Postage stamps, for Indian relics.
Bennie Stockwell,
850 National Avenue, Milwaukee, Wis.
Rare postage stamps.
Edward A. De Lima,
36 East Fifty-seventh Street, New York City.
Henry M. R.—There is some uncertainty in regard to the origin of the name of the city of Toronto. Chambers's Cyclopædia says that it is of Indian origin, and that the meaning of it seems to be lost. On the other hand, the National Cyclopædia says that the district, as it was gradually cleared by the British, was called Toronto, after the fort Tareno; but the name given by Governor Simcoe, in 1774, to the town, which he laid out on a regular plan, was York. This name it retained until 1834, when Sir John Colborne raised it to the rank of a city, and changed the name to that of the district, Toronto.
It is also surmised that the name of the fort may have been derived from that of the ancient city of Tarentum, in Calabria, also called Tarentus, and in modern times Tarento. The war which the inhabitants of Tarentum maintained against the Romans, with the assistance of Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, and which has been called the Tarentine war, is greatly celebrated in history. This may account for the name being given to the fort.