Geographic Notes 



455 



smaller amount, because the weather 

 was bad and there were some bad slides, 

 which broke up some of the excavators. 

 We cut the unit cost of excavating ma- 

 terial in July to 6o}4 cents per cubic 

 yard ; in August to 50^ cents per cubic 

 yard. During the time Major Black 

 was in charge there the French cost was 

 79 cents per cubic yard. One month 

 we cut the cost down to 45 cents, but 

 that was due to there being no rock 

 excavations. ' ' 



A cablegram from Christiania states 

 that the Duke of Orleans has asked per- 

 mission of the Norwegian government 

 to hire the Fram, in which Dr Nansen 

 made his vo3*age to the Arctic regions, 

 for the purpose of an Arctic expedition 

 in 1905. 



Emigration from Italy to the United 

 States. — ■ The Italian Commissioner- 

 General of Emigration has urged the 

 Chamber of Deputies to make special 

 appropriations for those districts in Italy 

 which are sending out the largest num- 

 ber of immigrants. His object is to es- 

 tablish additional schools in the "emi- 

 grant ' ' districts in order to teach the 

 illiterate adults to read and write, so that 

 if an illiteracy clause is inserted in our 

 immigration laws by Congress, the num- 

 ber of Italians going to the United States 

 may not be cut down. At the present 

 time the economic welfare of large sec- 

 tions of southern Italy depends, says 

 the Commissioner of Emigration, on 

 their being able to send their extra 

 laborers abroad, particularly to the 

 United States. If the United States 

 should suddenly refuse to admit immi- 

 grants who do not read or write, at 

 least half of the Italians aiming for the 

 United States would be unable to enter 

 and would be forced back on their over- 

 crowded homes. It is estimated that in 

 1901 there were 3,439,014 Italians liv- 

 ing abroad, of whom 654,000 were scat- 

 tered over Europe ; 168,000 were in 



Africa (Tunis, 83,000; Algeria, 39,000; 

 Egypt, 38,000); 745,000 were in North 

 America (729,000 in the United States 

 and 11,000 in Canada), and 1,852,000 

 were in South America (618,000 in Ar- 

 gentina and 1,100,000 in Brazil). 



That Russia is a complete world in her- 

 self; that she possesses in her own mines, 

 forests, and fields enough to satisfy her 

 every want ; that she ought to manu- 

 facture out of these possessions every- 

 thing that her people need, and that she 

 could do so if her tariff was high enough 

 is the dominant theme of a recent speech 

 of Mr Witte. Consul Monaghan has 

 sent over an abstract of this speech, 

 which contains the following figures to 

 show the present extent of some of her 

 manufacturing industries : 



Name of industry. 



Metal 



Textile 



Food stuff. 



leather 



Wood 



Ceramic... 

 Chemical.. 

 Paper 



Number 

 of fac- 

 tories. 



5,824 

 4.449 

 16,512 



4.238 



2,357 



3.413 



769 



53 2 



Number 

 of em- 

 ployees. 



758,644 

 642,520 



255, 357 

 64,418 

 86.273 



143.291 

 35.320 

 46,190 



Value of 

 output. 



f362.753.i25 

 487,342,440 

 333,779,740 

 68,009,870 

 52,982,685 

 42,533,850 

 30,670,825 

 23,427,350 



Maps of Manchuria. — The German gov- 

 ernment has recently issued a series of 

 map sheets of Manchuria showing the 

 scene of war. The sheets show in de- 

 tail the rivers and streams, the moun- 

 tains and mountain passes, and the roads 

 and trails. The French government 

 has also issued map sheets of the same 

 region. The two series are striking evi- 

 dence of the confusion of our knowledge 

 of Manchuria and Korea. For instance, 

 the spelling of places is so different that 

 they are almost unrecognizable — i. e., 

 Chemulpo is spelled Tschemulpo on the 

 German map and Tche-moul Po on the 

 French map. Now that all nations are 

 so intimately and jointly interested in 

 world events, they ought to decide on 

 uniform spelling of geographic names. 



