From moira@wcox.com Sun Jun 4 05:55:00 2000 Received: from mxu2.u.washington.edu (mxu2.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.9]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id FAA39168 for ; Sun, 4 Jun 2000 05:54:59 -0700 Received: from wcox.com (dns.wcox.com [204.144.138.10]) by mxu2.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id FAA27773 for ; Sun, 4 Jun 2000 05:54:59 -0700 Received: from wcox.com [204.144.138.114] by wcox.com with ESMTP (SMTPD32-6.00) id A19B2C750154; Sun, 04 Jun 2000 06:54:51 -0600 Message-ID: <393A50A8.AD556A8E@wcox.com> Date: Sun, 04 Jun 2000 06:50:48 -0600 From: Maire Lawry X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: semaphore References: <200006040337.WAA29529@darwin.helios.nd.edu> <393A416F.3B2B7E07@charm.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Nope, the "Rye-Oh" (not Ree-oh") they are referring to is the Rio Grande in the sea shanty, located near the mouth of the Parana. Remember that they are pretending to be sailors. The Swallows father is an officer int he Navy, so they probably know a good deal more about sea lore than Mr Kriman, and they are quite aware of the discrepancies in their imaginary plays. The only people I know who are avid Ransome fans are people who are involved in sailing and sailing history, so they understand the discrepancies too. mtlAwry Diana Wright wrote: > Alfred M Kriman wrote: > > > Maire Lowry wrote that the "SWALLOWS AND AMAZONS series" is > > > ... a series of children's books by Arthur Ransome, published in the > > > 1930's. > > > The stories involve a few groups of children who live and vacation in the > > > Lake District of England. The kids love sailing and everything nautical. > > > The first two groups are the Swallows (their boat is the Swallow), and the > > > Amazons (their boat is the Amazon, they pretend to live on the Amazon > > > River, near Rio). ... > > > > In view of the resurgent Gladiator thread, perhaps my captiousness > > will be excused: > > > > (1) "Rio" is presumably "Rio de Janeiro," located about 5000 km down > > the coast from the delta of the Amazon, and at least 700 km from the > > Amazon watershed. The "Rio" in its name stems from a mistaken initial > > identification of the entrance to Guanabara Bay. Okay, it's only a > > children's book series, but to repeat a tired refrain: what is gained > > by gratuitous inaccuracy? > > Not presuming to speak for Arthur Ransome, but I doubt that it was gratuitous. > He wrote from the viewpoint of his characters and it is barely possible that > they and I were not the only children having adventures on the Amazon who > thought Rio was there. > > "Only" a children's book series? Are any series more important? > > So glad Homer was not eliminated from the approved list because of his > geography. Why only last night I was reflecting on that overnight boat ride > from Ithaka to Pylos, and the jaunt from Pylos to Sparta. > > DW .