they might be ill qualified to describe its geographical position.

In the rude narrative of Odoricus we perceive the first approach to the
modern name in the word Sumoltra. Those who immediately followed him
write it with a slight, and often inconsistent, variation in the
orthography, Sumotra, Samotra, Zamatra, and Sumatra. But none of these
travellers inform us from whom they learned it; whether from the natives
or from persons who had been in the habits of frequenting it from the
continent of India; which latter I think the more probable. Reland, an
able oriental scholar, who directed his attention to the languages of the
islands, says it obtains its appellation from a certain high land called
Samadra, which he supposes to signify in the language of the country a
large ant; but in fact there is not any spot so named; and although there
is some resemblance between semut, the word for an ant, and the name in
question, the etymology is quite fanciful. Others have imagined that they
find an easy derivation in the word samatra, to be met with in some
Spanish or Portuguese dictionaries, as signifying a sudden storm of wind
and rain, and from whence our seamen may have borrowed the expression;
but it is evident that the order of derivation is here reversed, and that
the phrase is taken from the name of the land in the neighbourhood of
which such squalls prevail. In a Persian work of the year 1611 the name
of Shamatrah occurs as one of those places where the Portuguese had
established themselves; and in some very modern Malayan correspondence I
find the word Samantara employed (along with another more usual, which
will be hereafter mentioned) to designate this island.

PROBABLY DERIVED FROM THE SANSKRIT.

These, it is true, are not entirely free from the suspicion of having
found their way to the Persians and Malays through the medium of European