Borneo is a giant among the island of the world. Only Greenland and New Guinea are larger. Borneo is big enough to hold all of the states of Texas, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The island has an area about 743,000 square kilometers (287,000 square miles).

Borneo straddles the equator at the western end of the Pacific Ocean. Its neighbors to the northeast are the Philippines Islands. To the west, across the South China Sea, are Vietnam and the narrow finger of the Malay Peninsula. To the south and southwest are the large Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra. To the east are Celebes; the fables sp0ice islands, the Moluccas; and New Guinea.
Politically Borneo is made up of the territories of three countries. Sabah (formerly North Borneo) and Sarawak are states of Malaysia. Brunei is tiny sultanate (ruled by a sultan). The third political unit of Borneo is known as Kalimantan and is part of Indonesia

South of the United Stated, starting at a point about 160 kilometers (100 miles) from the tip of Florida, lie the Caribbean islands, known also as the Atilles. The Antilles from an arc stretching about 3,220 kilometers (2,000 miles) east and south to the coast of Venezuela. Between this this arc of islands and the mainland of North, South, and Central America lies the Caribbean Sea. An arm of the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean covers an area of about 1,942,500 square kilometers (750,000 square miles). The Panama Canal connect the Caribbean with the Pacific Ocean, making the sea a major waterway.

Named for the Carib Indians who once inhabited the smaller islands, the sea is known for its clear blue color. The temperature of the water rarely falls below 240 C (750F). Beautiful tropical fish and fascinating marine life, including many kinds of coral, thrive in the mild water. Swimming, fishing, and snorkeling are popuylar sports.

There are several hundreds island in the Caribbean. The four largest, known as the Carribean. The four largest, known as the Greater Antilles, are Cuba, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Jamiaca, and Puerto Rico. These coprise more than 90 percent of the land area are the home of over 80 percent of the inhabitans. East and south are Lesser Antilles, which are made up of the Leeward and the Windward islands. Except for fall huriricanes, which sometimes cause great damage, the climate troughout the area is pleasant. Temperatures average about 21 to 290C (70 to 850F).

Tourism is a major source of income. Sugarcane, spices, limes, bananas, oranges, cacao, and coffee are among the products grown, and most of these are exported. In the Virgin Islands and the Dominican Republic cattle raising is a major industry. Aruba, Curacao, and Trinidad produce petroleum, and Jamaica has large deposits of bauxite, a chief source alumunium.

Canals are chanels or ditches filled with water. Sometimes they are natural channels, but most often they have been made by people. The earliest canal were probably dug to bring water from rivers or lakes to irrigate dry land. Other canals were used to drain water away from swampy cities and towns.
Early in history, people found another important use for canals tranportation. A canal can be used to join two cities. It can give in inland waterway in a country that has few rivers.
Natural bodies of water, such as rivers, lakes, or seas, can be connected by canals to provide shorter os safer water routes. Canals are also sometimes built in rivers that are too swift or too shallow for boats to use.
There are two main types of canals that are used for transportation: ship canals and barge canals. Ship canals are use by large seagoing vessels. Barge canals are used by cargo carrying barges and small ship.
Canals may be built all on one level, or can be opened and closed to let water in or out and let boat through.
A ship going a lower to a higher level in a canal first sails into a lock through its open lower gates. The gates are shut nehind it. Water is allowed to flow into the lock through small opening until the level of water in the lock is as high as the water in the upper level of the canal. Then the upper gates are opened, and the ship proceeds on its way. If ships must be lifted a great distance, more than one locks is used. Sometimes a whole series of locks is used, one after the other, like steps an a staircase.
If a ship is descending to a lower level, the process in simply reversed. The lock is filled with water and the upper gate is opened. The ship enters the lock, and the water is let out through small openings in the lower gate. The lower gate is opened, and the ship sails on.
Except is very small lock, the lock is always filled or emptied through small openings in the gates or through pipes in the bottom of the lock. If the gates themselves were opened to let water in or out, the water would rush in or out with terrific force. The ship might be dashed against the side of the lock and damaged. The banks of the canal might also be washed out by the rush of water.

