LITMIR.BIZ

       PREFACE

       Table of Contents

      In the construction of this publication, the object is not to tell stories or relate experiences, but to exhibit, by carefully taken photographs, the great sights of the world as they exist to-day.

      The art of teaching with pictures is very old. The ancient Egyptians used emblems and designs to record the various incidents of their history, traces of which are still found on obelisks and ruined temples.

      Wood illustrations were also introduced many years ago; and as time rolled on, marked improvements were made in the art of wood-engraving. Notwithstanding the fact that they have not the power of truly representing the original objects they intend to portray, they are still largely used for illustrating printed books and papers.

      Over a century ago, the art of photography was made known to the world by Scheele, a Swedish chemist; since then, many improvements have been made in this art, until now, by the photo-electro process, an exact photograph can be transferred on a copper plate, without losing a single line or shade, and from this plate, photographs can be printed, such as appear in this book.

      Owing to the increasing popularity of the graphic and pictorial methods of imparting information, the photographic camera was employed to secure photographs of the greatest things of the world as seen to-day, both for instruction and entertainment.

      We forget knowledge acquired by common conversation, and descriptions of places and things; but when we observe them, and their forms are conveyed to our minds through the medium of our eyes, they are indelibly impressed upon the memory.

       The object, then, of this Publication is to present photographs of all the great sights of the world, from every corner of the globe, carefully reproducing them by the photo-electro process, and adding a few lines of explanation to every picture, so that any one can comprehend each subject.

      To make this collection, every country was carefully ransacked, starting in Ireland, with the famous Blarney Castle and Lakes of Killarney in the south, and extending to the Giant's Causeway in the north, said by an old legend to have been built by giants to form a road across the channel to Scotland.

      Passing through Scotland, we photographed its hills, castles, lochs, bridges and cities. Throughout Wales and England, we represent their busy seaport and manufacturing towns; the home of Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon; Windsor Castle, far-famed for its beauty and battlements; Greenwich Observatory, from which the longitude of the world is computed; Hampton Court, a relic of royalty; and London, the metropolis of the world, with over six million people, its crowded streets, imperial buildings, historic abbeys, famous towers and monuments.

      The Netherlands and Denmark are represented by the dykes and windmills, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Brussels, the battlefield of Waterloo; Russia, the land of the Czar, by Moscow, The Kremlin; St. Petersburg, the Winter Palace. Thence our photographers travelled across the steppes to Lapland, Finland, Poland, and over the tundras to sterile Siberia, inflicting its cruel tortures on unhappy exiled prisoners.

      Germany, that romantic country of northern Europe, affords Berlin; Potsdam, its Royal Palaces; Dresden and its Picture Galleries; Frankfort-on-the-Main, the former home of Luther, the reformer, and Rothschild, the financial king of the world; the picturesque Rhine, lined with its historic castles.

      France furnishes for our collection Paris, the proudest city of the whole world, ever gay, its pretty boulevards, monuments, towers, bridges, historic buildings, the Louvre and Luxembourg Galleries, and their treasures of painting and sculptures; Versailles, its royal palaces, the largest in the world; the palace at Fontainbleau, buried in the midst of that imperial forest, the home where Napoleon ruled and abdicated; the cities of the interior and those of the ever-delightful Riveria, from Marseilles to Monte Carlo, the latter both lovely, hideous, serene, sensational, beautiful and damnable.

       Through Spain and Portugal, every object of interest was photographed, from the wild and thrilling scenery of the Pyrenees in the north to that bold headland rock of Gibraltar in the south, and from the calm Mediterranean in the east to the turbulent waters of the Atlantic on the west.

      Of Switzerland, we exhibit its snow-capped peaks of perpetual ice and snow; Mont Blanc, Matterhorn and Jungfrau; its placid lakes; mountain passes, like shelves cut in rock; its bridges of ice and variety of wild scenery that is seen nowhere but in Switzerland.

      Through sunny Italy we gathered photographs from lakes Lugano, Maggiore and Como with perpetual spring, in the north, to the fiery crater of Mount Vesuvius in the south; Venice, the "Queen of the Adriatic;" Genoa, the home of Columbus; Pisa, its leaning tower; Florence, the "flower of cities," with its galleries of statues and paintings that the wealth of nations could not purchase; and Rome, that mighty city by the Tiber, that once ruled the world, and is still the abode of the Pope; St. Peters and its ruins; yet now calm, peaceful and powerless.

      Austria, where the Catholic bows his head to every shrine, favored us with its sublime mountain scenery; the picturesque Tyrol; the blue Danube, famous in history and song; and Vienna, the home of the Emperor and the former abode of Maria Theresa, strangely fascinating and unlike any other city in the whole world. Turkey, the land of the Sultan and the followers of Mahomet, with its strange people and curious habits, is represented by Constantinople, with its mosques and minarets, from the top of which the Mussulman sings out his daily calls for prayer, Ali! Ali!—there is but one God, and Mahomet is his prophet; its streets, gates and squares; the Bosphorus and Golden Horn.

      Classic Greece, once the centre of art and learning, adorns our collection with Athens, the Acropolis and Parthenon, the latter almost completely and shamefully bereft of those famous marbles, chiseled by Phidias nearly five hundred years before Christ.

      In ancient Egypt we photographed the Suez Canal; Alexandria, the former city of Cleopatra; Cairo, the home of the Khedive and his harems; the Sphynx and Pyramids, the latter the tombs of the selected Ptolemies; the river Nile, fed by the melting snows from the mountains of the Moon, and pouring its waters over this ancient valley with a regularity as though the ruined temples on its banks give it command.

       Palestine, the Holy Land, made famous in the history of the Christian Church, added Jeruselem, the City of David; Bethlehem, the cradle of Christ; Jordan, where He was baptized; the Sea of Galilee, on whose shores He preached to the multitude; Nazareth, from which He was called a Nazarene; Gethsemane, where He suffered; Calvary, where He was crucified.

      Asia furnished Mecca, that eternal city to which Mahomet's disciples make their weary pilgrimages; Hindoostan, from Bombay to Calcutta; the

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