172 PORTUGUESE ELEMENT IN NOMENCLATURE. 



denotes the sea-like sheet of water. {Of. the use of Bahr 

 among the Arabs for lakes, in " Sea of Galilee " (or Bahr et- 

 Tabiriyeh), and "Salt Sea" (or Bahr el-Lut). Alaotra, ac- 

 cording to the Eev. L. Dahle, is possibly the Arabic Al-lutat, 

 " the dashing of the waves," the ocean ; and the Arabs of the 

 Comoro Islands and East Africa are known among the Mala- 

 gasy as the Talaotra, i.e., " those from beyond the ocean." 



An inspection of a map of Madagascar shows a curious 

 contrast between the nomenclature of the interior and that 

 of the coast-line. The former is purely native, as no European 

 power has ever succeeded in retaining territory for long 

 away from the coast ; but the fringe of names along the sea- 

 line has a considerable European element in it, and throws 

 considerable light upon the successive periods during which 

 the Madagascar coast was visited in early times by different 

 European nations, as well as upon the attempts made by 

 some of them to plant colonies in various parts of the island. 

 Besides this, as all surveying and map-making has hitherto 

 been the work of Europeans, and as the naval commanders 

 who gave many of the names of prominent places were usually 

 unacquainted with the Malagasy language, and consequently 

 knew nothing of the native names of headlands, rivers, and 

 bays, they give many of them European names in a very 

 arbitrary fashion, in some cases, however, not the less em- 

 bodying an historical fact or date. Thus, most of the promi- 

 nent capes of Madagascar bear the names of saints — St. Mary, 

 St. Vincent, St. Thomas, and St. Sebastian — showing the reli- 

 gious feeling of the Portuguese, the first European power who 

 discovered the island, which for a considerable period was 

 called by them and others Isola de San Lorenzo, after the 

 saint on whose day it was first seen by Fernando Soares. 

 The traces of the Portuguese are also left in St. Augustine's 

 Eiver and Bay, the shoal of Bonaventura, the Island of Juan 

 de Nova, and the fine harbour of Diego Suarez, at the ex- 

 treme north of Madagascar. We find another memorial of 

 the same nation in the name of the chief inlet on the eastern 

 side of the island, Antongil Bay, so called from Antonio Gil, 

 a Portuguese, who first discovered it. Besides the names given 

 above, numerous other saints' names are found in ancient 



