Stories That Words Tell Us

by Elizabeth O'Neill

After this it was not long before the Portuguese explored the south and east coasts of Africa and the west coast of India to the very south, where they took the Spice Islands for their own. From these the Portuguese brought home great quantities of spices, which they sold at high prices in Europe.

It was the great explorer Ferdinand Magellan who first sailed round the world, being sure, as he said, that he could reach the Spice Islands by sailing west. And so he started on this expedition, sailing through the straits which have ever since been known as the Magellan Straits to the south of South America, into the Pacific, or "Peaceful," Ocean, and then ever west, until he came round by the east to Spain again, after three years of great hardship and wonderful adventure.

The adventures of the early explorers most often took the form of seeking a new and shorter passage from one ocean to another, and so many straits bear the names of the explorers. The Elizabethan explorer, Martin Frobisher, sought for a "North-west Passage" from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and for a time it was thought that he had found it in the very north of North America. But it was afterwards found that the "passage," which had already been given the name of Frobisher's Straits, was really only an inlet, and afterwards it became known as Lumley's Inlet.

Frobisher never discovered a North-west Passage, for the ships of those days were not fitted out in a way to enable the sailors to bear the icy cold of these northern regions. Many brave explorers tried later to discover it. Three times John Davis made a voyage for this purpose but never succeeded, though Davis Strait commemorates his heroic attempts. Hudson and Baffin explored in these waters, as the names Hudson Bay and Baffin Bay remind us.

It was nearly two hundred years later that Sir John Franklin sailed with an expedition in two boats, the Erebus and Terror, determined to find the passage. He found it, but died in the attempt; but, strangely enough, his name was not given to any strait, though later it was given to all the islands of the Arctic Archipelago.

The winning of India by the British in the eighteenth century did not give us many new English names. India was not, like the greater part of America, a wild country inhabited by savage peoples. It had an older civilization than the greater part of Europe, and the only reason that it was weak enough to be conquered was that the many races who lived there could not agree among themselves. Most of the place-names of India are native names given by natives, for centuries before France and England began to struggle for its possession in the eighteenth century India had passed through a long and varied history.

When we remember that the natives of India have no name to describe the whole continent, it helps us to understand that India is in no way a single country. The British Government have given the continent the name India, taking it from the great river Indus, which itself takes its name from an old word, sindhu, meaning "river."

In the days of the early explorers, after the islands discovered by Columbus were called the West Indies, some people began to call the Indian continent the East Indies, to distinguish it; and some of the papers about India drawn up for the information of Parliament about Indian affairs still use this name, but it is not a familiar use to most people.

The mistake which Columbus and the early explorers made in thinking America was India has caused a good deal of confusion. The natives of North America were called Indians, and it was only long afterwards, in fact quite lately, that people began to write and speak of the natives of India as Indians. When it was printed in the newspapers that Indians were fighting for the British Empire with the armies in France, the use of the word Indian seemed wrong to a great many people; but it is now becoming so common that it will probably soon seem quite right. When it is used with the old meaning we shall have to say the "Indians of North America." Some people use the word Hindu to describe the natives of India; but this is not correct, as only some of the natives of India are Hindus, just as the name Hindustan (a Persian name meaning "land of the Hindus," as Afghanistan means "land of the Afghans"), which some old writers on geography used for India, is really the name of one part of the land round the river Ganges, where the language known as Hindi is spoken.

The place-names of India given by natives of the many different races which have lived in the land could fill a book with their stories alone. We can only mention a few. The name of the great range of mountains which runs across the north of the continent, the Himalayas, means in Sanskrit, the oldest language used in India, the "home of snow." Bombay takes its name from Mumba, the name of a goddess of an early tribe who occupied the district round Bombay. Calcutta, which stretches over ground where there were formerly several villages, takes its name from one of these. Its old form was Kalikuti, which means the "ghauts," or passes, leading to the temple of the goddess Kali.