You see that an apple spins around on the stem. If the stem went all the way through, you could easily see that the apple spun around both ends of the stem. (See Fig. 34.) Perhaps you can push a knitting needle, or a piece of wire, or a thin piece of wood through an apple, and let the apple spin around this rod. Such a wire or rod may be called an axis. We can imagine one in the earth, on which the earth spins around. One end of the earth's axis always points toward the North Star. It is called the North Pole. The opposite end is called the South Pole. Your teacher will show you the poles on the globe, or on Fig. 45.
27. The North a hundred years men tried to get to the North Pole, but they always failed. Finally, in 1909, Robert E. Peary, an officer of the United States Navy, reached the North Pole after very high land entirely covered with snow and ice hundreds of feet deep.
The North Pole is as far north as man can go, and the South Pole is as far south as man can go. If we are going toward the North Pole, we say we are going north. It makes no difference on which side of the world we are, whether we are in Europe, Asia, or Africa, or whether we are one mile or ten thousand miles from the pole. If we are going toward the North Pole, we are going north; if we are going toward the South Pole, we are going south. Point out north and south directions on your spinning apple, calling the stem end the many trips and many years of hard work. He found only an ordinary piece of ocean covered with ice, over which he and the Eskimos walked, while the huskie dogs pulled their sled loads of provisions. But Peary knew he had reached the Pole be cause the sun stayed just so high, neither rising at noon nor setting at night.
In 1911, Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian, reached the South Pole, where he found a North Pole. If you have a globe, point out north and south directions on it. Do this for five places in Fig. 40.
28. cut your apple into two equal parts, a north half and a south half. If we could cut the globe in this way, we should have two halves of a globe or sphere, each called a hemisphere (hemi means half). The one with the North Pole for its center—the northern half—we call the Northern Hemisphere; the one with the South Pole for its center we call the Southern Hemisphere. The line half way between the poles is called the equator, because it is equally distant from the poles. The circumference, or distance around the earth at the equator, is about 25,000 miles; the diameter, or distance straight through the center of the earth, is about 8000 miles. Perhaps you can take a pen and ink and mark the poles, the equator, and the out line of one of the continents on an orange or on a new baseball. It will not hurt the
orange nor the ball. If you have a globe, look at it to find out in which hemisphere North America is. In which one is Europe? Australia? South America? Asia? Africa? Now take another apple and cut it in two halves in such a way that you split the core. (Fig. 33.) In the same way we could divide or mark off the globe into halves by a line running around it and passing through both poles. A long while ago, men decided that they would pretend to divide the world into two parts that way by a line in the Atlantic Ocean between Europe and America. The land to the east of that line we call the Eastern Hemi sphere, and that to the west we call the Western Hemisphere. In which hemi sphere is South America? Africa? Europe? 29. The Old World and the New World. —Men have• lived in the Eastern Hemi sphere much longer than they have in the Western Hemisphere. The Eastern Hemi sphere is often called the Old World, and the Western Hemisphere is called the New World. All the people mentioned in the Bible lived in the Eastern Hemisphere.
They did not know that there was any America out in the great western sea. Their ships were too small to sail on this wide ocean.
After a long, long time, somebody in vented the compass. Then sailors were able to have a clearer idea of where they were as they sailed on strange seas, and they could take longer voyages. At last, in 1492, a brave Italian named Christopher Columbus started from Spain with some other men to sail across the western ocean. He thought that the earth was round, and that if he sailed far enough he would reach Asia. This would be an easier route for ships trading with the people in India and China than the long voyage they had had to take before this time. His three ships sailed on and on and on.
For seventy days they sailed. The sailors, afraid that they would never again see home, threatened to throw Columbus overboard and to go back. But just as they were about to turn back, they saw land birds,. and then they knew that they must be near to land. On the seventieth day of the voyage, October 12, 1492, the weary sailors landed on an island, San Salvador, or Watling Island, one of the group we call the Bahamas. Columbus did not know he had discovered a new continent, but thought he had reached India. Although in later years he three more voyages to America, he died still thinking he had reached India. It was he who called the natives of this country Indians.