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They wouldn’t work for a thousand dollars a day, but they would work for a ten-cent string of beads. They were very fond of jewelry, so the white men paid them with glass beads or with victrolas to amuse them. Shredded cocoanut is called copra and is used in various ways. The cocoanut oil is used for making soap and a sort of butter.
Ships and steamers seldom pass many of these islands, and only at a few of the largest do they ever stop. Many stories have been told of men who were shipwrecked on coral reefs where no one lived, and where they lived alone and waited for years before they saw a sail and were picked up.
Many of these islands are so small that they have no names. Some of the groups, however, are named. There are the Solomon Islands, named so because the discoverers expected to find the wealth of Solomon there; there are the Cook Islands, named after Captain Cook; there are the Fiji Islands, and there are the Samoan Islands, some of which belong to the United States.
One of the largest groups, called the Philippines, once belonged to the United States, but now is a free nation. The Philippines, however, are nearer China, and the natives are more nearly like the Chinese. Near the middle of the Pacific are the Hawaiian Islands, which still belong to the United States. In Hawaii are raised most of the pineapples we eat. Honolulu is the capital of Hawaii, and from Honolulu come some of the greatest swimmers. They spend much of their time in the water, and young boys and girls are able not only to swim like fish but to ride the waves standing on a board. The ukulele, which you probably have heard and seen, is a musical instrument with a Hawaiian name. When a visitor comes to Honolulu the Hawaiians throw garlands of flowers called lei over his head, and when the visitor leaves he throws the lei into the water so that he will return some day. There is one word the Hawaiians use very often; it is “Aloha.” It means “Hello, Welcome, Good-by, God bless you.”
Aloha!
