20 A LL ARO UND THE B A Y OF PA SSA MA Q UODD Y 



topographic names, Leland's suggestion induced me, while study- 

 ing the dialect, to listen to the opinions of capable Indians when 

 I requested them to interpret a series of these names. INIany 

 interpretations thus obtained were so crude and ungrammatic 

 that the}'^ could not be sustained for a moment ; but the tnajorit}'- 

 of those resting on a correct linguistic basis disclosed the fact 

 that they are mostly compound nouns and combinations either 

 of two substantives or of an adjective and a substantive, with 

 the substantive standing last. In the first case, the noun stand- 

 ing fi.rst is sometimes connected with the noun standing second 

 bv the case-suffix i,as in Edu'ki m'ni'ku,/)eer t's^miri, from 6duk, 

 deer. The local names around the bay mostl}^ refer to the watery 

 element, for the terms, beach, sand-bar, cliff, rocky shore, island, 

 headland, point, bay and cove, current and confiacnce make up 

 almost the whole terminology of the region. The frequent end- 

 ing -k (-ak, -ik, -ok, -uk) sometimes marks the i)lural of a noun 

 considered as animate,, but more frequently it is the locative case- 

 ending observed in all Algonkinian dialects under various forms. 

 This case-suffix corresponds minutely to our prepositions at, in, 

 on, upon, at the place or spot of. It also obtains in the Penobscot 

 and Milicite dialects ; but in the southwest corner of Maine occur 

 a number of geographic names in -et, -it, -ot, which ap})roximates 

 the. dialect in which they originate to that of Massachusetts and 

 of Eliot's Bible., So we meet there with names like Abadasset, 

 Harriseekit, Manset, Millinoket,Ogunquit, Pejepscot (Sheepscot), 

 AVebhannet, and Wiscasset. The name Penobscot cannot be ad- 

 duced here, for its original form in that dialect is Panawampskek, 

 ''where the conical rocks ^re." 



The Indian names of elevations, rivers, and localities are in 

 this article spelt in a scientific alphabet in which the vowels 

 possess the value of and are pronounced as the}^ are in the lan- 

 guages of the European continent.* To readers it will soon ap- 

 pear how inconsistently the Indian names were rendered by the 

 American and British natives in their pronunciation and how 

 often parts of them were dropped entirely. These Indian names 

 are generally easy to pronounce for Americans; still, Algonkin- 

 ian dialects have a tendency to drop vowels when standing be- 

 tweeii consonants at the beginning of words. This causes a 

 peculiar difficulty of utterance, and makes some of them unpro- 

 nounceable to a majority of English-speaking people. 



*g is always hard and & has the sound of e in bucket. 



