The climate of Egypt is exceedingly hot, and the air unrefreshed by rain. The soil is fertile when sufficiently moistened, and produces wheat, barley, corn, flax, sugar-cane, olives, dates, and oranges in abundance.
The only river is the Nile, and the possession of this river is an incalculable blessing to the country, as it serves the double purposes of internal communication, and watering the country. This river annually overflows its banks, in consequence of rain in the Abyssinian mountains, where it rises. It begins to rise about the middle of June, and spreads a muddy deluge to a great extent, on both sides of its channel. The waters subside to their natural bed in October, leaving a rich and wet manure on the surface of the ground. That part of the year called the winter months, is here the most productive, the ground being covered with vegetation, and is so fertile during the season that it yields three crops.
Sierra Leone, so named by the Portuguese because the mountains are infested with Lions, is an English settlement, which was commenced with a view to extend the benefits of civilisation and Christianity to the natives, and to afford a refuge for Africans rescued from slave ships. Freetown is the capital of the colony.
Liberia is the name given to a colony established by the American Colonization Society, on the western coast of Africa, three hundred miles southeast from Sierra Leone. Great numbers of the free people of color have removed from the United States to this settlement. Commerce and agriculture flourish, and efforts are made to extend the benefits of education and the christian religion through the colony, and to the natives. Monrovia is the chief town.
GENERAL QUESTIONS.
1. What is diameter? 2. What is circumference? 3. How is the earth proved to be a globe or round body? 4. How many miles is it through the centre of the earth? 5. How many degrees round it? 6. How many miles round it? 7. If you were to sail from the island Owhyhee sixty degrees in a westerly direction, at what cluster of islands would you arrive? 8. How many degrees east and west is longitude reckoned? 9. What is the longitude of the New Hebrides?
10. Between what islands would a ship pass in sailing directly from Otaheite to Van Dieman’s land? 11. What direction would a ship take in sailing by the shortest route from Owhyhee to Canton? 12. Which way would you sail by the shortest route from Madagascar to the Friendly Isles? 13. Through what States would you pass in going from Mobile to Cincinnati? 14. From Charleston to Albany? 15. St. Louis to Boston?
The word Antip´odes means those people who live on the opposite side of the earth, and have their feet under ours. 16. The inhabitants of what city of Asia are nearly antipodes to the citizens of New Orleans?