English Department Year 8: ‘Travel Writing’ Knowledge and Content Booklet

English Department Year 8: ‘Travel Writing’ Knowledge and content booklet

This booklet has been created by your English department to help you develop your knowledge and learn new information about your topic.

Use this booklet to help you complete your workbook. Some strategies to help maximise how you use this pack:

• Read the information and highlight key notes • Copy out key information • Complete your workbook tasks using quotes and ideas from this booklet • Create revision posters, flashcards, notes • Quiz and test yourself

Lesson 1 1. Read through the text on space travel below and then answer the questions that follow.

‘Tim Peake can be a catalyst for more UK space missions’

by Andrew Wade from ‘The Engineer’, an online newspaper

If everything goes according to plan, by this time tomorrow Major Tim Peake will be back on terra firma following his six-month mission on board the International Space Station. His return home in the Soyuz capsule will see him travelling at 25 times the speed of sound, surrounded by superheated atmospheric plasma at temperatures touching 2,500°C.

With the capsule already decelerating, parachutes will open about 11km above the Earth’s surface to further slow the descent, and landing engines will fire to cushion the Soyuz as it crashes into the Kazakh Steppe. Such is the force of the collision that greenhorn astronauts are warned by their Russian mentors to stop talking before impact so that they don’t bite their tongues off.

As the first ever Briton to visit the ISS (and the first ever ESA astronaut from these isles), Major Peake’s space adventure has been a huge boon for both UK aerospace and for wider science and technology awareness across the country. His time on board the station has seen him ‘virtually’ run the London Marathon, remotely control a Mars rover prototype on Earth, and chased by Scott Kelly in a gorilla suit as part of the US astronaut’s birthday celebrations. Peake has also carried out more than 250 experiments during his six-month tenure.

In January, just a month after arriving on the ISS, Peake became the UK’s first astronaut to conduct a spacewalk. During the historic mission, Kelly commented how great it was to see the Union Jack flag on Peake’s arm as he moved through the blackness around the station’s exterior. Peake himself commented that it was a ‘privilege’ and a ‘proud moment’ to be the bearer of the flag on its first spacewalk.

The exterior work on the ISS was cut short due to a helmet malfunction for US astronaut Tim Kopra, but those images of Peake in space will last forever, and their power to inspire should not be underestimated. Media coverage of his mission has been extensive, and Peake’s affable nature and wide-eyed enthusiasm have made for welcome relief at a time when news cycles have been particularly bleak. It’s easy to see why the former helicopter pilot was selected from 8,000 applicants to become an ESA astronaut. It now seems important that steps are taken to make sure he is not the UK’s last.

Speaking recently to David Parker, ESA’s Director of Human Spaceflight and Robotic Exploration, I asked him about the possibility of UK involvement in future ISS missions. For the short term at least, it seems a return to space by Peake is the best prospect of seeing the Union Jack back in orbit.

‘The opportunities are there for future missions for this group of astronauts,’ said Parker, referring to Peake and his colleagues that were part of the 2009 ESA intake. ‘We probably wouldn’t start a new selection, but that’s not definite. It would be more about taking the maximum experience out of the astronaut group that we have now, who have all proved to be excellent.’

While Peake may be the most likely UK candidate for future ISS missions, the station will not be around forever, and plans are of course afoot for exploration beyond its low-earth orbit. NASA’s Orion programme, which ESA has a major hand in via development of the vehicle’s service module, will take astronauts on new lunar missions. ESA is also talking to its member states about involvement with the Deep Space Habitat, a station beyond Earth’s orbit that would lay the ground for the next stages of space exploration.

‘Think of a mini space station, but with an electric propulsion system that would go towards the Moon,’ Parker explained. ‘We’d use the Orion vehicle to take the astronauts there. You’d assemble a habitation module and a propulsion module in Earth orbit, then start to fly out on voyages of exploration into deep space for the first time.’

UK participation in such adventures would be largely dependent on funding, but the prospect of astronauts from these shores being involved is exciting. Tim Peake’s mission has given space exploration and science a massive shot in the arm. Let’s hope his success can be the catalyst for further investment in UK aerospace, and that someday we might even see the Union Jack in deep space. We wish Major Peake and his fellow astronauts a safe journey back to Earth, and advise him to heed the landing advice of those Russian mentors. He’s going to have a lot of talking to do over the coming weeks.

