This is a series of children’s books from the Victorian Era about countries of the world by Favell Lee Mortimer, author of the children’s religious book The Peep of Day. This was originally meant to be non-fiction, but when you actually read it, you realize that it’s largely an extended opinion piece about people in others countries, and it’s not a favorable opinion. Because I run a review site for books, my posts have a lot of opinions, and I also have many opinions about Mrs. Mortimer . . . most of them not favorable, either. Originally, I wasn’t even going to do a page about this series, just make a few notes, like I did for Little Black Sambo to get the awkwardness over with quickly, but in the end, I decided that there was just too much to say about Mrs. Mortimer and her “Countries Described.” Where do I even start?

There’s Something Wrong with Every Country, and She Will Find It

First, let’s talk about the mood of these non-fiction books (keep in mind that they are non-fiction . . . of a sort, more about that later). Mrs. Mortimer’s writings about other countries and their people are vivid, compelling, and also somewhat disturbing in the way that they take frequent 180 degree turns from descriptions of beautiful scenery (although, for a land to be called a “fine land,” it really should have fine rivers, you know – more about that later, too) to dark mutterings and sharp rebukes about the habits of people in other countries, peppered liberally with warnings about criminals and dangerous characters. Beautiful rivers, for example, can have dead bodies floating in them because foreign cities are full of thieves and cut-throats. She warns children that those beautiful rivers may be better admired from afar, if they don’t want to see dead people. Charming.

You may think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not.  Over the course of this three-book series, Mrs. Mortimer has bad things to say about practically every country and group of people in the entire world and dire warnings of the dangers and “savages” that lurk throughout the world, and she says it all in a very matter-of-fact way with detailed descriptions of the people’s clothing and habits along with colorful anecdotes that explain terrible things that can happen abroad or people’s strange and ignorant habits, so the reader can picture these people vividly while, at the same time, knowing the worst about them.  I can’t say that I’ve ever read a study that suggests that giving these books to children contributed to racism and prejudice in the mid-19^th century, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it turned out to be true because that was my conclusion after reading selections from them. (It would probably be difficult to prove for sure, now, but I still strongly suspect it.) Mrs. Mortimer didn’t invent racism and stereotypes, but she’s pretty good at synthesizing it and making it accessible and appealing for the minds of children.

The descriptions of people in other countries aren’t wholly negative, but frequently in these books, positive comments are quickly followed by some kind of criticism or dire warning.  To demonstrate how this works, in one of her milder passages, Mrs. Mortimer explains how German women like to spend their time (as far as she knows):

The ladies are very industrious, and wherever they go, they take their knitting.  They are as fond of their knitting-needles as the gentlemen are of their pipes.  The number of stockings they make would surprise you.  How much better to knit than to smoke!  When they are at home, the ladies spend a great deal of time in cooking; they also spin, and have a great deal of linen of their own spinning, locked up in great chests.  Can they do nothing but knit, and cook, and spin?  Yes, they can play on the piano, and the harp, and sing very sweetly.  But they are not fond of reading useful books.  When they read, it is novels about people who have never lived.  It would be better to read nothing than such books.

Yep.  Very industrious, but by the way, their reading material is silly and useless.  Keep in mind that this is one of Mrs. Mortimer’s milder criticisms. (On a personal note, knitting and reading novels, especially children’s novels, are a large part of my free time, but I see it as having more to do with my personality than my German ancestry. I would also argue that being more widely read, even in fiction, isn’t useless because it can help a person to both recognize quality writing in a variety of styles and to understand situations and personalities beyond the ones the reader encounters in average daily life.  Mrs. Mortimer and I have vast, irreconcilable philosophical differences.)

Note: There were people in the 19^th century other than Mrs. Mortimer who disapproved of novels in general, believing that people should read only factual, improving books; that novels were a waste of time; and that reading fiction would give people wrong ideas. This is not an idea that Mrs. Mortimer invented.  Jane Austen poked fun at this sentiment in her novel, Northanger Abbey (1817). At one point in Northanger Abbey, Austen even notes that many heroines in novels of the time go out of their way to point out that they disapprove of novels in order to seem like superior people . . . as characters in a novel – irony.

