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Half Round the World; Or, Among the Uncivilized
Half Round the World Or Among the Uncivilized Author:Oliver Optic General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1896 Original Publisher: Lee and Shepard Publisher Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com whe... more »re you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III THE STORY OF A BORNEAN CHIEF AND HUNTER " My friends, you have not yet seen the whole of India, and it will depend upon the result of a conference with you which I propose to hold to-day whether you see any more of it or not," the commander began. " We will not meddle with that subject just now, except so far as to say that the portion of it east of the Bay of Bengal is divided into Upper and Lower Burma." " How do you spell that name, Captain Ringgold? " asked Mrs. Belgrave, as the speaker was pointing out the divisions on the map. " The modern way to write it is B-u-r-m-a. Sometimes an h is added, and when I went to school it was Birmah. Like the great peninsula, it is divided into states or provinces; and the one to which I point is Pegu. As you see, about half of it forms a peninsula, which contains the mouths of the Irawadi River -- a name which is also variously spelled. Southwest of this peninsula are the Andaman Islands ; and south of them the Nicobar Islands, the most southern of which, Great Nicobar, is now in sight. " A hundred years ago all these islands were densely wooded, and sparsely inhabited by peoplein the lowest state of barbarism. What is called the Great Andaman consists really of three islands, with a Little Andaman at the south of it. The natives are negroes, supposed to be the descendants of a vessel carrying a cargo of Africans which was wrecked there. None of them are as tall as Louis Belgrave. They are quite black, with very big heads physically, and not in the sense that the ' Big Four' use the term, with limbs,...« less