In Scoresby’s Account of the Arctic Regions, vol. i, p. 504, it is said: “When seen at a distance, the front part of the head of the young walrus, without tusks, is not unlike the human face. As this animal is in the habit of rearing its head above water, to look at ships and other passing objects, it is not at all improbable that it may have afforded foundation for some of the stories of mermaids. I have myself seen a sea-horse in such a position, and under such circumstances, that it required little stretch of imagination to mistake it for a human being; so like indeed was it, that the surgeon of the ship actually reported to me his having seen a man with his head just appearing above the surface of the water.” [↑]
[99] “Bathing”—Ph. A misprint. [↑]
[100] Cortelassen—cutlasses. Plate CIII, of Dr. Meyrick’s Ancient Arms and Armour (vol. ii) contains a representation of an “Andrew Ferrara”, which is described as “a coutel-hache, coutelaxe or coutelas”. But the true original of the name is the Italian cultellaccio or coltellaccio, meaning literally a large (heavy) knife. Cultellazius, the Latinized form of this word, occurs in a list of forbidden weapons, in a statute of the city of Ferrara, A.D. 1268. See Muratori, Antiq. Italic., vol. ii, col. 515. [↑]
[101] Tottet Eglandt van Oraengien. [↑]
[103] Namely, those of Zeelandt and Enkhuysen, from which they had separated at Kildin on the 29th of June. [↑]
[104] De Weygats ofte Strafe de Nassou. This name has given occasion to much curious criticism. The Dutch, not unnaturally, have sought its explanation in their own language, in which waaien means “to blow”, “to be windy”, and gat is “a strait” or “passage”; so that waaigat would be “a passage wherein the wind blows strongly”. And it is indisputable that this name has, on various occasions, been so applied by the seamen of that nation. Thus, we find a Waaigat in Baffin’s Bay, one in Spitzbergen, and another by the Straits of Magellan; and even the roads between the Helder and Texel have, from an early period, borne the same name. See “Prize Essay on the Netherlandish Discoveries,” by R. G. Bennet and J. G. van Wijk, in Nieuwe Verhandelingen von het Provincial Utrechtsche Genootschap, etc., vol. vi (1827), p. 41.
Others, instead of the Dutch waaien, have taken the German weihen as the root, and thus made weihgat to mean the “sacred straits”.
J. R. Forster, in his Voyages and Discoveries in the North (Engl. edit.), p. 273, contends, however, that the name is of Russian origin, and explains it as follows:—“Barentz found afterwards in Nova Zembla some carved images on a head-land near the straits, in consequence of which he called it Afgoeden-hoek, the ‘Cape of Idols’. Now, in the Sclavonian tongue, wajat means ‘to carve’, ‘to make an image’. Wajati-Noss would, therefore, [[28]]be the ‘Carved’ or ‘Image Cape’; and this seems to me to be the true origin of the word Waigats, which properly should be called Wajatelstwoi Proliw, ‘the Image Straits’.” So convinced was Forster of the correctness of his conjecture, that in another part of his work (p. 413) he did not hesitate to assert that the Russians themselves give to the Afgoeden-hoek the name of Waijati Nos; and this strange derivation of the word Waigats has found supporters not only among foreign, but even among Russian writers. See Barrow, p. 137; Berch, p. 30.
But Lütke, who has fully investigated the subject, adduces as proof against these fanciful etymologies, first (p. 30), that the name recorded by the Dutch themselves is Waigatz [Weygats], and not Waigat, the Russian termination tsch being changed by them into tz, in the same way as in Pitzora for Petschora, etc.; secondly, that the name Waigatsch properly belongs to the island alone, and not to the straits; thirdly, that this name was known to the Englishman Burrough in 1556, nearly forty years before the first voyage of the Hollanders; and lastly (p. 31), that the Russians have never called the Cape of Idols Waiyati Nos, but always Bolwánskyi Muis, from bolwàn, a rough image.