Roberts says, the name was “that of an Indian tribe inhabiting round the bay but which was destroyed.” Mr. Fairbanks tells us it was “a name derived from the locality having been, formerly, that of the town of a tribe of Indians called Pencacolas, which had been entirely exterminated in conflicts with neighboring tribes.” The first objection to this assigned origin of the name is, that it is evidently not Indian, such names in West Florida invariably terminating with a double e, as for examples, Apalachee, Choctawhatchee, Uchee, Ochusee, Escambee, Ochesee, Chattahoochee. The “cola” added to Apalachee, and “ia” substituted in Escambia for ee, indicate the difference between the terminations of Indian and Spanish names. Again, amongst savages, we should expect to find in the name of a place an indication of a natural object, the name being expressive of the object, and hence as lasting. But, that the accident of an encampment of savages upon a locality should stamp that locality with their tribal name, as a designation that should survive not only the encampment, but the very existence of the tribe, is incredible. An extinct tribe would in a generation or two cease to have a place in the traditions of surviving tribes, because their extinction would be only an ordinary event amongst American savages. The termination being Spanish, and no natural object existing suggestive of the name, we naturally turn our search to a vocabulary of Spanish names, historical and geographical. Perched upon a rock springing 240 feet high from the Mediterranean shore of Spain, connected with the mainland by a narrow strip of sand, is the fortified little seaport of Peniscola. Substitute “a” for “i,” transpose “s” and we have the name for the original of which we seek. The seaports of Spain furnished the great body of Spanish adventurers to America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and what more likely than that some native of the little town crowning with its vine-clad cottages the huge rock that looks out upon the “midland ocean,” should have sought to honor his home by fixing its name upon a spot in the new world? When and by whom the name was affixed to our shores is an interesting inquiry. Neither Roberts, nor Fairbanks, nor any other authority, informs us. It comes into history with the advent of d’ Arriola, whose settlement will be the subject of a future page. Three hypotheses furnish as many answers to the question: it was original with Arriola to the extent at least of a new application of a Spanish name; or he found the place already named in some chart or document now lost to us; or already fixed by an Indian tradition, according to Roberts and Fairbanks. The first hypothesis requires no comment. The second rests upon the existence of a fact of which we can procure no evidence. The third is a tradition founded upon, or involving, a Spanish name.