_Martinique_ (Vol. v., p. 11.).--There must be some inaccuracy in the
reply of MR. PHILIP S. KING (p. 165.) to the Query of your correspondent
W. J. C.
A reference to the few authorities to which I have access leads me to
suppose that the period of the actual discovery of this island is
involved in some obscurity. Washington Irving assumes its identity with
the island called by its inhabitants "Mantinino," and that it was the
first land made by Columbus on his fourth voyage to the West Indies in
1502. Mr. Major, in his Introduction to the _Select Letters of
Columbus_, published for the Hakluyt Society, inclines to the same
opinion. It is extremely probable that Columbus had heard reports of
this island when he was among the group of the Caribbees in 1493, but he
does not appear to have been then further south than the latitude of
Dominica. Peter Martyr, however, alludes to Mantinino, an island of
Amazons, as having been passed by the admiral to the _north_ of
Guadaloupe, when on his course to Hispaniola. Assuming this to be an
error of position, and that the discovery of the island did not really
take place until the year 1502, the period at which Columbus was there
(June) could have had no influence on its new name, since the days of
the two Saints Martin are in November.
I am inclined to think that the name "Martinico" may have been conferred
by the Spaniards at some subsequent period; and, supposing it to be a
diminutive of _Martin_, in honour of the lesser St. Martin, pope and
martyr, and not him of Tours. _Martinique_ is, of course, the same word
Gallicised.