THE SPHINX—GUNPOWDER.
1. Is the Sphinx made of one solid block of stone, or is it built of mortar and brick? 2. Who invented gunpowder?
A. L.
Answer.—1. The “great Sphinx” at Gizeh, Egypt, only 300 feet east of the second pyramid, was hewn out of the natural rock where it stands. It measures 172 feet 6 inches long by 52 feet high. 2. Nearly all authorities agree in referring the invention of gunpowder to China or India, the weight of evidence being in favor of crediting it to the former.
COUNTIES LARGER THAN STATES.
Columbia, D. T.
Is it true that Brown County, D. T., contains a larger area than Rhode Island? Please give the exact figures.
R. A.
Answer.—Brown County, D. T., contains forty-eight Congressional townships, or, disregarding fractional sections, 1,728 square miles; whereas the area of Rhode Island is but 1,250 square miles. There are several counties of Dakota that are larger than Delaware, which contains but 2,050 square miles; such, for example, as Grand Forks, Pembina, and Burleigh. Some of the unorganized counties are as large as Connecticut. It will not be long before, following the practice in the most thickly settled parts of the Territory, these undergrown but over-extended counties will be subdivided into smaller ones of sixteen to twenty townships, the ordinary size of an Iowa county, each about half the size of “Little Rhody.”