l6o BROOMALL : 



cial side of navigation cultivated in the South while the Nor- 

 therner was still a pirate or a freebooter. 



This supremacy of the South Europeans in commerce, by 

 which the products of the newly discovered countries of the 

 fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were first brought 

 to Europe, taught us the names of these products in Italian, 

 Spanish or Portuguese form. Thus, indigo has this distinct- 

 ive form because the product was so named by the South 

 Europeans when they introduced it. It is simply their form 

 of the Latin word Indiais, whence by other lines of adoption 

 we have our word Indie. It was an Indie or Indian product. 

 The banana, potato and tomato are stamped as foreign by the 

 final a or o, and they are simply Romance forms of names 

 given the products by the natives of the countries whence 

 these products came or were thought to come. 



The main part of our nautical vocabulary, however, is 

 Teutonic. Most of it is Old English. Much of it is Scandi- 

 navian and Dutch. Sloop and schooner, for instance, are pro- 

 bably Dutch, and yet they may be our own words influenced 

 by the similar Dutch words. The nautical supremacy of the 

 Dutch, succeeding the Spanish- Portuguese and preceding the 

 English, naturally brought the sailors of the Netherlands and 

 of England into such intimate relations, hostile or friendly, 

 as to cause interchange or amalgamation of technical words. 



On shipboard the points of direction are fore and aft, star- 

 board and port. Things that are constant and on the ship 

 itself generally retain these names. Beyond the ship itself 

 fore becomes ahead, as " a buoy dead ahead," and aft becomes 

 astern, as " a light astern," which means a light seen off the 

 stern of the speaker's vessel. Many things that are starboard 

 and port when at anchor become windward and leeward when 

 under sail. The direction of the wind then becomes para- 

 mount in the mind of the sailor. If at anchor, the sailor is 

 told to move a thing " to starboard," toward the right side 

 of the ship, or "to look out to starboard," for another 

 vessel, but, if under sail, he is told to move it or to look " to 



