its cost. The diamond-cutting industry
is confined chiefly to Amsterdam, where the work employs several
thousand persons, mostly Hebrews, the craft having been handed down from
father to son through several generations. Much fine cutting is now done
in New York also.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: The term pan is a name applied to a basin or pool in which
water collects during the rainy season.]

[Footnote 5: Fontein is a word of Dutch origin meaning fountain or
spring. In this hot and semi-arid country a pan or fontein was a
necessity to the Boer farmer, whose chief dependence was on his sheep
and cattle. Hence he was wont to settle near where water could be easily
obtained.]

PART II

OCEANIA

CHAPTER XXII

THE ISLANDS OF THE PACIFIC

Not until four hundred years ago did the body of water now named the
Pacific Ocean become known to the people of Europe.

A vague knowledge of a sea that washed the eastern shores of Cathay, or
China, was gained from the reports of the famous Venetian traveller,
Marco Polo. After spending several years in the Orient, Polo returned
home in 1295, giving such marvellous accounts of the countries visited
and things seen that his stories were but half believed.

In 1531, Balboa, a Spanish explorer stationed at Darien, now Colon,
hearing rumors that a great ocean lay to the opposite side, determined
to test the truth of the report. Taking with him about three hundred
men, he laboriously worked his way through the jungles of the isthmus;
and on reaching the top of the divide beheld for the first time the
Pacific Ocean. He then hastened forward, and as he reached the shore he
waded into the water and took possession of it in the name of his
sovereign. He named it the South Sea.

But the vast extent of this sheet of water did not become well known
until fifty years later, when brave Ferdinand Magellan circumnavigated
the globe. Two and one-half centuries more elapsed before the memorable
voyages and discoveries of Captain Cook disclosed the fact that the new
ocean world was studded with countless islands, and that most of them
were densely inhabited by savages.

Just how or when all these islands became inhabited is not definitely
known. Since the Polynesian languages in general are similar, it is
conjectured that the inhabitants of the islands have a common origin and
that many of the more northerly groups were peopled by emigrants from
the south.

In a general way the nam