436 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



Sutter is pronounced with the u like " oo " in foot. Mokel- 

 umne is often mispronounced " Mac al a my," and the Cosum- 

 nes River is not unfrequently called the Macosme. Folsom 

 is pronounced like the adjective fulsome. Yosemite has four 

 syllables with the accent on the antepenultimate (Yo sem i te). 

 San Rafael is usually called "San Rah fell," Tehama " Te- 

 hay ma." 



3 63. Erroneous Spelling. The maps issued by the Federal 

 Surveyor General's office have abounded with errors of spell- 

 ing, chargeable to gross ignorance and carelessness. The 

 publications of the State Geological Survey have a few. 

 Whitney writes " Tamal Pais " instead of Tamalpais, and 

 " Hetch-hetchy" instead of Hetchhetchy. The hyphen in 

 Indian names is an absurdity, and has been abandoned in 

 Tecumseh and Yosemite, and other words in common use. 

 " Pais " in Spanish means county, and Marin County was 

 formerly occupied by the Tamal tribe of Indians, and there- 

 fore it is supposed that the mountain should, out of respect for 

 the Spanish language, be called " Tamal Pais." But the Spani- 

 ards united the two words, and instead of using pais separately, 

 they would say " el pais de los Tamales" A common error 

 of writers ignorant of Spanish is to say " the sierras." This, as 

 applied to the Sierra Nevada, is equivalent to speaking of the 

 Rocky Mountain Chains. There is only one sierra in California. 



