[FN#1] Men of the Maghrab, or Western Africa; the vulgar plural is Maghrabin, generally written “Mogrebyn.”  May not the singular form of this word have given rise to the Latin “Maurus,” by elision of the Ghayn, to Italians an unpronounceable consonant?  From Maurus comes the Portuguese “Moro,” and our “Moor.”  When Vasco de Gama reached Calicut, he found there a tribe of Arab colonists, who in religion and in language were the same as the people of Northern Africa,-for this reason he called them “Moors.”  This was explained long ago by Vincent (Periplus, lib. 3), and lately by Prichard (Natural History of Man).  I repeat it because it has been my fate to hear, at a meeting of a learned society in London, a gentleman declare, that in Eastern Africa he found a people calling themselves Moors.  Maghrabin-Westerns,-then would be opposed to Sharkiyin, Easterns, the origin of our “Saracen.”  From Gibbon downwards many have discussed the history of this word; but few expected in the nineteenth century to see a writer on Eastern subjects assert, with Sir John Mandeville, that these people “properly, ben clept Sarrazins of Sarra.”  The learned M. Jomard, who never takes such original views of things, asks a curious question:-"Mais comment un son aussi distinct que le Chine [Arabic text] aurait-il pu se confondre avec le Syn [Arabic text] et, pour un mot aussi connu que charq; comment aurait-on pu se tromper a l’omission des points?” Simply because the word Saracens came to us through the Greeks (Ptolemy uses it), who have no such sound as sh in their language, and through the Italian which, hostile to the harsh sibilants of Oriental dialects, generally melts sh down into s.  So the historical word Hashshashiyun-hemp-drinker,-civilised by the Italians into “assassino,” became, as all know, an expression of European use.  But if any one adverse to “etymological fancies” objects to my deriving Maurus from “Maghrab,” let him remember Johnson’s successfully tracing the course of the metamorphosis of “dies” into “jour.”  An even more peculiar change we may discover in the word “elephant.”  “Pilu” in Sanscrit, became “pil” in old Persian, which ignores short final vowels; “fil,” and, with the article, “Al-fil,” in Arabic, which supplies the place of p (an unknown letter to it), by f; and elephas in Greek, which is fond of adding “as” to Arabic words, as in the cases of Aretas (Haris) and Obodas (Obayd).  “A name,” says Humboldt, “often becoming a historical monument, and the etymological analysis of language, however it may be divided, is attended by valuable results.” [FN#2] The Toni or Indian canoe is the hollowed-out trunk of a tree,-near Bombay generally a mango.  It must have been the first step in advance from that simplest form of naval architecture, the “Catamaran” of Madras and Aden. [FN#3] In these vessels each traveller, unless a previous bargain be made, is expected to provide his own water and firewood.  The best way, however, is, when the old wooden box called a tank is sound, to pay the