4 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



being clearly a mere anglicizing of tlie accented *' é" — received its name 

 from a French oflicei*. Lingan Bay, where the coal mines were well 

 known to the French settlers, is a vulgar form of l'Indienne. The 

 French also t^oftened the harsh Indian names of Nericka to Arichat, and of 

 Achepé to Aspé, and of Kami-ok to Canscau. The picturesque Bras d'Or, 

 whicli divides the island into two sections, is now approjtriatcly named the 

 Golden Arm, but on the oldest maps it is Labrador, which may have been 

 given by some settlers from Bradore Bay on the rugged, inhospitable 

 northeastern shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 



In the course of years, after the treaty of Utrecht, when the British 

 began to settle and occupy the country in earnest, British names 

 prevailed. Annapolis, Halifax. Windsor, Horton. Cornwallis. Cumberland, 

 Lawrencetown, Liverpool, Guysborough, Sydney, and hundreds of other 

 names attest the British sentiments of the later occu])ants of the 

 peninsula. Lunenburg is a memorial of the first Germ:in migration to 

 Malagash or Merligueche Bay. While French, English. Scotch, and 

 German peoples have in their turn linked their languages to all time 

 with the geography of the Acadian land, the tongue of the original 

 Indian natives, the Micmacs or Souriquois, a branch of the widespread 

 Algonquin family — whose lodges extended from Cape Breton to the far 

 west of Canada — is still perpetuated largely in the momcnclature of the 

 bays, harbours, rivers, and mountains of the beautiful country 

 which stretches from Chebogue or Jebogue Point on the west to Canseau 

 on the east, and from Arichat to Aspé. Acadie, the oldest name of Nova 

 Scotia, is a memorial of the original Micmac occupants. In the early 

 maps of Gastaldi, a distinguished Italian cartographer of the sixteenth 

 century, we see the name of •' Larcadia " spread over the country now 

 known as the Maritime Provinces of the Dominion, and other mapmakers 

 of the same or later time frequently call it Lacadia. It may be fairly 

 presumed, in the ab.sence of any other plausible or intelligent explanation, 

 that these two names are simply variations of the Micmac Kade, or 

 Akade, meaning a ])lace or locality, which the early Breton and other 

 French voyagers found in use on the Atlantic coast, in connection 

 with some striking natural feature, and which survives until the 

 present time in the names of Shubenacadie or Segubun-Akade, or 

 place of the ground-nut, and of Passamaquoddy or Pestumoquade, the 

 place of the pollock, and of many other localities in Nova Scotia noted for 

 some special natural i)roduetion. The Fi-ench were in the habit of 

 perpetuating these Indian names whenever they found them, as Canada, 

 Saguenay, and Kebec (Quebec) undoubtedly prove.' We find the first 

 official recognition of Acadie in the commission given b}' Henry IV. to 



^ Sec Bourinot's "Cape Breton, etc.," App. XIII., for illustrations of the use of 

 " Akade" by the Micmacs. 



