372. Coal and water has no coal. All her coal must come in ships from other countries. When ships were scarce during the World War, the Italian people nearly froze, and many of the fac tories could not be run. Luckily, an Italian engineer found some boiling springs near the city of Florence. The water of these springs was hot enough to boil water in pipes and make steam with which to run the factory engines. There are many waterfalls in the southern Alps, and near them the Italians have built electric power plants. The electricity is carried by wires to run the factories of Milan, Turin, and other cities of northern Italy.
In the south of Italy, there are no snow fields on the mountains and therefore no melting snow make water power in summer when there is no rain. Thus you see southern Italy is not a manufacturing place. Since all of the land has been long in use, there is not much for the young men to do. Therefore, many hundreds of thousands of Italians have emigrated from southern Italy and Sicily to other countries. Italian emigrants raise most of the wheat in Argentina and most of the coffee in Brazil. So many have come to the United States that there are more Italians in New York than in any city of Italy.
373. Sulphur and has two minerals, sulphur and marble, and these are sent to many countries. The finest marble statues in the world are made of the marble from Carrara, on the coast not far from Genoa.
Sulphur is often found in the sides of volcanoes. Near Etna, Sicilians dig much
of the world's sulphur supply, even much of the sulphur we use in America. The ships that take American cotton, wheat, and lumber to Italy carry Sicilian sulphur back to the United States.
374. Manufacture and is plain to you why Italy has less manufac turing than France or Swit zerland, and why her cities are not so large as those of the United States and Eng land. Naples, the largest city of Italy, is about the size of Boston, and is an important seaport. However, Genoa is the chief port of Italy, because most of the trade of Lombardy and part of the Swiss trade pass through it. There is no good harbor near Rome.
Venice is much visited by travelers because it has an interesting history and many beautiful buildings. It was built on some small islands long ago, by a group of people who wanted to be safe from robbers. Instead of streets, there are canals, and instead of taking a carriage or an auto mobile, one takes a graceful boat called a gondola, to go from place to place. Long before Columbus discovered America, Ven ice was the greatest trading city in the world. Many beautiful buildings of that time still stand. People in almost every country in the world wear colored glass beads made by the Venetian glass makers.
Across the Adriatic from Venice are Trieste and Fiume, cities with Italian people whose chief business is to handle the imports and exports of parts of Czecho slovakia, Jugoslavia, Austria, and Hungary.