Wonderful collections of pictures and stat ues are to be seen in France. French builders, with their love of the beautiful, have made Paris, the French capital, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, a city to which travelers go each year by hundreds of thousands. The Louvre, in Paris, is one of the world's most famous art galleries.
Some of the pictures and statues have been brought from other countries. Hundreds of people from many foreign countries are in Paris all the time studying to be painters and sculptors.
We see French art in the trade of Paris. As Manchester means cotton, and Birming ham means iron and steel, so Paris means artistic and beautiful clothing and furnish ings. Gloves, dresses, hats, perfumery, and jewelry are made in Paris in great quantity, and sent to the United States, South Amer ica, and many foreign coun tries.
Paris lies in the center of a rich plain in the northern part of the Atlantic Plain.
It is five times as large as Marseille, the second city of France, and is one of the greatest railroad centers in Europe. Every day trains enter from Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Ger many, Holland, and Bel gium, and from the channel ports to which people come from London.
The city of Limoges is almost as famous in pottery as Paris is in clothing. Haviland china, made in France, is widely known.
Rheims, in the midst of limestone hills where sheep are pastured on land too rough for farming, is a wool-manufacturing center.
457. Trade.—The chief ports of this dis trict are Bordeaux, the port of the west, exporter of wine, and Havre, port of the north, through which most of the trade of Paris goes. Havre is especially famous as a market for Brazilian coffee and American cotton. A ship from Galveston once un loaded at Havre 28,000 bales of cotton of 500 pounds each. What would that be worth now? River boats go up the Seine from Havre to Paris. There are canals to Antwerp and the coal fields of the north near Lille, as well as to the rivers Rhone and Loire. Altogether, this plain is well equipped for trade. It is all near to the sea; it has sev eral seaports, several navigable rivers, and a good system of canals connecting the rivers.
There is a lively traffic between Paris and London. By the fastest trains, one can make the journey in less than eight hours. Of this time, a little more than one hour is spent in the twenty-mile boat-ride from Calais to Dover. Other routes of travel between London and Paris are by way of the channel ports of Boulogne and Dieppe, and by airplanes, which now maintain a regular service between the two capitals.
St. Nazaire and Brest are two smaller ports in the west. Hundreds of thousands
of American soldiers were landed at Brest during the World War.
458. Government and is a republic with a congress (or parliament) much like the American Congress, and a president, who has much less power than the President of the United States. France does many things in Paris which we do in our county seats, city halls, or state capitals. For this reason we say that the French government is very much centralized. This custom brings many people to Paris and helps to make it the largest city on the continent of Europe. Compare it with some American cities in population.
We have already seen that France owns some small colonies in America (Sec. 254), but she has very large colonies across the Mediterranean and in northern Africa. She owns most of the African shore opposite France and Spain, most of the Sahara, and some land south of the Sahara. French posses sions in Central Africa extend even to the equator and beyond it. France also has some colonies in southeastern Asia. Name less cost, and in this way build up her manufactures. If manufactures increase, it will be by making light, fine things, which employ the artistic and skilful work of the people, and which do not require heavy raw mate rials or much fuel. Why? the French possessions (Fig. 10). Among all the large French possessions, only Africa north of the Sahara is suitable for white men. In the others the people are nearly all black or brown, and even in North Africa there are six Arabs to one white settler.
459. Future.—While the Atlantic Plain of France has almost the same good climate that England has, it does not promise to become a land of factory towns, such as England is. English coal, which is used there, must cost more in France than it does in England.
More food can be produced because French agriculture is not so intensive as that of Holland, Belgium, or Germany. France might also produce more manufactures, for Holland has shown that a country with few raw materials and little fuel can manufacture extensively, but the fact seems to be that France is not increasing in population and that her industries show but little change. Since the World War, there have been many plans for improvements in industry. One of these plans is to build large water-power plants which shall be run by tidal water caught by dams across arms of the sea. Another is to build a canal from Paris to the coal and iron-ore district of Lorraine near Luxembourg. (Sec. 518.) This plan would give France a chance to get iron and steel at