Bermuda is a sunny group islands in the vast Atlantic Ocean. The nearest land is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about 1,075 kilometers (670 miles) to the northwest.
The islands are British colony known officially as the Bermudas or Somers Islands. The total land area is about 54 square kilometers (21 square miles), and the length of the island chain is 35 kilometers (22 miles). The land is shaped like a giant fishhook.
Nature wa symbolic when it shaped Bermuda this way, for the islands are noted as a superb fishing area. Naglers have caught bonefish, wahoo, and tuna of record size Bermuda waters. Over 600 species of fish have been found along the reefs and in the open sea around Bermuda. The Bermuda Government Aquarium has one of the world’s finest collection of tropical marine fish.

The Atlantic Ocean is a huge body of water second only to the pacific Ocean in size. The Atlantic furnishes fine trade routes and fishing grounds for four continents Nort America, South America, Europe, and Africa. It was the first ocean to be crossed by ships and airplanes.

The Atlantic ocean may have been named for the mythical land of Atlantis. According to legend, Atlantis was suddenly swallowed up by the sea and disappeared ages ago. Another legend names the ocean for the Atlantides. These water nymphs were the daughters of Atlas. Their home was the Atlantic Ocean beyond the Atlas mountains.

The Atlantic Ocean has an average depth of about 12,800 feet (3,900 meters). Its bottom is covered mainly with an ooze made up of the shells of tiny ocean animals. The deepest place is in the North Atlantic, north of Puerto Rico. Here in the Puerto Rico Trench, the ocean reaches down 27,510 feet (8,385 m).
The ocean bed of Atlantic isi divided into two valleys by the mid-Atlantic ridge. This is an S-shaped ridge running from north to south and rising about 6,000 feet (1,830 m) from the ocean bottom. Where the ridge rises above sea level, it forms the island of Azores, Saint Payl Rocks, Ascension, Saint Helena, Tristan da Cunha, and Bouvet.
Compares to the fairly straight coast of the South Atlantic, the North Atlantic has a very irregular shoreline. The greatest indentations are on the European side of the ocean. These are formed by the Baltic, Nort, Mediterranean, and Black seas. The coastal waters on the American side include Hudson Bay, the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea. Water from most of the great river systems of the world flows into the Atlantic. These rivers the Saint Lawrence, Mississippi, Orinoco, Amazon, La Plata, Congo, Niger, Nile, Don, Dnieper, Danube, Po, Loire, Rhine, and Elbe give the Atlantic the largest drainage area of any ocean. Such drainage, from about half of the world’s land area, includes many dissolved minerals and makes the Atlantic the saltiest of the ocean.

The Andes from the longest and one of the highest mountain ranges in the world. Only the Himalayas in south central Asia are taller and more rugged. The Andes Cordillera along the west coast of South America, From the Caribbean Sea in the north to Tierra del Fuego, an Archipelago at the southern tip of South America. The Andes are in every South American Republic except Barzil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Guyana.
Within the Andean regions are many different kind of life and lands. There are great modern cities and small Indian villages where people live much as they did centuries ago.

There are dense forest and barren plains, fertile farmland, and stony soil where little grows. About a third of all the people in South Aemerica live in the Andean regions. Most of them in crowded cities and towns. For South American capitals lie high in the Andes-Caracas, Venezuela; Bogota, Colombia; Quito, Ecuador; and La Paz, Bolivia.
Many peaks in Andes are over 20,000 feat high-taller than any peaks in North America. Aconcagua (22,835 ft), in Argentina, is the highest mountain in the Western Hemisphere. Many of the Andean Mountains are volcanic. Some are inactive, although a number of them still erupt from time to time and cause great damage.