Lesson 2 6. Read through the text on imprisonment below and then answer the questions that follow.

Twelve years a slave by Solomon Northup

This is an extract from an autobiography by Solomon Northup (‘Platt’ in the text), a slave, who was kidnapped while living as a free black man in New York State in 1841 and sold into slavery in the south of the United States. In this extract he describes some of his experiences as a slave.

As the sun approached the meridian that day it became insufferably warm. Its hot rays scorched the ground. The earth almost blistered the foot that stood upon it.

I was without coat or hat, standing bare-headed, exposed to its burning blaze. Great drops of perspiration rolled down my face, drenching the scanty apparel wherewith I was clothed. Over the fence, a very little way off, the peach trees cast their cool, delicious shadows on the grass. I would gladly have given a long year of service to have been enabled to exchange the heated oven, as it were, wherein I stood, for a seat beneath their branches. But I was yet bound, the rope still dangling from my neck, and standing in the same tracks where Tibeats and his comrades left me. I could not move an inch, so firmly had I been bound. To have been enabled to lean against the weaving house would have been a luxury indeed. But it was far beyond my reach, though distant less than twenty feet. I wanted to lie down, but knew I could not rise again. The ground was so parched and boiling hot I was aware it would but add to the discomfort of my situation. If I could have only moved my position, however slightly, it would have been relief unspeakable. But the hot rays of a southern sun, beating all the long summer day on my bare head, produced not half the suffering I experienced from my aching limbs. My wrists and ankles, and the cords of my legs and arms began to swell, burying the rope that bound them into the swollen flesh.

All day Chapin walked back and forth upon the stoop, but not once approached me. He appeared to be in a state of great uneasiness, looking first towards me, and then up the road, as if expecting some arrival every moment. He did not go to the field, as was his custom. It was evident from his manner that he supposed Tibeats would return with more and better armed assistance, perhaps, to renew the quarrel, and it was equally evident he had prepared his mind to defend my life at whatever hazard. Why he did not relieve me—why he suffered me to remain in agony the whole weary day, I never knew. It was not for want of sympathy, I am certain. Perhaps he wished Ford to see the rope about my neck, and the brutal manner in which I had been bound; perhaps his interference with another's property in he had no legal interest might have been a trespass, which would have subjected him to the penalty of the law. Why Tibeats was all day absent was another mystery I never could divine. He knew well enough that Chapin would not harm him unless he persisted in his design against me.

Lawson told me afterwards, that, as he passed the plantation of John David Cheney, he saw the three, and that they turned and looked after him as he flew by. I think his supposition was, that Lawson had been sent out by Overseer Chapin to arouse the neighbouring planters, and to call on them to come to his assistance. He, therefore, undoubtedly, acted on the principle, that ‘discretion is the better part of valour, and kept away.

But whatever motive may have governed the cowardly and malignant tyrant, it is of no importance. There I still stood in the noon-tide sun, groaning with pain. From long before daylight I had not eaten a morsel. I was growing faint from pain, and thirst, and hunger. Once only, in the very hottest portion of the day, Rachel, half fearful she was acting contrary to the overseer's wishes, ventured to me, and held a cup of water to my lips. The humble creature never knew, nor could she comprehend if she had heard them, the blessings I invoked upon her, for that balmy draught. She could only say, ‘Oh, Platt, how I do pity you,’ and then hastened back to her labours in the kitchen.

Read through the text on travelling throughLesson Africa 3

Walking the Nile This is an extract from Walking the Nile by Levison Wood.

Last year, the explorer walked along the Nile from Rwanda to Egypt. It was a journey that took him through six African nations covering almost 4,000 miles in nine months. In this extract from his new book, Levison Wood describes the route from one of the river's sources, Lake Victoria, to the Ugandan capital, Kampala

North of Kasansero, the plan was to follow the shore of Lake Victoria for another 160km; seven days of hard trekking that would finally take us to Kampala, Uganda's boomtown and capital city.

