146 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
Hunts.— This name appears, as far as I can find, but once, and 
then upon the original plane-table sheet of the survey of this region 
by the United States Coast Survey, of which the island is reproduced 
(by permission of the Superintendent of the Survey) in Fig. 13. This 
name is entirely unknown locally for the island, and on inquiry of the 
Superintendent of the Coast Survey, I find that nothing is now known 
in the Survey office as to the reason for its adoption. Though the 
name is on the original manuscript sheet, it is not on the published 
map made from it (Fig. 4), and it has vanished completely. Two 
possible explanations occur for this name: — first, that it was intended 
to use the name de Monts given the island by the Coast Survey in 
1866, but that owing to imperfect memory of some person connected 
with the survey it was put down wrongly as Hunts, and, second, (and 
more probably) the name was transferred to it by mistake from a ledge 
on the northwest of the island which is locally often called Hunts 
ledge (Fig. 3). 
Met-a-neg-wis or Met-neg-wis (the a being sometimes sounded, 
sometimes not), the Passamaquoddy Indian name of the island. As 
to its exact form and significance, Mr. A. 8. Gatschet, of the United 
States Bureau of Ethnology, our best authority upon the Passama- 
quoddy language, writes me that he derives the name from Met-neqwis, 
meaning “the little island at the end” (met “at the end,” negwis, 
diminutive of m’niku, “island”), and he suggests that it may refer 
to the end of navigation. The great objection to this interpretation 
is in its inappropriateness; the island is by no means at the end of 
anything, but rather in the middle of the length and breadth of this 
estuary. There is, moreover, some evidence looking in another direc- 

been rebuilt, but the placesis still referred to as ‘‘ DeMonts” by the people of 
Calais and St. Stephen. It will be interesting for the future student of place- 
nomenclature to observe whether the name becomes persistent. 
It may here be noted incidentally that the supposition repeated by Kilby 
(Eastport and Passamaquoddy, page 126), and which has some local vogue, 
that Devils Head is a corruption of d’Orvilles (a companion of de Monts at 
St. Croix Island in 1604) Head, is a pure guess with absolutely no fact what- 
ever from historical documents or maps to support it. On the contrary, the 
word can be traced back in its present form through numerous maps and 
documents to 1770, when it appears in the Owen Journal spelled as now. 
All the probabilities, therefore, are in favour of the belief that this head, very 
prominent and somewhat treacherous to the sailor because of the squalls 
which sometimes sweep down from it, was named the “ Devils” precisely 
as innumerable other places in this region, of a somewhat uncanny nature, 
are named for him. Another origin, equally foundationless, for the word, is 
given locally, that it is for a man named Duval who once lived behind it. As 
above shown, the word goes back in its present form long prior to any settle- 
ment in this vicinity, which did not begin until after 1783. 