Fine Lands Need Fine Rivers and Forests, and Not All of Them Count

Now, let’s talk about rivers. Mrs. Mortimer does. Mrs. Mortimer describes the landscapes of countries in some detail, not only painting a picture of the scene in the impressionable minds of her young readers but with a particularly scornful tone for those countries whose rivers and forests leave something to be desired. In just one example:

Australia is not so fine a land as Europe, because it has not so many fine rivers; and it is fine rivers that make a fine land. Most of the rivers in Australia do not deserve the name of rivers; they are more like a number of water-holes, and are often dried up in the summer; but there is one very fine, broad, long, deep river, called the Murray. It flows for twelve hundred miles. Were there several such rivers us [sic] the Murray, then Australia would be a fine land indeed.

I guess it’s just too bad that Australia’s rivers aren’t up to par for Mrs. Mortimer. She does follow that up with a short discussion about how mountains can influence rainfall, which isn’t bad, but it is a little weird how accusatory she can sound about things like this. Australia is far from her only target.

One of the things that really blew my mind in the book where she is describing the United States is the part where she talks about the Great Plains. Mrs. Mortimer wonders why there are no trees on the prairie. (She’s almost as concerned with fine forests as she is with fine rivers.) She says, “Yet it is supposed, that once the prairies were forests, but that wandering savages set fire to them, and consumed them.  Now they are desolate places.” What? Who supposes that? You don’t know because she doesn’t say. What were the fires for? Were they on purpose? She doesn’t say. This fascinating little tidbit has no citation (not in the edition I saw anyway), and Mrs. Mortimer swiftly moves on to the topic of birds, with no further explanation. After pondering whether or not Mrs. Mortimer just made this up, I did a little poking around on the Internet, and discovered that, after a fashion, this is a real theory, that humans may have changed the ecosystem through the use of fire (or that lightning strikes may have caused fires that impacted the forests, since the potential causes of ancient fires are uncertain). To hear Mrs. Mortimer describe it, it sounds like ancient Native Americans might have been firebugs, but when you hear the U.S. Forest Service describe it, it has more to do with slash-and-burn agriculture and the use of fire to control animal populations for hunting purposes:

Native Americans used fire for diverse purposes, ranging from cultivation of plants for food, medicine, and basketry to the extensive modification of landscapes for game management or travel (Pyne 1982; Anderson 2005; Abrams and Nowacki 2008). Although landscape-scale fire use ended with nomadic hunting practices, the smaller scale use of fire to promote various plant materials remains an integral component of traditional ecological knowledge in American Indian cultures (Anderson 2005).

The article discusses the general concept of the role of fire in changing landscapes, not focusing on the Great Plains, and notes that “the degree to which human-caused fires were agents of land-cover change is unknown because of the spatial and temporal limitations of paleological data.” Presentation matters, and it changes the story. If anyone is doing a research paper about research and presentation techniques and how improper presentation can lead to misinformation, this is the series for you!

Almost Nothing but the Truth

If you were wondering if Mrs. Mortimer just makes up things about people she doesn’t like just to say something bad, she apparently doesn’t. I say “apparently” because the sources are too haphazardly-documented (or frequently completely undocumented) to be sure exactly where she got much of the information she presents. While she was not widely traveled herself, it seems that she did do research to write these books, and she does cite at least some of her sources (not in all the books I’ve seen, and not in all places, but in the edition of Near Home I saw on Internet Archive, she has footnotes for various anecdotes, which seem to be from traveling missionaries). To figure out, point by point, if she’s telling the truth, you have to do your own fact-checking.

One thing I did appreciate that Mrs. Mortimer got right and explained fairly well, given that archaeology was a relatively new and evolving profession at the time, was that the Pyramids in Egypt were meant to be tombs, not granaries. I looked for that section specifically because people who use religious sources instead of specialized, scholarly ones sometimes get that wrong because they get too hung up on the story of Joseph and leap to the wrong conclusion, partly based on the assumptions of Medieval travelers from Europe, when they first encountered the Pyramids and guessed at what they were. If you study history at all today, you know that notion was proven wrong centuries ago. In spite of Mrs. Mortimer’s apparent reliance on the descriptions of missionaries, she understands what the pyramids are.

