ENGLISH ELEMENT IN NOMENCLA TURE. 173 



maps, as St. Justina, St. Eomano, St. Julian, St. Clara, St. 

 Lucia, St. Eoche, and others, but these latter have been dis- 

 used by later geographers. The memory of the French occu- 

 pation of Madagascar is retained in the words Fort Dauphin, 

 to the extreme south-east ; the island of St. Marie's, still 

 held by them, on the east coast ; Port Choiseul, Foule Pointe, 

 and Louisbourg. And lastly, an English element in the map, 

 but probably quite unrecognised by the natives, is seen 

 in the names given by Captain Owen and others to various 

 ports and islands ; as William Pitt Bay, Liverpool Point, 

 Port Croker and Point Barrow, and in Barren, Barlow, Crab, 

 Murder, and Grave Islands ; while Owen's surveying ships 

 are both memorialised in " Barracouta " Island and Port 

 " Leven." 



Some of the foreign names given to places in Madagascar 

 have been strangely altered by the Malagasy, both in sound 

 and spelling, so that one hardly recognises in Toamasina, the 

 native name of Tamatave, the San Tomaso of the Portuguese 

 settlers ; and still less in Faradofay, the Fort Dauphin of the 

 south, two centuries ago the chief French port and stronghold 

 in the island. 



In Madagascar, not less than in European and other 

 countries, place-names will doubtless prove on careful exa- 

 mination to be one of the most valuable of ancient his- 

 torical records ; and while we sometimes ask carelessly, 

 " What's in a name ? " it will be seen that in Madagascar, 

 as in other parts of the world, names form, strange as it may 

 seem, more enduring and unmistakable records than tombs 

 and temples, or marble and bronze. 



