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over which once roamed countless herds of buffalo and the race of 

 the red-skin. This formation, it is needless to say, is still going 

 on, though one could wish that a people speaking our own tongue, 

 and spnmg from our own stock, had made choicer selections in 

 naming new settlements than they have done in many instances : 

 Smithvilles, Jonesvilles, and Brownsvilles are numerous. Most of 

 the States have their Thebes, Cairo, Athens, Troy, Rome, &c. 

 Russel, in his diary of North and South, describes one of the 

 "Corinths" as "consisting of a wooden grog-shop and three log- 

 shanties;" while he found the Acropolis represented by a "grocery 

 store ;" and all that can be seen of the City of Troy is "a timber 

 house, three log -huts, a saw-mill, and twenty negroes." 



It was my intention to touch upon the place-names of that still 

 newer world, which is so fast rising into importance at our 

 Antipodes, by a process similar to that which has been done with 

 the map of the Americas. Similar results could have been 

 obtained, but time at present forbids; besides, those who feel 

 sufficiently interested in the matter, can work out the subject for 

 themselves by reading the Voyages of the Early Navigators — 

 Tasman, Dampier, Cook, Carteret, &c., aided by a good modern 

 Gazetteer and Maps. 



The investigation of the earliest European place-names is 

 beset by considerable difficulties ; in some instances the languages 

 from which they are derived have passed away; in others they have 

 become so much corrupted as to make the attempt to explain them 

 satisfactorily little better than guess-work. Still, a great deal has 

 been done in recent times to unravel their significance, especially 

 by the German philologists who are now being closely followed by 

 some of our English scholars. In order to follow such authorities, 

 some knowledge of the present state of philological science will 

 be necessary. ... I will condense into as small a space as 

 possible the leading principles of Philology which bear upon 

 Nomenclature. It has been shown beyond dispute, that the 

 present existing languages of Europe — the Turkish, Basque, Finn, 

 and Lapp excepted — are closely akin to each other. They form, 

 together with the Indianic and Persian, one family, known as the 



