. How we are sheltered; a geographical reader . nearly every city there are long rows ofbrick buildings. Some of these are dwellinghouses occupied by a single family, some aretenement houses .in which many families live,while others are hotels or business houses manystories high. Here by the roadside is some damp clay. Itclings to our shoes. See how the wheels of thewagons roll it up as they pass along. Take a bitof it in your hand; you can mold it into anyform you wish. It is from material such as thisthat the brick for our buildings is made. Thousands of years ago the people of Egypt,Assyria
. How we are sheltered; a geographical reader . nearly every city there are long rows ofbrick buildings. Some of these are dwellinghouses occupied by a single family, some aretenement houses .in which many families live,while others are hotels or business houses manystories high. Here by the roadside is some damp clay. Itclings to our shoes. See how the wheels of thewagons roll it up as they pass along. Take a bitof it in your hand; you can mold it into anyform you wish. It is from material such as thisthat the brick for our buildings is made. Thousands of years ago the people of Egypt,Assyria, Babylonia, and other eastern countries,molded clay into bricks and dried them in the sun-shine. Bits of grass or straw were mixed withthe clay to bind the particles together. Therewas little timber in these countries, but therewas plenty of clay. The climate is so dry that 110 HOW BRICKS ARE MADE 111 some of those ancient bricks have been preservedto this day. In Mexico, Arizona, Cahfornia, and otherparts of the West, there are many dwelHngs. Fig. 46.—An Adobe House. made of sun-dried bricks. Such homes are calledadohe houses. Most of them were built whenlumber was more difficult to obtain than it isto-day, but many of them are still inhabited. Most bricks are now made by machinery. Inorder to understand how the work is done we 112 HOW WE ARE SHELTERED will visit a brickyard. The process is carriedon in somewhat different ways in different places,yet it varies little throughout the world. As we approach the brickyard we see severaltall chimneys rising above long, low sheds. Wesee men and boys moving to and fro, carts drawnby single horses, and as we come nearer we hearthe sound of machinery. Here men are plowing. This loosens the clayso that it can be taken up in scrapers. We followone of the scraper loads of clay to the foot of aninclined plane on which there is a track. Abridge is built over the track at the lower beneath a hole in the middle of thebridge is
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