In Kasansero the fishermen warned us that the way north was a morass of tributaries and dense swamps, and if we wanted to stay close to the lake the trek was going to be laborious. Boston, my guide, and I bickered about which route to take and, in the end, settled on a compromise: we would gather the services of a few locals and their boat – not to ride in, but to ferry our packs along the shore while we walked along the bank so as to make us light enough to move through the swamps, and if necessary swim around the mangroves.

There was something quite indulgent about walking along a beach for days on end, with palm-fringed shores, rickety fishing boats, and quaint wooden villages making it feel as if we were in a clichéd image of holiday perfection. Despite warnings of "chiggers", the voracious red mites that lived in the sand, it was too beautiful to wear boots and a nice change to walk either barefoot or in sandals, with the lapping waves to cool our feet. Most of the lake was flanked by thick forests, some of it national parkland, where colobus monkeys and waterbuck abounded. All along the shorelines, birds of every variety gathered in their thousands: sacred ibis, white storks, Ugandan crested cranes, and Egyptian geese.

Yet, for all this perfection, for long stretches paradise turned to hell. The locals in Kasansero had not been exaggerating when they called this place a quagmire. For miles the path disappeared into impenetrable mangrove swamps, and Boston and I hacked our way on, turning in circles, until we stumbled upon a trail blazed by locals to the next settlement along the shore.

5 More than once, I stumbled and became entirely submerged, having to be fished out of the stinking brine by Boston. We had backtracked in search of Boston's lost shoe, and

spent 10 minutes working out a way to pull him out of the soft earth that was trying to swallow him up. There was a part of me – some insane, masochistic part – that was beginning to enjoy the torment, when Boston's eyes drew mine down to what appeared

More than once, I stumbled and became entirely submerged, having to be fished out of the stinking brine by Boston. We had backtracked in search of Boston's lost shoe, and spent 10 minutes working out a way to pull him out of the soft earth that was trying to swallow him up. There was a part of me – some insane, masochistic part – that was beginning to enjoy the torment, when Boston's eyes drew mine down to what appeared to be a pool of black liquid right beside my feet.

"It's a snake," he whispered. "Look, Lev! A python ...."

I saw the blackness uncurl and disappear, setting the surface of the water to ripples. I froze. Then, putting on my most nonchalant face, I smiled back at the overjoyed Boston. "It's probably just a mon- itor lizard."

"I don't think so, Lev." Boston had crouched and was already plucking a ghostly white snake skin from the reeds – by its rubbery texture, quite fresh

An hour later, soaked to the skin, we stepped up on to dry land and, in front of us, stood three wooden huts and a crowd of villagers. By the remoteness of the place and the piles of shells lying on the sand it seemed they were shell-fish miners; men who collected shells to grind up and sell as chicken feed in the local markets. It is one of the worst-paid professions on the shores of Lake Victoria and, as they turned to see us, they were evidently thrilled. To them, strangers meant opportunity.

They rushed to meet us, eager to shake hands. One man cried out to congratulate us on not being constrained by such foolish things as "paths" – and, as the crowd shifted, I saw something staked out on the beach, reflecting the cruel midday sun. Boston and I shared a look. It was another python skin – but this one was more than six metres long and not a skin that had been shed. This gleamed black and blue, a true snakeskin taken from a dead python and pegged out to dry

"You want to buy it?" a man asked. "I don't think I'd get it through customs," I replied, but the joke was lost.

Over the next days the shore alternated between dense swamp and pristine beaches where more landing sites like Kasansero had grown up. At times the mangrove forests were so alive with fire ants and spiders that we were forced to wade out into the lake and skip around the swamp instead.

From the moment we'd set foot in Uganda the local attitude towards us seemed to change; the villages we passed through were not as immediately suspicious as they had been in Tanzania, and the police didn't seem as eager to apprehend us for being spies. Uganda emerged from British rule in 1962 and it felt as if, unlike in some other corners of Africa, the colonial times were looked back on fondly. English is still the first language, though the languages of the different tribes also proliferate, and perhaps it was this shared tongue that made it seem an easier, simpler country to navigate.

