.MTMxMw.NjQwMQ

it, and is in no sense, topographically, a great ridge - or as one suggestion was like a moose back - okun, ikun etc. If so there are a thousand "great ridge places". In other words it doesn't describe anything in particular. There is a profile of the Machigonne Neck[underlined] as it was first called in English in 1636.

[drawing of mountain ridge contrasted with horizon]

It is a peninsula in the hills about 150 feet high - not much of a ridge and not as high as a hill three miles inland. The earliest description usually refer to the point[underlined] of a Neck of land called Machigonne - a restricted area.

But that is not what I started to say - except in so far as it relates to Indian place names. It seems to me that it is important to settle - once for all - the name of Monhegan. It ought to answer some phases of the Pemaquid problem as it was the landfull. I am not sure that I ever heard of or saw a definition. Ida Sedgwick Proper (Miss or Mrs) has just published a very careful study of the early history of the island - from Primative chaos to the Fall of Man, and ducks the question. Says it has never been studied. If you have done so it is unknown to me. AS a fool rushing in where angels fear to tread I will start something in the first place I think the sound value of the first syllable is like O in Son- that it should be Mun-hegan- early spellings justify their view. Then follows the (h)egan which appears in many Maine names - Sebascodegan, Reskohegan, Mach/egon/. It occurs elsewhere in New England as Kepigon on Martha's Vineyard. I suggest it means - an enclosed place, (artificial?) like a palisade, fro, Ighan or Egon. The prefix "Mun" I suggest