to expect
the regularity of a ledger, and it is more probable that the entries were made, not
from day to day, but at irregular intervals as opportunity presented at the several
resting places. The story must be interpreted in the light of our later knowledge of
the geography and ethnology of the country traversed.
Each of the three principal narratives has passed through translations and later
editions of more or less doubtful fidelity to the original, the English edition in some
cases being itself a translation from an earlier French or Dutch translation. English
speaking historians of the expedition have usually drawn their material from one or
the other of these translations, without knowledge of the original language, of the
etymologies of the Indian names or the relations of the various tribes mentioned, or
of the general systemof Indian geographic nomenclature. One of the greatest errors
has been the attempl to give in every case a fixed local habitation to a name which
in some instances is not a proper name at all, ami in others is merely a descriptive
term or a duplicate name occurring at several places in the same tribal territory.
Thus Tali is simply the Creek word talua, town, and not a definite place name as
represented by a mistake natural in dealing through interpreters with an unknown
Indian language. Tallise and Tallimuchase are respectively "Old town" and "New
town" in Creek, and there can lie no certainty that the same names were applied to
the same places a century later. Canasagua is a corruption of a Cherokee name
which occurs in at least three other places in the old