MALDIVES

This lovely card shows two of the 800 islands of the Maldives, as well as the traditional boats and pirogues that are used for inter-island transport; the card was franked with a floral stamp showing a rose

PANAMA

This card comes from the Pacific coast of Panama,and shows a fishing village. Part of Colombia until 1903, Panama became independent with help from the U.S. The canal was finished in 1914, and shipping has been a mainstay of the economy, alongside banking.

MAURITANIA

This amazing card show a caravan of dromedary camels in the Sahara beyond the capital, Nouakchott. The domestication of this species by humans several thousand years ago is widely thought to have allowed expansion of human settlements into desert areas otherwise too forbidding.