Lesson 4 –

Read through the text on London Pollution below and then answer the questions that follow.

This is a journal entry by Flora Tristan, a Frenchwoman who visited London in 1839. Overseas visitors to London rarely commented favourably on the English weather. It was often claimed by visitors that in England there are “eight months of winter and four months of bad weather.” In her journal entry, the author is complaining about the smog – air pollution from houses and factories so bad it created a thick, smoky fog.

SOURCE A: A journal entry, written in 1839

Over every English town there hangs a pall compounded of the Ocean vapours that perpetually shroud the British Isles, and the heavy noxious fumes of the Cyclops’ cave. No longer does timber from the forests 7

provide fuel for the family hearth; the fuel of Hell - coal - snatched from the very bowels of the earth, has taken its place. It burns everywhere, feeding countless furnaces, replacing horse-power on the roads and wind-power on the rivers and the seas which surround the empire.

Above the monster city a dense fog combines with the volume of smoke and soot belching from thousands of chimneys to wrap London in a black cloud which allows only the dimmest light to penetrate and shrouds everything in a funeral veil.

In London, misery is in the very air you breathe and enters in at every pore. There is nothing more gloomy or disquieting than the aspect of the city on a day of fog or rain or black frost. Only succumb to its influence and your head becomes painfully heavy, your digestion sluggish, your breathing laboured for lack of fresh air, and your whole body is overcome by fatigue. Then you are in the grip of what the English call “spleen”: a profound despair, unaccountable anguish, cantankerous hatred for those one loves the best, disgust with everything, and an irresistible desire to end one’s life by suicide. On days like this, London has a terrifying face: you seem to be lost in the necropolis of the world, breathing its sepulchral air. The light is wan, the cold humid; the long rows of identical sombre houses, each with its black iron grilles and narrow windows, resembles nothing so much as tombs stretching to infinity, whilst between them wander corpses awaiting the hour of burial.

On such black days the Englishman is under the spell of his climate and behaves like a brute beast to anybody who crosses his path, giving and receiving knocks without a word of apology on either side. A poor old man may collapse from starvation in the street, but the Englishman will not stop to help him. He goes about his business and spares no thought for anything else; he hurries to finish his daily task, not to return home, for he has nothing to say to his wife or children, but to go to his club, where he will eat a good dinner in solitude, as conversation fatigues him. Then he will drink too much, and in his drunken slumber forget the troubles which bother him during the day. Many women resort to the same remedy; all that matters is to forget that one exists. The Englishman is no more of a drunkard by nature than the Spaniard, who drinks nothing but water, but the climate of London is enough to drive the most sober Spaniard to drink.

Summer in London is hardly any different than winter; the frequent chilling rainstorms, the heavy atmosphere charged with electricity, the constant change of temperature, cause so many colds, headaches and bouts of colic that there are at least as many sick people in summer as in winter.

Lesson 5 – IN PAKISTAN, A SELF-STYLED TEACHER HOLDS CLASS FOR 150 IN A COWSHED

By Philip Reeves 2014

The following article reports on the efforts of Aansoo Kohli, a 20-year-old Pakistani woman, to bring education to her rural village in Pakistan.

As you read, take notes on the state of education among Kohli’s community in Pakistan and the ways she is making change.

Every day, shortly after breakfast, more than 150 noisy and eager-eyed kids, coated in dust from top to toe, troop into a mud cowshed in a sun-baked village among the cotton fields of southern Pakistan. The shed is no larger than the average American garage; the boys and girls squeeze together, knee-to-knee, on the dirt floor.

Words scrawled on a wooden plank hanging outside proudly proclaim this hovel to be a “school,” although the pupils have no tables, chairs, shelves, maps or wall charts—let alone laptops, water coolers or lunch boxes. Nor are there any teachers, except for one very young woman who is sitting serenely in front of this boisterous throng, occasionally issuing instructions, watched by a cow and a couple of goats tethered a few feet away. Her name is Aansoo Kohli. Aansoo is a 20-year-old student in the final stages of a bachelor’s degree. She is the only person in this village with more than a smattering of education. Her mission is to change that: “I’ll make these children doctors,” she says. “I’ll make them teachers and engineers.”

