292 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



As to its corruption, it is not without significance that I have heard it called locally 

 PORTLOGAN, which Father Pacifique, in a letter, writes POTLOGAN. 



POCUMCUS. The name of a small lake on the Scoodic, or West Branch of 

 Saint Croix, chain in Maine. It appeared first in this form on a boundary map, 

 from survey, in 1797 (these Transactions, VII, 1901, ii, 254); it is marked upon Wil- 

 kinson's map of 1859 as POKOMPKUS, though later Maine Maps have the older 

 form. One's first thought must be that this POC, or POK, if not POKW meaning 

 SHALLOW must be PÔK or POOK meaning NARROW; and this was the idea of 

 the late A. S. Gatschet, who in a letter to me in 1898 made the word PUKAMKÉS'K, 

 from PUK meaning A NARROWS or THOROUGHFARE, and AMKÉS meaning 

 A LITTLE SANDY (or GRAVELLY) SPOT. A partially similar explanation was 

 given by L. L. Hubbard for the obviously identical part POKUMKES of POKUM- 

 KESWAGAMOKSIS, next mentioned (Woods and Lakes of Maine, 209), though he 

 makes the POKUM (which should read POGUMK) mean DRY SAND, evidently 

 influenced by that usage in Micmac, as shown by his citation from Rand. Both 

 Gatschet's and Hubbard's explanations, however, are purely speculative and made 

 without any reference to any known characteristics of the places, though it happens 

 to be a fact that Pocumcus Lake has a sand bar where it joins Grand Lake, as men- 

 tioned in the Seventh Report. . . .Maine Board of Agriculture 1862, 303. On the 

 other hand, they ignore a very remarkable and unusual geographical peculiarity which 

 both lakes possess in common, namely, their principal inlets and their outlets lie 

 close together, with nearly the entire lake extending off from the line between them, 

 much as a bag hangs from its gathering strings. Furthermore, there is a little Pond, 

 called COMPASS Pond, marked on Hubbard's map, on a small stream emptying 

 into the west Branch of Penobscot a little above Pemadumcook Lake; and this Pond 

 displays the same characteristic as Pokumpcus and Pokumkeswagamoksis, though 

 in somewhat less marked degree. The resemblance in name and unusual geographi- 

 cal relations points to identity of name in all three cases, COMPASS being a wholly 

 probable simplification and familiarization of POCUMCUS. Thus is suggested a 

 derivation from the name of some object having a form or structure comparable with 

 the geographical peculiarity here presented. Such lakes are sometimes called 

 "Pocket Lakes" in New Brunswick (there is a good one just above Big Lake on the 

 Little Southwest Miramichi), and I sought a word in "pocket," "bag," etc., without 

 success, until finally in Rand's Micmac- English Dictionary, 142, I found the word 

 POOGOOGUMAOO, as meaning the STOMACH or PAUNCH. I have not been 

 able to find, as yet, the exact Maliseet or Penobscot equivalent of this word; but the 

 relationship of Micmac to these tongues is sufficiently close to make me feel certain 

 that a similar word exists in them. As everyone will recognize, the resemblance in 

 form between the outlines of these lakes, and the profile of the paunch of an herbiv- 

 orous animal like a Moose or a Deer, with the inlet gullet and outlet intestine not 

 far apart and the main stomach bulging off to one side, is very close, — so close indeed 

 as to leave in my mind little question as to the correctness of this explanation of the 

 word. I have no doubt, accordingly, that POCUMCUS, POKUMKES, and COM- 

 PASS, all represent corruptions of the Penobscot equivalent of the Micmac POO- 

 GOOGUMAOO, meaning PAUNCH, together with the remains of some old suffix 

 meaning POND (perhaps an extreme condensation of GAMOOKSIS, meaning 

 LITTLE LAKE) giving to the entire word the significance of LITTLE LAKE, or 

 POND. Thus the name would mean PAUNCH-SHAPED POND. 



It is likely that the root POOG in POOGOOGUMAOO is really POOK, meaning 

 NARROW, in allusion to the narrowing where gullet and intestine join the paunch, 



