This man is happy to think he is free, and he works hard to keep his family supplied with all they need. See the dear little baby in his mother’s lap. Perhaps when he grows up he will go to one of the schools in North Carolina, where the negroes learn to be good farmers, able to take care of themselves and their families. Perhaps he will be a teacher. This road looks very sandy, doesn’t it? You know it is in what is called the Sand Belt of North Carolina. All along the eastern part of the state the country is low and flat, much of it sandy, with here and there a swamp; but farther inland it is good farming country with fine soil. North Carolina has a wonderful climate, and it is so warm and pleasant that a bigger variety of plants grow there than in almost any other state. We should like to see peanuts growing, shouldn’t we? They grow in great abundance here. [Illustration: _Free and happy in his crude Prosperity. Life in the Sand Belt of North Carolina_ _From Stereograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York_] AN OX-CART IN SOUTHERN MISSISSIPPI This father is taking his family out too; it is a good large family, isn’t it? All these pickaninnies live in the house we see in the picture, way down in southern Mississippi. Before the Civil War the coloured people in Mississippi were slaves, but now they are free, and many of them live quite happily and contentedly in their little cabins. Numbers of them own small farms and grow cotton and corn, or sometimes sugar-cane, from which syrup and molasses are made. Mississippi is one of the states where it is warm weather most of the year; the Gulf of Mexico is just south of it, and the breeze across the water is soft and mild. It rains a great deal in the southern part of the state, and there are many rivers, so the land is overflowed very often. Along the Mississippi River in some places banks called levees have been built, to keep the water in its place, but often after a heavy rain there is so much water in the river that the levees are broken, and then great damage is done. If the river did not sometimes carry off houses these overflows would not be so bad, for the water leaves a kind of mud on the fields, which makes things grow faster and better. There are large numbers of trees in Mississippi: the holly that we use at Christmas time grows there, the fragrant magnolia, the persimmon with its queer puckery fruit, and many other varieties. [Illustration: _Rapid Transit in Southern Mississippi_ _From Stereograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York_] IN CENTRAL PARK These dear little goats give a great deal of pleasure to children in Central Park, New York City. Would you like to take a drive now and see some of the interesting things in the park? It is such a large place that it would take quite a long time to drive about and see everything.