[ganong] INDIAN PLACE-NOMENCLATURE 401 



Megantic. 



The name of a large Lake near the source of the Chaudière River in southern 

 Quebec; extended also to a Settlement, which is a Station on the Canadian Pacific 

 Railway. 



The earliest use of the name that I can find occurs in 1686 in the form MAMIS- 

 COUCANTE, applied to a stream and lake forming one of the sources of the Chaudière 

 River, on the great map of Acadia by Franquelin and De Meulles, still unpublished as a 

 whole (in the Paris Archives), but reproduced in part and described in these Trans- 

 actions, III, 1897, ii, 364. I find it next on the epochal Carte de la Partie Oriental 

 de la Nouvelle- France, of 1744, by Bellin, in Father Charlevoix's Histoire, where it is 

 applied distinctly to the lake in the form NANSAKANTI. On the historic Mitchell 

 map of 1755 it is AMAGUNTIC Pond, while it is AMMEGUNTIC in 1775, in the 

 account of Arnold's expedition against Quebec (Collections of the Maine Historical 

 Society, I, 508). The earliest use I have found of the present spelling is upon Green- 

 leaf's map of Maine, of 1815, though MEGANTICK is on the Montresor map of 

 about 1768 in the Library of Congress, from which form I suspect the MEGANTIC 

 of his published journal is misprinted (Collections of the Maine Historical Society, I 

 1865, 448.) 



While the prefixes, or first parts, of the three forms above cited appear to have 

 little in common, the latter parts are evidently identical, and seem clearly to involve 

 our familiar combination -KANTI, -CONTE, including in the third instance the 

 locative suffix -K. Thus part of the name would be -KANTI K, the precise 

 equivalent of the Micmac -KA'DI-K, earlier explained (page 377), meaning OCCUR- 

 RENCE-PLACE, with the secondary meaning of ABUNDANCE. This much 

 seems quite clear. As to the first part of the word, all analogy of other uses of 

 -KANTIK would lead us to expect that it involves the name, or an abbreviation 

 thereof, applied to some natural object, animal or plant, jirominent at that place. 

 Fully conformable to this idea is the explanation of the word published by Laurent, 

 himself an Abenaki, in his valuable little book. New Familiar Abenakis and English 

 Dialogues, 215, where it is made equivalent to NAMAKÔTTIK or NAMAGWÔT- 

 TIK, which word, since Laurent's O represents a nasal sound, we would write NAMA- 

 KONTIK or NAMAGWONTIK. He makes it mean LAKE TROUT PLACE, anH 

 elsewhere in his book (page 39) he gives NAMAGW as meaning SALMON TROUT, 

 a name often used for the LAKE TROUT. It is evidently the same word which 

 Father Rasle writes NAMÉG8 (Abnaki Dictionary, 510), the 8 representing the 

 sound 00 or OUI. The present Passamaquoddy Indians call the Lake Trout, or 

 Togue, NEMEK, as I am told by Mr. Chas. J. Rolfe of Princeton, Maine; and of 

 course the word is identical in roots with NAMAYCUSH, the well-known Canadian 

 Indian name for the same fish. Thus it seems very plain that the word is in reality 

 NAMAGW-KONTI-K, meaning literally LAKE TROUT-OCCURRENCE-PLACE. 

 This word, with the usual condensation of the two successive similar syllables GW- 

 KO into one, becomes NAMAGONTIK, which with the loss of the preliminary N 

 becomes AMAGONTIC, identical with AMAGUNTIC the predecessor of our 

 MEGANTIC. 



As to the appropriateness of the name to the place, viz., as to the occurrence and 

 prominence of the Lake Trout at Lake Megantic, I have not yet been able to obtain 

 satisfactory information, for no mention of the Lake seems to occur in works des- 

 criptive of the Lake Trout, and my repeated inquiries made locally by letter remain 

 unanswered. 



But what as to the earlier forms MAMISCOUCANTE and NANSAKANTI, 

 the most notable feature of which is the presence of the S ? This I take for a per- 