For some basic, dry facts, she’s not too bad, although there are some things she gets inexplicably wrong. For example, she says at one point that there are no rivers in Denmark. There is a list of the rivers in Denmark on Wikipedia now. I’m not sure why she doesn’t think they exist. Then again, it might just be another one of her slights, that she thinks that the quality of the rivers in Denmark are not up to her exacting standards, so they shouldn’t qualify as rivers in her opinion. It’s hard to tell.

Cultural context is usually where she is most off base, and therein lies a major problem. Mrs. Mortimer’s writing style is calculated to teach children not just about the world as it is but how she wants the children to look at it with warnings that imply the dangers of doing otherwise. I wouldn’t call Mrs. Mortimer confusing, but there are some definitely wrong impressions being imparted, and the worst part is that much of it intentional.

Carefully Curated Cultural Stereotypes

There is a section in Near Home where she compares different countries to each other. In modern books about countries around the world, this section would be where the different countries’ statistics are located – things like population numbers, GDP, major exports, etc. Mrs. Mortimer starts with something of the sort, but she has absolutely no numbers to back anything up. In the part labeled “REMARKS ON THE CHIEF TOWNS, OR CAPITALS, OF EUROPE”, she just lists cities, saying which has the largest population or is the “busiest”, and there are no numbers or any further information to support any of it:

“London contains the most people.
Christiana contains the fewest people.”

“London is the busiest chief city in Europe.
Copenhagen is the least busy.”

“Paris has the most museums of any city in Europe.
Rome has the most pictures.”

What does “busiest”even mean in this context? Is it about industry and production? Exports? Traffic? No numbers at all, just comments and random observations. It gets weirder as you go along, still with nothing to explain anything.

“In Madrid there is a great deal of dust.
In Amsterdam there is very bad water.
In London there is a great deal of smoke.
In Constantinople there are many troops of troublesome dogs.”

I’ll admit that I understood the part about London’s smoke because London’s famous fogs were partly produced by industrial air pollution and coal fires. (Maybe that’s what they’re “busy” doing?) Some of these other “facts” might also be based on something, but with so little information, it’s hard to tell.

There’s a section a little further along called “THE COUNTRIES OF EUROPE COMPARED TOGETHER”, and Mrs. Mortimer has a note that says, “It is not intended that this chapter should he learnt by heart, but that it should furnish matter for questions that might entertain some children.” Basically, on some level, she’s acknowledging that this section is more for entertainment purposes than informative purposes. Most of it is opinion and random observations with no basis provided. Like the previous sections comparing countries and cities in Europe, there are no stats of any kind, and parts of it read like a laundry list of stereotypes about different countries:

“The Irish have warm manners.
The Scotch have cold manners.
The French have polite manners.
The English have blunt manners.”

“Greek women are handsome.
French women are witty.
Scotch women are sensible.
Welsh women are notable. (She doesn’t say what they’re “notable” for.)
Dutch women are neat.
English women are modest.”

“The gayest nation in Europe are the French. (“Gay” in the sense of “happy.”)
The gravest nation are the Dutch.
The most industrious nation are the Germans.
The idlest nation are the Portuguese.
The cleanest nation are the Dutch.
The dirtiest nation are the Poles.
The simplest nation are the Icelanders. (I’m not sure in what sense she means “simple.”)
The most cunning are the Italians. (“Cunning” could be good or bad, depending how she means it.)”

As I was reading through all of this, I started wondering if Mrs. Mortimer actually invented some of these stereotypes herself and spread word of them through her books. Is this their possible origin story? Actually, I think she’s probably drawing on rumor and gossip she heard elsewhere and is just passing it along in the dressing of fact, which is no better, but I still think that she may have helped popularize some of these concepts among the youth of her time through her books, teaching them to regard opinion and gossip as truth itself because that’s the way she presents it.

There are parts here that are simply not true at all and can be easily disproved:

“In Denmark, there are no rivers. (I already covered that one.)
In Wales, there are no lakes. (Yes, there are.)
In Holland, there are no mountains. (The Netherlands are pretty flat, and their mountains aren’t as high as other places, but that’s still not completely accurate.)
In Iceland, there are no forests. (More accurate than the other statements because Iceland has gone through periods of deforestation, but it does require more explanation.)”

