_Yalos._ Frosts (whence, perhaps corruptly, Yallahs), the high white
cliffs having the appearance of a frosty covering. [Now called
Yallahs. Long was probably wrong in connecting Yallahs with Yalos.
The Hatô de Ayala extended from Bull Bay nearly to Morant Bay, and
the name is probably a personal one. Pedro Lopez de Ayala was a
celebrated poet and politician in the fourteenth century; Pedro de
Ayala was Spanish envoy to the Court of St. James in 1498; and,
curiously, a recent Spanish representative at Havana bore the name
de Ayala. There was a Captain Yhallahs, a privateer who flourished
in Jamaica in and about 1671, and the locality may have been named
after him.]
_Luidas._ Perhaps from Luzida; gay, fine. [Lluidas Vale is in St.
Catherine.]
_Martha Brea._ Martha, a woman’s name; Brea, tar; perhaps a nickname
of some Spanish sailor’s Dulcinea like the English vulgar
appellation _Jack Tar_. [Martha Brea village and river are in
Trelawny. The name is a corruption of Rio Matibereon.]
No traces are to be found to-day of the following: Alta Mela, Rio de
Camarones, Caborida, Carvil Bahia, Guada Bocca, Jarisse Punta, Javareen,
Multi Bezon Rio, Perexil Insula.
Of corruptions of Spanish names the best known are: Agualta (Agua Alta,
the deep river); Bog Walk (Boca d’Agua, water’s mouth); and Mount
Diablo. Cagua became with the English Caguay, then Cagway when it was
renamed Port Royal.
Those who see in Porus a survival of the name of Columbus’s companion,
Porras, are probably drawing on a fertile imagination. Columbus and his
companions saw little of the interior of the island. It is more probably
called after some well sunk there, or from the porous nature of the
soil, “pitted with holes.” In the English edition of Ferdinand
Columbus’s “Historie,” we read that the Morant Cays were called by
Columbus _Los Poros_ because “not finding water in them they dug pits in
the sand”; but in the Italian edition (Venice, 1571) they are called “le
pozzi” (the pits), and in the Spanish edition of 1749 they are called
“Las Poças” (the pits). It is possible that in the case of Porus, as in
that of the Morant Cays, there has been a confusion between _Poros_ and
_Pocas_; and that the town in Manchester should be called Poças. The
Spaniards called the Black River, el Caovana (the Mahogany River).
In the English section of Jamaica history for the two centuries from
1655 to 1855, there is a wide field of exploration.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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