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small volume and thus give interesting and valuable information about
countries and peoples in all parts of the world. Young people especially
are in the mind of the writer. As most of the information was secured by
rambling through these countries and rubbing elbows with the common
people it will be difficult to keep from using the personal pronoun
quite often.

It is fitting that our first view be of China which is one of the oldest
civilizations on the earth. This great agricultural people have tilled
the same soil for forty centuries and in most cases it yet produces more
per acre than the soil of perhaps any other country. The Chinese are a
great people. Although they are just awakening from a sleep that has
lasted twenty centuries or more, yet the world can learn many valuable
lessons from them. They used to embody the genius of the world and even
yet have skill along certain lines that is simply amazing. Many of the
great inventions that have blessed the world and which we are using
today were wrought out by these people and it will not be out of place
here to recount some of their achievements.

The Chinese invented printing five hundred years before Caxton was born
and the Peking Gazette is said to be the oldest newspaper in the world.
They invented paper nearly eighteen centuries ago and had books hundreds
of years before the days of Gutenburg. They invented the compass twenty
centuries before Jesus was born in Bethlehem. They invented gunpowder
ages ago and were the first people to use firearms. They used banknotes
and bills of exchange long before other nations, and the modern adding
machine is founded upon a principle which has been used by them a
thousand years. They discovered the process of rearing the silkworm and
they dressed in silk when our forefathers wore clothing made of the
skins of animals. The writer has crossed the Atlantic more than a dozen
times on ships with watertight compartments, a so-called modern safety
device, but the Chinese had watertight compartments in their junks
hundreds of years before modern steamships were ever dreamed about.

To the Chinese we must credit the making of asbestos, the manufacture of
lacquer, the carving of ivory and many other important industries. Even
today they make the finest dishes and the best pottery. At one time
they built a tower two hundred and fifty-six feet high entirely of
porcelain. Ages ago they dug the longest and in some respects the
grea