The kids in Aansoo’s cattle shed are from Pakistan’s Hindu community—a marginalized, sometimes victimized, minority in an overwhelmingly Muslim nation. Their village has for centuries subsisted on the tiny income produced by picking cotton and green chilies for feudal landlords. The mass exodus of Hindus to India—50 miles to the east—during the 1947 partition of the Subcontinent seems to have passed by this remote community. The village, Minah Ji Dhani, lies deep in the countryside of Pakistan’s Sindh province; you have to drive across fields to reach it. There is no road. Nor is there electricity or running water. Its inhabitants are among the poorest of Pakistan’s roughly 200 million population.

A crude wooden crutch lies at Aansoo’s side. She needs this because she lost the use of a leg as an infant due to a botched medical procedure. Her father, an illiterate farm worker, realized she would be unable to work in the fields, so he packed her off every day to a government-run school miles away.

As an impoverished and disabled Hindu girl in a highly conservative and patriarchal rural society, Aansoo says her school years were difficult. “People would laugh at me when I went to school,” she recalls. “They’d say, ‘What’s she going to do once she’s educated?’” Aansoo’s cowshed “school” is her answer to that question. She has no teaching qualifications and works without pay. This hasn’t deterred her from pushing ahead with a personal campaign to give her village’s children—girls as well as boys—the chance to get educated.

“I love these kids,” she says. “I’m urging them to study.”

You only have to watch Aansoo at work for a short while to realize that to describe her cattle shed as a school, or her as a teacher, really is a stretch.

Overwhelmed by numbers, she teaches some of the older children, who then squat on the ground and impart what they have just learned to the smaller kids, some as young as three. Somehow the village whipped up enough money to buy some dog- eared government textbooks and hand-held blackboards.

But there is another goal here. Talk to Aansoo, and it soon becomes clear she has assembled these kids in part to draw attention to a chronic problem blighting her country’s young, especially the poor. Over the years, government teaching jobs in Pakistan have routinely been handed out as political favours. Thousands of so- called “teachers” pocket wages but do not go to work. There’s a girls’ school less than a mile from Aansoo’s village that has long been closed because the teachers never showed up.

Aansoo’s aim is to generate the kind of publicity that will send a message to people far beyond the confines of her village: “I want to tell Pakistan’s teachers that you have a duty to the nation’s children. Please come to school and teach!”

“Aansoo is posing a question for all of Pakistan,” says Janib Dalwani, a Muslim social activist from a nearby village who’s playing a central role in Aansoo’s seven-month-old campaign, publicizing her efforts and rallying villagers to the cause. “If someone with her disadvantages can teach, then why can’t teachers who’re sitting at home drawing salaries go out and teach?”

The task of persuading parents to allow their kids to go along to Aansoo’s cattle shed fell to Dalwani. He says they were initially reluctant to release their children from working in the fields and doubtful about the benefits of education.

“I told them God’s on their side,” says Dalwani. “He’ll help them.”

This seems to have worked. Ram Chand, a farm worker, has allowed three of his daughters to go to the cattle shed: “I am very happy,” he says. “We don’t want the children to lead the life we’ve led.”

Aansoo’s message is being heard beyond her village. Liaquat Ali Mirani, a principal in the Sindhi city of Larkana, runs a website that publishes the names and photos of absentee teachers in the hope this will shame them into doing their jobs.

“I fully support Aansoo and have a lot of sympathy for her. May God help her,” says Mirani.

He estimates four out of 10 teachers in the province never set foot in a school: “Some of them run shops, some work in the media, some for feudal landlords.”

In 2010, Pakistan’s federal constitution was amended to make education compulsory and free for all children age 5 to 16. But education is run by provincial governments; they haven’t yet turned this amendment into law and it seems unlikely they will. This helps explain why, according to estimates, nearly half of Pakistan’s 58 million kids of school age are not in school.

“The state of education is very bad in Pakistan,” says Farhatullah Babar, a leading figure in the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the late Benazir Bhutto’s party that governs Sindh. “In fact, we have what we call education emergency.”

