NEW AMSTERDAM GARDENS 69 



the orthography of the word as it appears on the early 

 maps of the region. The spelling of even a mother- 

 tongue was largely a matter of chance, individual pref- 

 erence or peculiarity at the time these first maps were 

 made; and what was one thing, at one time, under 

 one man's pen, appeared in a slightly or very much 

 altered dress, as the case might be, when another set it 

 down. This being true of a familiar tongue, how is it 

 to be expected that consistency should have marked 

 the treatment of the strange sounds and gutturals which 

 characterized the speech of the savage, whose phonetics 

 even must have been largely guessed? 



Juet, the journal keeper of Hudson's first voyage, 

 wrote the much disputed word the first time it was 

 ever committed to paper; his rendering of it is 

 "Manna-hata." He applies this very distinctly and 

 unmistakably to the land, not to the men inhabiting 

 it — but apparently to the mainland opposite the is- 

 land; to what is now the New Jersey shore. The 

 first English map seems to bear out this definite loca- 

 tion of the name, for this has it written along the 

 river's western bank — "Manahata"; but it confuses 

 the question by presenting "Manahatin" along the 

 eastern bank. Another map complicates it by show- 

 ing "Manhattes" on the mainland to the north and 

 no island at all, while still another confines the word 

 to the island alone, and gives it as "Manhates" ! 



