By dialectic exchange of n and r, it may be read Wa-wa-nuwas-ink, "At a place w^here the stream winds, bends, twists, or eddies around a point or promontory." This explanation is fully sustained by the topography. Hon. Th. E. Benedict writes me: "The Rondout at that point (the corner of the Anna Beake Patent) winds around at almost a right angle. At the bend is a deep pool with an eddying current, caused by a rock in the bank below the bend. The bend is caused by a point of high land. It is a promontory seventy-five feet high." The inquiry as to the meaning of the name need not be pursued further. The frequently quoted interpretation, "Blackbird's Nest," is puerile. (See Wawayanda.) Honk, now so written as the name of the falls on Rondout Creek at Napanock, appears first in Rochester town records, in 1704, Hoonck, as the name of the stream. In the Lowe Patent (1722), the reading is : "Beginning by a Great Fall called Honeck." The Rochester record is probably correct in the designation of the name as that of the creek, indicating that the original was Hannek (Del.),

Hudson's river on the west. 167

meaning, "A rapid stream," or a stream flowing down descending slopes." As now written the name means nothing unless read from Dutdh Honck, ''Home, a standing post or place of beginning," but that could not have been the derivative for the name was in place before the falls became the boundmark. The familiar interpretation: "From Honck (Nar.), 'Goose' -- 'Wild-goose Falls,' " is worthless. The local word for Goose was Kaak. The falls descend two hundred feet, of which sixty is in a single cataract -- iprimarily a wild, dashing water-fall. Lackawack appears of record as the name of a stream in Sullivan County, otherwise known as the West Branch of Rondout Creek, and also as the name of the valley through which it passes.