Now, what happened along the banks of the Nile happened to a certain degree along the banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris. Mesopotamia means "the land between the rivers," the mid-river country. Away back five or six thousand years ago there were people who built great cities, erected high tower-temples of burned brick. They invented a curious kind of arrow-headed alphabet (the cuneiform), which they stamped into clay tablets, brick reading books. On the banks of these rivers, in that far-off time, astronomers watched the stars, and found out a good deal about the planets and eclipses. They measured time by the year of three hundred and sixty-five days, and twelve months, which means that they had watched the moon and measured the length of the days. Then there are other rivers, The Ganges, that runs through the heart of India, on the banks of which there grew up the great religions and the curious customs of the Hindus and the Buddhists; and the Jordan, which, you will remember, flows through our Bible. Around it clusters the great stories of the prophets, of Jesus and his disciples. When we turn to Europe, we will find much about the Germans, by finding out all we can about the Rhine. If you can find out much about the Rhone and the Seine, you will understand the story of France and the French people. The Thames is older than London; and along the banks of the Danube grew up nation after nation. Down that stream have floated war vessels for different peoples for thousands and thousands of years. Would you not like to see a collection of boats that would reach from the boats made of the raw hides of animals by the earlier pagan people along the Danube, up to the latest and best steamer that now plies up and down that great river? None the less interesting are the rivers of the Western continent, the Hudson, the Mississippi, and the Missouri; the Ohio and the Amazon are the pathways over which the first explorers traveled. Along their banks did the first settlers make their homes, and on their bosom did the men in the wild woods first send their traffics. Who was it that started the first steamboat up the Hudson? You remember how Abraham Lincoln when a boy helped build a flat-boat, and how he steered that flat-boat all the way from Illinois to New Orleans, selling there the truck the early settlers raised, exchanging it for molasses, and sugar, and the calico that they needed in Illinois.