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names were given to it is a question wHcli the records of 

 history do not answer. All that can be affirmed with cer- 

 tainty is that the first name was given to it before 1508, the 

 second before 1527, the third before 1595. 



Not less obscure than the dates are the reasons of its early 

 nomenclature. Of the origin of its two earliest appellations 

 we know nothing , and to what it owed its designation of 

 Cirne is a point scarcely easier to determine. I am quite of 

 the opinion expressed by M. d'Avezac, that the doubts which 

 surround the discussion lend no sanction to our considering 

 the name of Cirne, o Cirne, as a reflex of the Cerne of ancient 

 cosmography, making all due allowance for such inconsisten- 

 cies as the confused erudition of the geographers of the XYIth 

 century, may have introduced into Pliny's notion of the posi- 

 tion of that Atlantic island. * 



To account for the name of Cirne three other conjectures 

 have been hazarded. It has been supposed that the island 

 may have been named after a Portugueuse family of the 

 name of Cirne ; the existence of such a family has been 

 recorded in some mediseval official documents, but no proof 

 of any kind exists connecting any member of it with the 

 island of Mauritius. Another conjecture derives the name 

 from the bird called by the Dutch Walz-Vogel, the Dodo, to 

 which from some similarity to swans the Portuguese may 

 have given the name Cirne (the old Portuguese form of 

 Oisne, a swan). A third, more historical conjecture suggests 

 that the island was called after a vessel of the same name, 

 commanded by the great Albuquerque, from 1506 to 1509 ; 

 this hypothesis is certainly ingenious and seems plausible. 

 According to a generally received opinion, " Mauritius was 

 discovered in the year 1507 by Don Pedro Mascarenhas, a 

 navigator of the Portuguese Government in India, under the 

 orders of Grovernor Almeida. Mascarenhas named the island 

 Cerne. t 



* On several maps of tlie XVIth centuiy Cerne ^thiopica is the name 

 given to Madagascar. 



+ Montgomery Martin, History of the British Colonies. D'Ualenville, 

 StaUttiqif^e de Vile Maurice, and others, 



