Excerpt
I take pleasure in announcing that I have purchased the entire subscription list and good will of Current Events, and offer you in its stead The Great Round World, a weekly newspaper for boys and girls.
You will receive one number of The Great Round World for each number of Current Events due you on your subscription. I make the special offer, to send you The Great Round World every week until December 31st, 1897, if you will remit the sum of $1.25 at once.
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If there is any special feature or department of Current Events which the majority of the subscribers would like to have continued, I will take great pleasure in arranging for it, and I trust that you may find The Great Round World a satisfactory substitute for Current Events.
William Beverley Harison.
Copyrighted 1897, By William Beverley Harison.
Vol. 1 February 18, 1897. No. 15
There is a new cause for supposing that the Treaty with Great Britain will either be defeated in the Senate, or else delayed for some time to come.
This new trouble concerns the building of the Nicaragua Canal.
It seems a remote cause, does it not? but it only shows how closely the affairs of one nation are bound up with those of all the others. No matter what our speech, our climate, or our color, we are all a portion of the great human family, and the good of one is the good of all.
The Nicaragua Canal is a water-way that will cross the narrow neck of land that makes Central America. It will connect the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean.
With the help of such a canal, ships in going to the western coast of North or South America will not need to make the long and dangerous voyage around Cape Horn.
Cape Horn, you will see if you look on your map, is the extreme southerly point of South America.
There are so many storms and fogs there, that the Horn, as it is called, is much dreaded by sailors.
Since the invention of steam, all the steamships go through the Straits of Magellan, and save the passage round the Horn; but there is not enough wind for sailing vessels in the rocky and narrow straits, so they still have to take the outside passage.
The Straits of Magellan divide the main continent of South America from a group of islands, called Tierra del Fuego, and Cape Horn is the most southerly point of this archipelago.
The journey down the coast of South America on the east, and up again on the west, takes such a long time, that the desire for a canal across the narrow neck of land which joins North and South America has been in men's minds for many years.
A railway was built across the Isthmus of Panama to shorten the distance, and save taking the passage round the Horn. Travellers left their ship at one side of the Isthmus, and took the train over to the other, where they went on board another ship, which would take them the rest of their journey.
This plan greatly increased the expense of the journey, and the canal was still so much wanted, that at last the Panama Canal was begun.
You have all heard about the Panama Canal, which was to do the same work that the Nicaragua Canal is to do, that is, to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. You have probably heard how much time, labor, and human life was wasted over it, and how much trouble its failure caused in France....