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ORGAN IZ 

 KNOWLEDG 



AND X PICTURE 



other letters in the Phoenician alphabet, yod was a consonant, but approached a vowel 

 sound; and the Greeks, when they took it over, made of it a vowel with the e sound. 

 They also straightened it out into its present form. In Latin the letter kept the same 

 sound as in Greek, but the Romans perceived that in certain words, as in the name 

 lulius, it had really the force of a consonant, and later writers adopted a slightly different 

 form for the letter in its consonant use. From this, modified 7 came the modern J. 



The vowel i has four main sounds. Long i, as it is called, is the sound heard in the 

 word ice. It is in reality a diphthong, rather than a single sound, for it is made up of 

 the sound of a in father and of i in it. The two are so closely blended, however, that the 

 combination is a difficult one for many foreigners to acquire. Short i is heard in stick; 

 and the other common sound is that found in first. The fourth sound is that which is 

 most common in all languages of the Continent but very uncommon in English words, 

 except those adopted from foreign languages the one heard in machine. In its consonant 

 value, i is found in such v/ords as genius. 



The Hebrew letter which corresponded to the Phoenician yod bore the same name, and 

 as it was the smallest of all the letters its name came to be use figuratively to denote 

 anything very small. The English word jot is derived from it. 



IBERIA, ibe'ria, the ancient name of the 

 peninsula now comprising Spain and Portugal. 

 The Iberians, probably the most ancient of all 

 European races, inhabited the regions watered 

 by the river Iberus, now called the Ebro. The 

 Basques are direct descendants of the Iberians, 

 whose language they retain in part, and the 

 population of Italy, Spain and Portugal con- 

 tains a large admixture of Iberian blood. The 

 race was characterized by long heads and short 

 stature. It spread over large areas of Europe 

 and even as far north as Scotland, the Picts 

 having been identified as of Iberian descent. 

 The term Iberia is still frequently used with 

 reference to Spain and Portugal, especially in 

 literature, the expression Iberian peninsula 

 being quite common. 



IBERVILLE, eberveel', PIERRE LE MOYNE, 

 Sieur d' (1661-1706), a French-Canadian soldier, 

 naval commander, explorer and founder of the 



province of Louisiana, which became the Ameri- 

 can state of the same name. In 1698 he sailed 

 with two ships from France to found a colony 

 at the mouth of the Mississippi River, as La 

 Salle had attempted to do, and in 1699 entered 

 Mobile Bay. Leaving his fleet, he set off with 

 a party in small boats in search of the great 

 river. He went up the Mississippi until he 

 came to an Indian village, where the chief gave 

 him a letter which Tonty, thirteen years before, 

 when in search of La Salle, had written and 

 left in the crotch of a tree. Thus he knew he 

 was on the Mississippi. But, seeing no spot 

 there available for the site of a city, he led his 

 colony to Biloxi Bay and founded Biloxi, after- 

 wards called Mobile, thus fulfilling LaSalle's 

 dream of founding a French colony on the Gulf 

 of Mexico (see LOUISIANA, subhead History). 

 See, also, LA SALLE, RENE-ROBERT; Tovn. 

 HENRY DE. 



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