1. The first objection I have to refer to is one which does not require to be dwelt upon at any length, as the instances are too many and too wellknown to be unnecessarily detailed. In fact they arise even unsought for and are forced upon us in the midst of other questions, I mean those where Etymologies are given so palpably idle and fatuitous as positively to justify the sneers cast on Etymology by some who ridicule it altogether.
2. Of the same character in kind though in another direction are those errors of judgment where etymologies are given from sources with which the words could have no possible connection, and so giving the wildest conjectures in the place of authority. Some writers if they can but hit on some Greek or Latin word having some possible affinity to the one they know not how to derive otherwise, seize on it as if desirous of at least showing their learning and thus become ridiculous by the show of erudition. Many other examples may be suggested, but I offer the few following.
Cannibal, a word first heard of upon the discovery of the New World is given by the earliest writers of that event as an Indian word, the name of a savage people found there. The first writer who uses it, is I believe Peter Martyr of Angleria, who died in 1526 and who wrote as he states from information given him by Columbus himself and others who had been engaged in the first discoveries of America. His Decades have been several times printed, and first in England by Hakluyt, and translated into English by Mr. Lok who had been an associate with Hakluyt in his great work, distinct from this publication. In his first decade, P. Martyr speaks of the savage race found in the Caribbee Islands as "the wilde and mischievous people called Canibales or Caribes, which were accustomed to eate man's flesh and called of the olde writers Anthropophagi." And in like manner throughout his interesting and circumstantial narrative he couples the words Cannibals and Caribs together as synonymous; as in the 7th decade ch. 4 "the Caniballes otherwise called Caribes are men eaters." The next earliest writer I conceive to be Americus Vesputius whose original account we have transcribed into the collection published by Grynæus, Basil. 1537, and he speaks p. 170 of the savages as gens hæc tam effera et crudelis, humanarum carnium comestrix Canibali nuncuparetur. In the same collection, in the account given of Columbus and his discoveries the same people are referred to not as Caribs, but only as Cannibals. Canibalos appellant ferinos populos, qui in cibatu homines habeant gratissimos, p. 92., the word Carib never being used.