Other parts here are somewhat informative but maybe not in the way that Mrs. Mortimer intended. I learned that she either really liked Parmesan cheese or that she at least accepted it as fact that it’s the “best” cheese: “The best cheese (called Parmesan) comes from Italy.” (It’s a matter of opinion. What’s “best” partly depends on how you want to use it.) More interestingly, I also learned that, while these books were written before the word “bunk bed” came into common use, the concept of a bunk bed did exist during this time because Mrs. Mortimer describes one: “In Sweden they sleep on shelves, placed one over the other: the women sleep on the lower shelf, and the men sleep on the shelf above, to which they climb by a ladder.” Would she be surprised if she saw the bunk beds at a modern Ikea, or would it just confirm to her exactly what she thought about Sweden? Actually, rather than referring to a freestanding bunk bed, she might really be referring to a multilevel box bed, the type of bunks that are built into the wall. They not only save space, but they also help preserve warmth and privacy, but Mrs. Mortimer rarely considers why people do the things they do or that they might have good reasons.

Seriously, Mrs. Mortimer’s lack of detailed, verifiable information and her constant use of opinions as statements of fact are troubling, and if the children who originally read these books hadn’t all died before I was even born, I’d be worried about what they were getting out of these books.

Mrs. Mortimer’s Agenda and Tactics

We live in an age where people have lost confidence in facts, and part of the reason, I would argue, is people who are exactly like Mrs. Mortimer. Her methods are more insidious than outright lying, and the sad fact is that she doesn’t need to directly lie to accomplish her goals. I’ve seen people who do exactly what she does in modern times, both in writing and speaking, and in a way, her techniques and the reactions she elicits (and was trying to elicit in the first place) are timeless. The root of her technique is not in what she says as much as how she says it.

Her style is engaging and appealing in a number of ways. For example, there’s the frequent use of the word “we” to try to pull the reader in, like seeing these countries is an experience that the reader is sharing with the author. “We” also subtly reinforces that the reader should feel the same way the author does about what they’re seeing. Sometimes, the author also refers to the reader as “you,” giving the book a personal, conversational tone. Add a little well-aimed criticism in a way that will appeal to your audience, and you provoke similar scorn in the reader and maybe even a touch of humor for those who like mean jokes that poke fun at people who are different. Then, even in spite of detailed accounts of clothing and incidents witnessed in different countries by tourists, Mrs. Mortimer does what’s necessary to make sure that the reader doesn’t empathize with or fully understand the people and places she describes: she leaves things out. Besides that cloyingly evocative tone Mrs. Mortimer has, she has a way of not putting things into context. The books are full of information but without the historical and cultural context that would make it all make sense.

Mrs. Mortimer randomly throws out commentary on the habits of people living in far-off countries, then says something about how strange/ignorant/wicked the people are (or how disappointing/nonexistent their rivers and forests are), and swiftly moves on without further explanation. As far as she’s concerned, ignorance and wickedness are the only necessary explanations, and no further explanation is necessary. Sometimes, she recounts a story to illustrate the wickedness, ignorance, or bad habits of all the people in a country – one story, about one incident, mind you, that somebody (who isn’t always identified) said that they witnessed at some point in this location – magnifying it to attribute it to the entire group of people. For example, if someone witnesses one child in a particular country crying or having a tantrum, the conclusion is that all children in that country are badly behaved and spoiled by their parents. The initial story may not be a direct lie (assuming that the source of her information didn’t make it up), but I would call it lying by omission or lying by exaggeration. Mrs. Mortimer omits the context of the incident and exaggerates the rest out of proportion. Some of it may be due to poor skill at explaining on the part of Mrs. Mortimer, some due to to her own misinformed prejudice, and some possibly due to her belief that her child audience wouldn’t understand the more complex contexts of other countries, but I believe that a lot of it was fully intentional, so that she could cast it all into the context that she wanted to set for it. Mrs. Mortimer isn’t too bad at explaining the things she really wants to explain. Mrs. Mortimer has an agenda beyond teaching kids about the world.

Mrs. Mortimer’s opinions about the “savages” and “heathens” of the world aren’t really worth repeating. Generally, as far as she’s concerned, they live practically everywhere, and their habits are really weird. The racism and prejudice are blatant, and Mrs. Mortimer speaks for herself, not at all shy about her opinions. Religion is a major issue with her (in many ways, it is the major issue), and she flatly states that the best religion is “the Protestant.” (Yes, that’s how she says it, like there’s only one. She was originally raised as a Quaker and later became Evangelical. This is where she is coming from, and she has zero patience for anyone not heading in the same direction.) She has many bad things to say about every religion that is not “the Protestant,” and she knows which countries and regions are not “the Protestant.” If you read any of these books, they’re pretty self-explanatory, and the messages repeat throughout, so you can’t miss them. (“I have told you that it is not a true religion . . .” – from the section about Roman Catholics in France.)

