Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/379

 10 s. XL APRIL IT, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

in mind of a place beloved by them, and which they therefore ' tearmed pimplico,' seems to me rather a far-fetched yarn. If it was sent from London, it was presumably an English bird with an English name of its own, and it is difficult to conceive why the men should have termed it something else."

Is this interpretation correct ? Here is the passage :

" Another smale Birde ther is, the which, by some Ale-banters of London sent ouer hether, hath bin tearmed pimplicoe, for so they Imagine (and a little resemblance putts them in mind of a place so dearely beloued) her note articulates."

Obviously, as it seems to me, what was " sent ouer hether " was not a bird, but ale-banters,* by whom, after they had reached Bermuda, the bird there found was called "pimplicoe."

The theory that the bird received its name from an island called Pimlico is not entitled to serious consideration until the existence of such an island before 1614 can be proved. Even if there were now in the Bermudas a Pimlico Island, it would by no means follow that that name was attached to it before 1650, though COL. PRIDEATTX can " see no reason why it may not have been." A native of a country in which a place-name, once imposed, is retained for a thousand years or more, COL. PKTDEATTX is probably not aware of the extraordinary instability of geographical names in America. One of the most difficult problems an Ameri- can historian has is to trace the history of towns, counties, and even States, as well as capes, islands, rivers, &c., through the various changes in name they have under- gone ; and no such historian would assume that because a place now bears a certain name, it therefore bore the same name in the seventeenth century. The statement in my previous reply, that " it may be doubted whether there was such an island [as Pimlico] before 1650," was not made at random. There never has been such an island in the Bermudas. The name does occur, as pointed out by MR. FRANCIS KING (ante, p. 133), in the Bahamas, though there seems to be a good deal of confusion as to its application.

The Pimlico Islands (lat. 25 21'), lying between New Providence Island and Eleu- thera, were first described, so far as I have been able to ascertain, in ' Mer des Antilles et ^Golfe du Mexique,' 1875, ii. 929 ; again in ' Navigation of the Caribbean Sea and

" Ale-banters " is the reading in the ' N.E.D.' but in the printed book (p. 4) it is " ale-hanters " ; and in another place (p. 263) there is an allusion to " the ale-hantinge articlcrs in England."

Gulf of Mexico,' 1888, i. 37 ; and are plotted on the map in J. H. Stark's ' History of and Guide to the Bahamas' (1891). MR. KING'S Pimlico Island is one of this group, and one of the same group was spoken of as Pimlico Cay by Prof. Alexander Agassiz in 1894 (Bulletin of the Museum of Compara- tive Zoology of Harvard College, xxvi. 27). A Pimlico Cay is also alluded to in G. B. Shattuck's ' Bahama Islands,' 1905, p. 365. It is not located, but my guess is that it is one of MR. KING'S Pimlico Cays in the Exuma group. Stark's map also plots Pimlico Rocks (lat. 23 57') which perhaps are identical with MR. KING'S Pimlico Cays. Probably, as MR. KING remarks, these islands, rocks, and cays have derived their names from the bird ; for MR. KING is correct in saying that the bird is known in the Bahamas, though it has never there or elsewhere been called " Pamlico." But whatever may be the true origin of the names of the Pimlico islands, rocks, and cays, it is certain that the bird did not derive its name from them. In 1859 Dr. H. Bryant wrote :

" Puffinus obscurus. On making inquiries as to what sea-birds breed on the kays, I was con- stantly told of a singular bird with a hooked bill that only flew during the night, and was known by the name of Pimlico : it proved to be the present species." Proceedings of the Boston Soc. of Nat. Hist., vii. 132.

In 1880 C. B. Cory stated that ' ; the in- habitants claim that this species [Puffinus obscurus] has received its local name of ' Pimblico ' from its cry" ('Birds of the Bahama Islands,' p. 221). And in the same year C. Ives remarked that " the inhabitants call it [dusky shearwater] Pemblico" ('Isles of Summer ; or, Nassau and the Bahamas,' p. 263).

The statement found in nearly all books about the Bahamas that they were settled in 1629 is a mistake, due to confusion be- tween Old Providence Island (off the Mos- quito Coast) and New Providence Island (Bahamas). (See 10 S. i. 13) They were discovered in 1492 by the Spanish, who carried off the natives and left the land desolate. The English first appeared about 1647, or nearly forty years after they had settled the Bermudas. Now while a West India island may have received, and fre- quently did receive, a name derived from or imposed by the early Spanish explorers, yet, to speak generally, Local names arose only after settlement. Thus the Bermudas derived their generic name from Juan de Bermudez, who discovered them about 1510, but virtually all the local names in