, they don't like the idea of it at all, and have to be forced into the water by their mothers, and taught to swim just as though they were little boys and girls.

Baby seals have nearly white fur when they are born, and, strange to say, until this coat falls off and the dark one comes, their mothers never attempt to take them to the water.

The seals are not the gentle things they appear to be, with their soft brown eyes and their sleek coats. On the contrary, they are very fierce and warlike if any attempt is made to interfere with their families.

When the fathers first reach the beach, and set about making the home ready for their families, they will not allow any of the young bachelor seals to land near the rookeries. They force them either to remain in the water, or to go to the highlands above the village.

The bachelor seals think they have as much right to a comfortable home as the older seals, and so they fight hard to enter the villages.

This fighting keeps up the whole summer while the seals are out of the water, and those who have seen these battles say that "night and day, the sound of them is like that of an approaching railway train."

So steadily does the fighting continue that the old seals have no time to eat, and during the three or four months they stay with their families on the beaches they never take a mouthful of food. At the end of the time, when they leave the rookeries, they are thin and miserable, and covered with battle scars.

The killing of the seals should be carefully arranged with a knowledge of these habits.

The proper rules are that no mother seals, baby seals, or father seals shall be killed, but that the hunters shall watch until the badly behaved bachelor seals have got tired with fighting, and gone up above the rookeries to rest. The hunters ought then to creep in between the seals and the water, and making a noise to frighten them drive them inland.

Every hunter should be armed with a wooden club, and when he has chosen a seal that seems to be about two or three years old, he should strike it with this club and kill it.

In this way a large number of seals can be obtained without disturbing the rest of the flock.

The manner of killing that the United States complains of is that the hunters creep into the rookeries and kill the mother seals, leaving the poor little pups to die by thousands for want of their mothers' care.

Because of this wholesale killing of the seals, there are few young seals left to grow up in the place of those that have been taken away, and so after a time there will be no more flocks at all.

The sealskin which we use is made out of the under fur of the animal. The seals which are caught for fur have a very thick, velvet-like undercoat, covered with a quantity of long hair, which has to be removed from the skins before they can be used for market.

The roots of these long hairs grow much deeper into the skin than those of the short, thick fur, and so the pelts can be laid face downward, and pared away very carefully at the back until the roots of the long hairs are cut through. The long hairs are then pulled out of the skin, and the beautiful soft fur is left.

It is to be hoped that, in the discussion of this matter between England and the United States, the proper rules for killing the seals may be very strictly laid down, that they may be enforced. It will be too bad if this splendid fur is lost through ignorance and carelessness.

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Another of the old questions that have vexed our Government is being brought to the front again. This one is the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands.

The reason why this subject has come up again is that the Japanese have been emigrating to these islands in such vast numbers of late, that an invasion is feared, and the Government is anxious to have American protection.

A little while ago word was sent that the Hawaiians had turned back four hundred Japanese emigrants who sought to land at Honolulu. Japan immediately sent war-ships to inquire into the matter, and the United States also sent a cruiser.

It soon became evident that the affair was much more serious than at first appeared.

The Japanese have been emigrating to Hawaii in such vast numbers that, unless something is done to stop them, there will soon be more Japanese than natives in the islands.

The Government of Hawaii, awakening to the danger that threatened, has made fresh advances to the United States, asking once more to be annexed to this country.

This question of annexation has been talked about since the year 1893.

In January, 1893, there was a revolution in Hawaii, because the people had found cause to dislike their queen, Liliuokalani. This queen's behavior had been very bad, and her rule had been a disgrace to the islands for some time. At last the people would stand it no longer, and so removed her from the throne.

The people who revolted against the Queen were either Americans or people born of American parents settled in Hawaii.

They formed a government, and after many troubles asked the United States to take possession of the Hawaiian Islands, and, in return, to pay over $3,000,000 of debts which Hawaii had contracted, and a yearly income of $20,000 to the deposed queen, and also a lump sum of $150,000 to her daughter, Princess Kaulani.

Mr. Cleveland, who was President, opposed the idea of taking possession of the islands, and endeavored to restore Queen Liliuokalani to her throne.

His efforts were not successful. The Hawaiians would not have her back, and having had time to establish a government for themselves, they felt as if they could do without the United States as well as their dark-skinned Queen. So the question of annexing the islands fell through.

Now it is before us again with greater force than before.

It is evident that if we don't want Hawaii, Japan does, and the time is drawing near when some decided step must be taken.

The Japanese plan for securing Hawaii seems to be similar to the English plan for getting possession of the Transvaal.

It seems to be their idea to fill the islands with Japanese, until the number of Asiatics is far greater than that of the Hawaiians. Then they will demand a voice in the government, and when once they have secured that, it will be only a question of time when they will have the government of the islands under their control.

The people of Hawaii became suspicious of this plot when they found that the Japanese who came over in such hordes (sometimes as many as fifteen hundred in one week), were not laborers seeking work, as is the case with most immigrants.

It was found that the new arrivals belonged to the student class, and that after they arrived in the islands, they made no attempt to get anything to do, but seemed to be living on their incomes.

This made the Hawaiians suspicious that these emigrants were being sent over at the expense of their Government, and that the Mikado was supporting them until he had gained his ends, and secured the islands for himself.

Just lately there was a scare of fever in Honolulu, the port of Hawaii, and the baggage of the incoming people had to be carefully fumigated. While doing this work the officers found to their surprise that nearly every Japanese immigrant had a soldier's uniform done up in his baggage.

The Government does not know what to make of this, but has become so thoroughly alarmed that it is seeking the protection of the United States.

A prominent lawyer from Honolulu has come over here to assist the officials who are already in Washington laying their case before our Government.

The Japanese treat the matter very lightly, and pretend that it is a foolish scare that amounts to nothing. They insist, however, that the Japanese immigrants shall not be turned back from Hawaii but allowed to land, as they have a right to do, according to the treaty existing between Hawaii and Japan.

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Some fresh news has come about the uprising in Brazil.

The insurgents it would seem are led by a man named Antonio Conselhiero, who appears to be a very extraordinary kind of person.

He first made his appearance last November, when one day he marched through the streets of a small town in Bahia, followed by a well-drilled, orderly band of men and women.

These people went through the streets singing the old songs and hymns of the empire, and every now and then they would halt, and Conselhiero would address the crowd that gathered around him.

From the descriptions of him that have been sent from Brazil, he seems to be an enormously tall man, with black eyes, and long black hair and beard. He is broad and big as well as tall, and looks like a giant.

He seemed to have such an influence over the crowds who listened to his words, that they flocked to his standard, and followed him, promising to help him in his crusade against the government, and his attempt to restore the monarchy.

The Governor ordered the police to send the crowds back to their homes, and drive Conselhiero and his band out of the city. But this was easier said than done. The strange man's followers, women as well as men, attacked the police, killing some, and wounding many.

Then Conselhiero made his way to a mountain, where he encamped with his followers, and prepared to defy the authorities.