hearing strange words from the lips of the natives, often converted them into English words of similar sound, though of widely different meaning. Thus the words /Hassan/ and /Hosein/, frequently used by the Mohammedans of the country in their devotions, were turned into /Hobson-Jobson/. The same process is constantly in operation elsewhere. By it the French /route de roi/ has become /Rotten Row/ in English, /écrevisse/ has become /crayfish/, and the English /bowsprit/ has become /beau pré/ (=/beautiful meadow/) in French. The word /pigeon/, in /Pigeon English/, offers another example; it has no connection with the bird, but merely represents a Chinaman's attempt to pronounce the word /business/. No doubt /squash/ originated in the same way. That /woodchuck/ did so is practically certain. Its origin is to be sought, not in /wood/ and /chuck/, but in the Cree word /otchock/, used by the Indians to designate the animal. In addition to the names of natural objects, the early colonists, of course, took over a great many Indian place-names, and a number of words to designate Indian relations and artificial objects in Indian use. To the last division belong /hominy/, /pone/, /toboggan/, /canoe/, /tapioca/, /moccasin/, /pow-wow/, /papoose/, /tomahawk/, /wigwam/, /succotash/ and /squaw/, all of which were in common circulation by the beginning of the eighteenth century. Finally, new words were made during the period by translating Indian terms, for example, /war-path/, /war-paint/, /pale-face/, /medicine-man/, /pipe-of-peace/ and /fire-water/. The total number of such borrowings, direct and indirect, was a good deal larger [Pg042] than now appears, for with the disappearance of the red man the use of loan-words from his dialects has decreased. In our own time such words as /papoose/, /sachem/, /tepee/, /wigwam/ and /wampum/ have begun to drop out of everyday use;[9] at an earlier period the language sloughed off /ocelot/, /manitee/, /calumet/, /supawn/, /samp/ and /quahaug/, or began to degrade them to the estate of provincialisms.[10] A curious phenomenon is presented by the case of /maize/, which came into the colonial speech from some West Indian dialect, went over into orthodox English, and from English into French, German and other continental languages, and was then abandoned by the colonists. We shall see other examples of that process later on.