Babar says that although the PPP bears much responsibility for the education crisis in Sindh, it plans to fire absentee teachers and make government teachers take a proficiency test.

“I think these measures indicate a very strong realization on the part of the PPP that if it was responsible for the mess, it is also determined to clean the mess,” says Babar.

For now, though, the kids in the cattle shed are on their own. Their chief hope is Aansoo’s determination—and their own enthusiasm. 10

Lesson 6 –

EXCERPT FROM TRAIL OF TEARS DIARY

By Jobe Alexander & Mary Hill 1938

The Trail of Tears is the name given to the forced relocation of Native American nations following the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The removal included many members of tribes who did not wish to assimilate.1 Many Native Americans suffered from disease and exposure, and somewhere between 2,000- 6,000 Cherokee died on the trail. The Trail of Tears Diary includes interviews that reveal the extraordinary resilience of the Native American nations during the trail.

As you read, take notes on how the perspectives of the two Native American interviewees differ.

INTERVIEW WITH MARY HILL, AGE 47 April 19, 1937 Billie Byrd, Research Field Worker S-149 Mary Hill, Muskogee Tribe Okfuskee Town (tulwa), Okemah, Oklahoma

The Migration to the West of the Muskogee Many years ago, my grandmother, Sallie Farney, who was among those that made the trip to the West from Alabama, often told of the trip as follows:

In every way we were abundantly blessed in our every day life in the old country. We had our hunting grounds and all the things that are dear to the heart or interest of an Indian.

A council meeting was mostly composed of men, but there were times when every member of a town (tulwa) was requested to attend the meetings.

Many of the leaders, when unrest was felt in the homes, visited the different homes and gave encouragement to believe that Alabama was to be the permanent home of the Muskogee tribe. But many different rumours of a removal to the far west was often heard.

The command for a removal came unexpectedly upon most of us. There was the time that we noticed that several overloaded wagons were passing our home, yet we did not grasp the meaning. However, it was not long until we found out the reason. Wagons stopped at our home and the men in charge commanded us to gather what few belongings could be crowded into the wagons. We were to be taken away and leave our homes never to return. This was just the beginning of much weeping and heartaches.

We were taken to a crudely built stockade and joined others of our tribe. We were kept penned up until everything was ready before we started on the march. Even here, there was the awful silence that showed the heartaches and sorrow at being taken from the homes and even separation from loved ones.

Most of us had not foreseen such a move in this fashion or at this time. We were not prepared, but times became more horrible after the real journey was begun.

Many fell by the wayside, too faint with hunger or too weak to keep up with the rest. The aged, feeble, and sick were left to perish by the wayside. A crude bed was quickly prepared for these sick and weary people. Only a bowl of water was left within reach, thus they were left to suffer and die alone.

The little children piteously cried day after day from weariness, hunger, and illness. Many of the men, women, and even the children were forced to walk. They were once happy children; left without mother and father, crying could not bring consolation to those children. The sick and the births required attention, yet there was no time or no one was prepared. Death stalked at all hours, but there was no time for proper burying of ceremonies. My grandfather died on this trip. A hastily cut piece of cotton wood contained his body. The open ends were closed up and this was placed along a creek. This was not the only time this manner of burying was held nor the only way. Some of the dead were placed between two logs and quickly covered with shrubs, some were shoved under the thickets, and some were not even buried but left by the wayside. There were several men carrying reeds with eagle feathers attached to the end. These men continually circled around the wagon trains or during the night around the camps. These men said the reeds with feathers had been treated by the medicine men. Their purpose was to encourage the Indians not to be heavy hearted nor to think of the homes that had been left.

Some of the older women sang songs that meant, "We are going to our homes and land; there is One who is above and ever watches over us; He will care for us." This song was to encourage the ever downhearted Muskogees.

Many a family was forced to abandon their few possessions and necessities when their horses died or were too weary to pull the heavy wagons any further.

