THE COST OF ROYALTY IN ENGLAND.—Her Majesty:
| Privy purse: | £60,000 |
| Salaries of household: | 131,260 |
| Expenses of household: | 172,500 |
| Royal bounty, etc.: | 13,200 |
| Unappropriated: | 8,040 |
| £385,000 | |
| Prince of Wales: | 40,000 |
| Princess of Wales: | 10,000 |
| Crown Princess of Prussia: | 8,000 |
| Duke of Edinburgh: | 25,000 |
| Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein: | 6,000 |
| Princess Louise (Marchioness of Lome): | 6,000 |
| Duke of Connaught: | 25,000 |
| Duke of Albany: | 25,000 |
| Duchess of Cambridge: | 6,000 |
| Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz: | 3,000 |
| Duke of Cambridge: | 12,000 |
| Duchess of Teck: | 5,000 |
SOME GREAT RIVERS.—From Haswell's little work for engineers and mechanics the following figures are taken, showing the lengths of the largest rivers on the various continents:
| Name: | Miles. |
| EUROPE. | |
| Volga, Russia: | 2,500 |
| Danube: | 1,800 |
| Rhine: | 840 |
| Vistula: | 700 |
| ASIA. | |
| Yeneisy and Selenga: | 3,580 |
| Kiang: | 3,290 |
| Hoang Ho: | 3,040 |
| Amoor: | 2,500 |
| Euphrates: | 1,900 |
| Ganges: | 1,850 |
| Tigris: | 1,160 |
| AFRICA. | |
| Nile: | 3,240 |
| Niger: | 2,400 |
| Gambia: | 1,000 |
| SOUTH AMERICA. | |
| Amazon and Beni: | 4,000 |
| Platte: | 2,700 |
| Rio Madeira: | 2,300 |
| Rio Negro: | 1,650 |
| Orinoco: | 1,600 |
| Uruguay: | 1,100 |
| Magdalena: | 900 |
| NORTH AMERICA. | |
| Mississippi and Missouri: | 4,300 |
| Mackenzie: | 2,800 |
| Rio Bravo: | 2,300 |
| Arkansas: | 2,070 |
| Red River: | 1,520 |
| Ohio and Alleghany: | 1,480 |
| St. Lawrence: | 1,450 |
The figures as to the length of the Nile are estimated. The Amazon, with its tributaries (including the Rio Negro and Madeira), drains an area of 2,330,000 square miles; the Mississippi and Missouri, 1,726,000 square miles; the Yeneisy (or Yenisei, as it is often written) drains about 1,000,000 square miles; the Volga, about 500,000. In this group of great rivers the St. Lawrence is the most remarkable. It constitutes by far the largest body of fresh water in the world. Including the lakes and streams, which it comprises in its widest acceptation, the St. Lawrence covers about 73,000 square miles; the aggregate, it is estimated, represents not less than 9,000 solid miles—a mass of water which would have taken upward of forty years to pour over Niagara at the computed rate of 1,000,000 cubic feet in a second. As the entire basin of this water system falls short of 300,000 square miles, the surface of the land is only three times that of the water.
HOW THE UNITED STATES GOT ITS LANDS.—The United States bought Louisiana, the vast region between the Mississippi River, the eastern and northern boundary of Texas (then belonging to Spain), and the dividing ridge of the Rocky Mountains, together with what is now Oregon, Washington Territory, and the western parts of Montana and Idaho, from France for $11,250,000. This was in 1803. Before the principal, interest, and claims of one sort and another assumed by the United States were settled, the total cost of this "Louisiana purchase," comprising, according to French construction and our understanding, 1,171,931 square miles, swelled to $23,500,000, or almost $25 per section—a fact not stated in cyclopedias and school histories, and therefore not generally understood. Spain still held Florida and claimed a part of what we understood to be included in the Louisiana purchase—a strip up to north latitude 31—and disputed our boundary along the south and west, and even claimed Oregon. We bought Florida and all the disputed land east of the Mississippi and her claim to Oregon, and settled our southwestern boundary dispute for the sum of $6,500,000. Texas smilingly proposed annexation to the United States, and this great government was "taken in" December 29, 1845, Texas keeping her public lands and giving us all her State debts and a three-year war (costing us $66,000,000) with Mexico, who claimed her for a runaway from Mexican jurisdiction. This was a bargain that out-yankeed the Yankees, but the South insisted on it and the North submitted. After conquering all the territory now embraced in New Mexico, a part of Colorado, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and California, we paid Mexico $25,000,000 for it—$15,000,000 for the greater part of it and $10,000,000 for another slice, known as the "Gadsden purchase." In 1867 we bought Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000. All the several amounts above named were paid long ago. As for all the rest of our landed possessions, we took them with us when we cut loose from mother Britain's apron string, but did not get a clear title until we had fought ten years for it—first in the Revolutionary War, costing us in killed 7,343 reported—besides the unreported killed—and over 15,000 wounded, and $135,193,103 in money; afterward in the War of 1812-15, costing us in killed 1,877, in wounded 3,737, in money $107,159,003. We have paid everybody but the Indians, the only real owners, and, thanks to gunpowder, sword, bayonet, bad whisky, small-pox, cholera and other weapons of civilization, there are not many of them left to complain. Besides all the beads, earrings, blankets, pots, kettles, brass buttons, etc., given them for land titles in the olden times, we paid them, or the Indian agents, in one way and another, in the ninety years from 1791 to 1881, inclusive, $193,672,697.31, to say nothing of the thousands of lives sacrificed and many millions spent in Indian wars, from the war of King Philip to the last fight with the Apaches.