Frequently, Mrs. Mortimer is trying to promote her religious agenda, the one that always comes first in all of her criticisms, in intensity if not in direct order. (I’ve noticed that she has kind of a hierarchy of criticisms that she falls back on, but I’ll get to that in a minute.) Traditional dances from a variety of places around the world are described as being similar to “antics” of “demons” and are accompanied by yells and “strange noises.” She doesn’t say what they sound like exactly or what the purpose of the dancing is, if she has any clue about that herself. Basically, she says it’s something that these “savages” like to do. (You know, fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, “savages” gotta . . . I don’t know, dance or “antic” or something. Yeah, that’s my critical humor there, but you earned it, Mrs. Mortimer.) It’s not important to Mrs. Mortimer what the cultural significance of these dances might be. The point of this is that these people, who are not “the Protestant,” are weird. Really weird. That’s basically her opinion, so she doesn’t bother to dig any deeper.

Part of the problem with Mrs. Mortimer is that she has a definite mindset and points that she wants to make, and she frequently states her opinions as facts to convince her young readers to take the same dim view that she has of other people, giving false impressions. I don’t doubt that Mrs. Mortimer wanted to teach children about people around the world, but the message is severely compromised by her need to make sure that the children know that foreign “savages” and people of other religions are strange, ignorant, and wrong, which keeps her from delving deeper into her subject and actually coming to understand the cultures and variations of human behavior throughout the world. However, I think that there is something even more to it than that, which I will come to in my closing points.

On the up side of author’s harsh opinions, Mrs. Mortimer thinks that it is terrible and “wicked” that black people of her time are enslaved and mistreated in the United States simply because they are black. In her words: “It is painful to see the manner in which many worthless whites behave to many harmless blacks.”  She recounts an incident of a big white boy kicking a young black boy in New York as an example to illustrate the point.  This is about as sympathetic toward other races as Mrs. Mortimer gets, and this is one instance where I fully agree with her assessment of the situation, but yet, I get the feeling that she enjoys jeering at the “worthless whites” more than defending the black people. If you read the sections she wrote about Africa, she certainly doesn’t think highly of the black people who live there. Part of my theory is that she likes the slaves better because they’ve been Christianized. Remember, religion is one of her hot-button issues. “There is one reason why we should desire to hear about Abyssinia.  It is the only Christian kingdom in Africa. … But what sort of Christianity is found in Abyssinia?  A Christianity very unlike the religion that Christ taught.” Mrs. Mortimer is never satisfied, and in a way, that seems to be a source of satisfaction for her.

The Need to Be Negative

This brings me to my final conclusion about Mrs. Mortimer and her series: Being critical of somebody, somewhere, for some reason is a major part of these books. If people are not “the Protestant”, Mrs. Mortimer has something definite to criticize that supports one of her primary agendas. If they are “the Protestant”, she might still find evidence that they have criminals living in their country somewhere, or they might use alcohol or tobacco or maybe they’re lazy or spoil their children or beat their children or encourage their children to act too grown-up and clever or read silly novels or dress in clothes that are too nice and promote vanity. There are big things to criticize. There are small things to criticize. There’s bound to be something worth telling people off for, and even if it isn’t really worth it, you can do it anyway! (“In most countries mothers take delight in dressing their children fine – indeed too fine – thus making the little creatures vain and trifling . . .” – from the section about Egypt – she says the Egyptians don’t do that while at the same time criticizing their reasons for not doing so – double bonus!)