INTERVIEW WITH JOBE ALEXANDER May 3, 1938 Jesse S. Bell, Investigator of Indian-Pioneer History, S-149 Jobe Alexander, Cherokee Tribe Proctor, Oklahoma

I am a full blood Cherokee Indian born in Going-Lake District, Indian Territory, Cherokee Nation, March 10, 1854, and raised there. My father, Dun-Ev-Nall Alexander was born in Georgia and was driven West during the immigration. All the Indians were gathered up or rounded up by soldiers and put in pens and guarded until ready for the move; they were gathered up by the "Clans" and left their gardens and crops, and some of the old homes of the Cherokee are still standing in Georgia. The last group that was rounded up revolted; the leader gave the signal to revolt and all turned on the guards and took their guns away and murdered the guards and they made for hide aways in the mountains. That is why the Indians are back in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia. They never were found or hunted much.

Lesson 7 –

Thousands of Years from Now

By Hans Christian Andersen 1853

Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) was a Danish writer who is best known for his fairy tales including “The Little Mermaid” and “The Snow Queen.” “Thousands of Years from Now” published in 1853 is an essay in which the author imagines what the future might be like.

As you read, take notes on Andersen’s predictions about the future and the role of technology.

Yes, thousands of years from now men will fly on wings of steam through the air, across the ocean. The young inhabitants of America will visit old Europe. They will come to see the monuments and the great cities, which will then lie in ruins, just as we in our time make pilgrimages to the ruined splendours of southern Asia. Thousands of years from now they will come!

The Thames, the Danube, and the Rhine still roll in their valleys, Mont Blanc still stands firm with its snowy summit, the northern lights still glitter over the lands of the North, but generation after generation has become dust. Mighty names of today are forgotten-as forgotten as those who already slumber under the hill where the rich corn merchant sits and gazes out across his flat and waving cornfields. "To Europe!" cry the young sons of America. "To the land of our ancestors, that glorious land of memory and legends! To Europe!"

The ship of the air comes. It is crowded with passengers, for this is a much faster crossing than by sea. The electromagnetic wire under the ocean has already cabled the number of the aerial travellers. Already Europe is in sight--the coast of Ireland. But the passengers are still asleep and will not be called until they are over England. It is there that they still take their first step onto the soil of Europe, in the land of Shakespeare, as the intellectual call it, or the land of politics and land of machines, as it is called by others.

Here they stay a whole day! That is all the time this busy generation can give to the whole of England and Scotland. Then they rush on, through the tunnel under the English Channel, to France, the country of Charlemagne and Napoleon. The learned among them speak of Molière and the classic and romantic school of remote antiquity; others applaud the names of heroes, poets, and scientists whom our time does not yet know, but who will in after days be born in that crater of Europe, Paris. Now the steamboat of the air crosses the country whence Columbus set sail, where Cortez was born, and where Calderó sang his dramas in resounding verse. Beautiful, black-eyed women still live in those blooming valleys, and the ancient songs tell of the Cid and the Alhambra.

Then through the air, across the sea, to Italy, where once stood old, eternal Rome. It has vanished! The Campagna is a desert; a solitary ruined wall is shown as the remains of St. Peter's, and there is even doubt that this ruin is authentic.

On to Greece, to spend a night in the hotel at the top of Mount Olympus, just so they can say that they have been there. Then to the Bosporus, for a few hours' rest and to see the spot where Byzantium stood; and where legends tell of the harems of the Turks, poor fishermen are now spreading their nets.

Over the ruins of the mighty cities of the Danube, cities that we in our days know not yet; and on the rich sites of some of those which time shall yet bring forth, the air travellers sometimes descend, only to depart again quickly.

Down below lies Germany, which was once covered with a massive network of railways and canals. Germany, where Luther spoke, and Goethe sang, and Mozart once held the sceptre of music! Great names of science and art now shine there – names still unknown to us. One day's stopover for Germany, and one for the other – the country of Oersted and Linnaeus, and for Norway, land of old heroes and young Norwegians. Iceland is visited on the journey home; the geysers burst forth

no more, the volcano Hecla is extinct, but that great island is still fixed in the foaming sea, mighty monument of legend and poetry. "There is really a great deal to be seen in Europe," says the young American proudly. "And we've seen it in eight days; and it is quite possible, as the great traveller" (and here he names one of his contemporaries) "tells us in his famous book, How to See All Europe in Eight Days."