APRIL 69 



means of designation, to which M'Kenzie river, Fraser 

 river, and hundreds of others in all languages and all parts 

 of the world owe their names. Or they call it after some 

 natural feature or product of the country through which 

 it flows, as in the instances of the Yellowstone river, a 

 tributary of the Missouri, or the Rio de la Plata river of 

 the silver. Again, when they fail to pick up the native 

 name, or when its pronunciation involves a conscious 

 effort, or when there are no particular features to dis- 

 tinguish one river from another and no special person 

 or incident to commemorate, recourse is had to the simple 

 plan of numbering the rivers as they occur in their line 

 of march. Thus when the Spaniards overran what is 

 now the Argentine province of Cordova, they crossed 

 five rivers which bear now in succession from the north, 

 whence the invaders advanced, the names Rio Primero, 

 Rio Secundo, Rio Tercero, Rio Quarto, and Rio Quinto. 



Returning to the example first cited, if the river-name 

 Tarf represents the Gaelic tarbh, a bull, how is its frequent 

 occurrence to be accounted for ? The simplest way is the 

 surest. If you look at Blaeu's Atlas a masterpiece of 

 industry and skill you will find in the maps of Scottish 

 counties surveyed by Timothy Pont between the years 

 1595 and 1605 that nearly all the Highland river-names 

 we now use have the word amhuinn (avon) prefixed to 

 them. Amhuinn tarbh means the river of the bulls ; and 

 now there is legitimate scope for imagination in assigning 

 the origin of such a title as Tarf to some incident either 

 of primitive pastoral life or in the chase of the wild 

 Caledonian cattle. 



Enough, perhaps, has been said to indicate how simple, 

 direct, and obvious is the meaning of the original place- 