I think that’s what Mrs. Mortimer really gets a kick out of doing, finding something to be righteously critical about. I did appreciate that criticizing slavery was one time when Mrs. Mortimer found something really worth criticizing. I’m not opposed to all criticism; it’s just that it isn’t helpful when the act of being critical appears to be the goal by itself, which I think covers most of Mrs. Mortimer’s criticism. The lengths that Mrs. Mortimer goes to in order to achieve this goal are both disturbing and oddly hilarious, once you begin to catch on to her thought patterns. She might go on at length, describing geography and scenery or the clothes or food of a particular place, but if she hasn’t dished out some criticism yet, rest assured, she will:

“When the other countries of Europe were filled with savages, then Greece was filled with clever men.  When our dear old England was covered with forests; haunted by bears and wolves, wild bulls and boars; inhabited by people with painted skins; then – then – what was to be seen in Greece? All that was grand and beautiful: – kings and armies, ships and palaces, pictures and statues, temples and cities, gardens and groves.  But now, what is England? and what is Greece?  The Greeks are not savages, but they are not so wise as the English.“

After awhile, you stop being surprised at the insults that spring up suddenly in the middle of a description or after praise of a country’s accomplishments or the temperaments of the people and find yourself just waiting for what you know is coming. She isn’t even particularly kind to her native England, picking at the bad habits of its people and sometimes comparing aspects of life there unfavorably compared to other counties. (“The Dutch children do not make as much noise at school as our children do.” A hint to the English children reading this, perhaps?)

I would like to add one more quote from Mrs. Mortimer, from her section about the people of Egypt:

“The worst quality in any character is hypocrisy, and this is to be found in the Egyptian. In Egypt it is thought a credit to be religious, therefore every one [sic] tries to appear to be so.  … The name of God is used upon every trifling occasion.  … People seem to think that they may do any wicked actions they please, if they only just say, ‘I beg forgiveness of God.’  A man will speak without shame of the lies he has told, and then just add, ‘I beg forgiveness of God,’ as if God was too merciful to punish his sins.”

Be careful, Mrs. Mortimer. Your house is made of more glass than you realize.

Mrs. Mortimer and Her Books

Part of the reason why I wanted to discuss this series of books is that its existence helps support a couple of my pet theories about children’s literature: that the books we give children are a reflection of the times and circumstances in which we live and that the books children read help to shape their minds, their attitudes, and the future that they create for themselves and their children. If you’ve ever wondered how whole generations of children (or significant portions of them) can grow up with contempt for people from different countries or different religions, it can help to take a look at what they read as children and the people who gave them these books.

There is a modern compilation of Mrs. Mortimer’s Countries Described books (abridged) meant as a humor book for adults called The Clumsiest People in Europe, or, Mrs. Mortimer’s Bad-Tempered Guide to the Victorian World by Todd Pruzan. The second part of that title is pretty accurate. Parts are bizarrely funny for their exaggerations of the foibles of the world, lots are rudely offensive, and the horrific realization that both of these aspects were probably completely lost on the books’ original, intended audience of innocent, impressionable Victorian children makes it quite an emotional roller-coaster. The author/compiler of this book also includes some helpful contextual information about the countries being described, including information about what was happening there around the time that Mrs. Mortimer was writing her books. In other words, the kind of contextual information that Mrs. Mortimer really should have included but didn’t. cThe introduction to this compilation book also gives a brief biography of Favell Lee Mortimer and descriptions of her other works in children’s literature. 

Favell Lee Mortimer (nee Bevan) was born into a banking family. Her father, David Bevan, was one of the co-founders of what is now Barclays. Mrs. Mortimer is best known as the author of children’s religious classic The Peep of Day (this book was referenced in Anne of Green Gables when Marilla gives Anne a copy to study as part of her religious education – parts of that book are also terrifying, but in different ways) and Reading Without Tears (Winston Churchill read this as a child and later declared that the title was a misnomer) as well as the inventor of flashcards as part of her Reading Disentangled.  Yes, she really is considered the inventor of flashcards as an educational tool, and I do appreciate her attention to phonics as a reading technique.

If you really want to know what this series is like, Pruzan’s book is the least painful way of finding out. It is currently available online through Internet Archive.  Just, please, don’t show it to children. If you would prefer to read the unabridged original books, they are all public domain now and available online. This page lists places where you can read them online (some in different languages), or you can follow my links below.

Books in the Series:

Near Home; Or, the Countries of Europe Described (1849)

As the title says, this book focuses on European countries. It is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Far Off; Or, Asia and Australia Described (1852)

This volume also covers the Middle East. It is currently available online through Project Gutenberg.

Far Off, Part 2; Africa and America Described (1854)

This edition of the book, on Internet Archive, has an expanded section about Australia and also covers New Zealand and South America.