Transactions. 135 
In marked contrast to this is the poverty of inventive faculty 
evinced by the earlier settlers in America, who were not savages 
but civilised men, yet a large proportion of the names given by 
them to places are thoroughly barbarous in character, and for 
the most part utterly imappropriate, and accomplish very 
insufficiently the purpose which names are intended to fulfil. 
Such names as Salem, Bethel, Athens, Troy, Rome, London, 
Paris, Corinth, and the like, are scattered broadcast throughout 
the length and breadth of the land, and by their endless repeti- 
tions must be a source of great perplexity in the post-office, 
booking office, and schoolroom. Much may be said in favour of 
the names whereby the Colonists have striven to reproduce in a 
land of exile, the names of the beloved spots which they had left. 
I was much struck with this, when a few years ago I passed 
through that part of Canada lying between the lakes Huron and 
Erie, and generally known as the Huron tract. The Colonists of 
that district being chiefly from the South of Scotland, the familiar 
Galloway names were everywhere to be met with, and though 
many of them were inappropriate in such a level country, yet on 
account of their being given in memory of the old homesteads 
they were excusable. Not so, however, the intolerable presump- 
tion displayed by those who have ruthlessly seized upon the 
grand historic names of the old world, and applied them by the 
score to a limited number of wooden houses, a sawmill, grocery, 
and grog stores, which go far to make up a city in a Western 
forest. But from this digression to return to Galloway. A very 
important point in ascertaining the meaning of topographical 
words is to discover their ancient spelling. As the greater 
number of these had been spoken for ages before they were 
written, and when they came to be written the manner of 
spelling would in a great measure depend on the accent of 
the speaker and the ear of the writer, which accounts for 
the diversity that often appears in spelling the same word, 
though it may be nearly at the same date. I have now before 
me the Valuation Roll of the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, 
retoured to Exchequer, 15th July, 1642. The spelling used in it 
makes plain the meaning of many words which modern spelling 
has almost completely obscured. Words being like coins, they 
get clipped and worn by constant use, until the legend which 
they bore at first becomes almost effaced. The several races who 
at different times held sway in Galloway, namely, the Caledonian 