The northern Andes lie in Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. Much of South America’s fine coffee is grown on the lower slopes of the northern Andes.
The central Andes are in Bolivia, Peru, northern Chile, and northern Argentina. The mountain in some part of central Andes are extremely high and wide, making transportation difficult. For example, to reach La Paz, Bolivia, the railroad must cross the mountain at an elevation of nearly 14,000 feet.
The southern Andes, at the tip of the continent in Argentina and Chile, are the lowest range. This is sparsely populated area.

Many of the people of who live in the Andes of Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador are the descendants of the ancient Incas and other Indians who inhabited the area before the Spanish conquest in the 16th century. Many of these people still speak an Indian tongue, such as Quechua. The Spanish languange is unknown to them.

The Andes act as a great barrier to transportation and communication. From the Caribbean Sea to the Strait of Magellan there are few passes through the mountains. Deep gaorges, step slopers, and towering heights make roads and railroads difficult and costly to build. Within recent years, however, the airplane and some modern highway have opened up areas that were previously cut off from the outside world.

Two major river system of south America the Amazon and the Arinoco begin in the Andes, High in the mountains beetwen Bolivia and Peru is Lake Titicaca. It is the largest lake in South America and the highest large lake in the world.

The climate in the Andes change with the elevation above sea level. At the lowest elevation, below 3,000 feet, the climate is tropical. Here are dense green jungles and rivers filled with crocodiles. This is called the tierra caliente, or “hot land”.
The climate is cooler from 3,000 feed to 7,000 feed. At 7,000 feet the cold land, or tierra fria, begins. Evergreen trees and wheat grow well at this elevation.

Between 10,000 feet and 13,000 feet is the puna. Only potatoes and barley and a few other hardly crops will grow on these high mountainsides. The top level, between the puna and the snowfields, is called paramo. Nothing grows here except mosses and lichens.

The mines of the Andean regions provide the world with many important minerals. Among them are cooper, tine, and proteleum. Gold and silver re mined is smaller amounts. The supply of coal is limited in most areas.

Many interesting animals live in the Andes. There are llamas, guanacos, alpacas, and vicunas – all members of the camel family. The chincilla is highly prized for its valuable fur. There is the fierce cougar, or mountain lion, and the small deer, or guemal. Tiny humming birds, brilliantly colored, dart about in the Andean forests. Soaring high above the towering, snowcapped Andes are the huge condors, the largest of the vultures. They are also the World’s largest flying birds.

The Amazon is South America’s most important river. A Spaniard named Francisco de Orellana made the firs explorations of theriver in 1541. The Amazon carries more water than the Mississippi, the Yangtze, and Nile together. In a single second Amazon pours more than 60,000,000 galons of water into the Atlantic Ocean. The muddy river stains the ocean brown for 200 miles. This tremendous flow is caused by heavy tropical rains and melting snow in the Andes mountains. The Amazon’s huge basin extends for about 2,700,000 square miles.

The Amazon is almost 4,000 miles long. It begins in the snow-fed Andean lakes of peru, 18,000 feet above sea level, and then flows eastward across the low paliants of Brazil. On its journey the Amazon gathers additional water from hundreds of rivers. The Negro, Madeira, Purus, and Jurua are majaor branches, each one is beetwen 1,000 and 2,000 miles in length.

The Amazon is only 200 feet above sea level at the Peru-Brazil border. It flows slowly on its lenghthy journey to the Atlantic. Sometimes the river is so wide that one cannot see the opposite shore. During the rainy season the flood water spread for miles over the jungle lowland. It is no wonder that the Amazon is sometimes called the River Sea.
Where the river empeties into the Atlantic Ocean a strange thing happens. Twice a day, when tide rises, 12-foot tidal waves called “bores” rush upstream. The current of river is reversed for as much as 400 miles.

Ocean-going ships can travel 1,700 miles up the Amazon from Belem, Brazil, at the river’s mouth. Smaller steamers can reach Iquitos, in Peru, 2,300 miles inland. Ships paa trought some of the most densely forested land in the world.