It is quite impossible for such an harbour as Falmouth to have escaped the knowledge of the Phœnicians, when they came to Cornwall for tin, and strangely mistook it for a cluster of islands. The Greeks must also have known this port; and the Romans not merely encamped in various parts of the county, but having fixed stations within it, and on the very banks of the Fall, cannot have failed of noticing the longest and best roadsted and navigable river within the limits of Cornwall: but so vague and uncertain are all the descriptions transmitted to us either by geographers or by the writers of itineraries, that we are utterly unable to discriminate most places within certain limits of each other except by conjecture. It is truly a matter of astonishment that nations having made such ample progress in abstract geometry, and in astronomy itself, should have altogether disregarded latitudes which were within their reach; and even approximations towards longitudes, which might have been obtained through the medium of lunar eclipses. Various names derived from ancient authors have been applied to Falmouth. VALUBA is the one most commonly received. The Ocrinum promontory being taken for the Lizard, and Bolerium for the Land’s End. The late Sir Christopher Hawkins seems to have established, with the full degree of certainty applicable to such subjects, that the ICTIS of Diodorus Siculus must have been St. Michael’s Mount, and not the hill occupied by Pendennis Castle. The British name of Falmouth was Smithick. The last syllable, ick, has doubtlessly some reference to water. The few houses standing at Smithick before Mr. Killigrew built the new town, are said to have been called Pen-y-cum-quick; and an idle story is related of some old woman having brewed ale for a public meeting, and having apologized to the people when they assembled for all her stock being gone, by stating that foreign sailors coming to her house drunk the whole, and that “Pennies came so quick” she could not resist the temptation for parting with it. But the Right Hon. Charles Williams Wynn, M.P. for Denbighshire, has informed me that Pen-y-cwm-cuick is, in good Welch, the head of the contracted valley or dingle. Cuch signifies contracted, or knit together, as knitting the brows. This corresponds with the valley going up from the strand by the new market-house. Sir George Clark’s seat, near Edinburgh, situated in a similar manner in respect to a narrow vale, is written Pen-y-cuick, and pronounced Pennyquick, the Celtic PEN-Y being always corrupted by Saxon lips into penny; as Pen-y-darran, on the Taff.