ILLUSTRIOUS MEN AND WOMEN.—It is not likely that any two persons would agree as to who are entitled to the first fifty places on the roll of great men and great women. Using "great" in the sense of eminence in their professions, of great military commanders the following are among the chief: Sesostris, the Egyptian conqueror, who is represented as having subdued all Asia to the Oxus and the Ganges, Ethiopia, and a part of Europe; Cyrus the Great; Alexander the Great; Hannibal; Che-Hwanti, who reduced all the kingdoms of China and Indo-China to one empire, and constructed the Great Wall; Cæsar; Genghis Khan, the Tartar chief, who overran all Asia and a part of Europe; Napoleon Bonaparte; Ulysses S. Grant, and General Von Moltke. Among the most illustrious benefactors of mankind, as statesmen, lawgivers and patriots, stand Moses, David, Solon, Numa Pompilius, Zoroaster, Confucius, Justinian, Charlemagne, Cromwell, Washington and Lincoln. Eminent among the philosophers, rhetoricians and logicians stand Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, the two Catos, and Lord Bacon; among orators, Pericles, Demosthenes, Cicero, Mirabeau, Burke, Webster and Clay; among poets, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, and Shakespeare; among painters and sculptors, Phidias, Parrhasius, Zenxis, Praxiteles, Scopas, Michael Angelo, Raphael and Rubens; among philanthropists, John Howard; among inventors, Archimedes, Watt, Fulton, Arkwright, Whitney and Morse; among astronomers, Copernicus, Galileo, Tycho Brahe, Newton, La Place and the elder Herschel. Here are sixty names of distinguished men, and yet the great religious leaders, excepting Moses and Zoroaster, have not been named. Among these stand Siddhartha or Buddha, Mahomet, Martin Luther, John Knox and John Wesley. Then the great explorers and geographers of the world have not been noticed, among whom Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, Vasco de Gama, Columbus and Humboldt barely lead the van.
Of eminent women there are Seling, wife of the Emperor Hwang-ti, B. C. 2637, who taught her people the art of silk-raising and weaving; Semiramis, the Assyrian Queen; Deborah, the heroic warrior prophetess of the Israelites; Queen Esther, who, with the counsel of her cousin, Mordecai, not only saved the Jews from extermination, but lifted them from a condition of slavery into prosperity and power; Dido, the founder of Carthage; Sappho, the eminent Grecian poetess; Hypatia, the eloquent philosopher; Mary, the mother of Christ; Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra; the mother of St. Augustine; Elizabeth of Hungary; Queen Elizabeth of England; Queen Isabella of Spain; the Empress Maria Theresa; Margaret the Great of Denmark; Catherine the Great of Russia, Queen Victoria; Florence Nightingale; Mme. de Stael: Mrs. Fry, the philanthropist; among authoresses, Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Sigourney, Mrs. Browning, "George Sand," "George Eliot," and Mrs. Stowe; and among artists, Rosa Bonheur, and our own Harriet Hosmer.
THE SUEZ CANAL.—The Suez Canal was begun in 1,858 and was formally opened in November, 1869. Its cost, including harbors, is estimated at $100,000,000. Its length is 100 miles, 75 of which were excavated; its width is generally 325 feet at the surface, and 75 feet at the bottom, and its depth 26 feet. The workmen employed were chiefly natives, and many were drafted by the Khedive. The number of laborers is estimated at 30,000. The British government virtually controls the canal as it owns most of the stock.