Before revision: The decay of their speech went on for a long time before civilized men had occasion to note the tribe , and the name by which the people and the mountains are now known is, not improbably, the bare remnant of the original word, which may very well have been something like Amerristiquiqque shortened successively to Amerristique and Amerrisque.
After revision: The decay of their speech went on for a long time before contact with Europeans , and the name by which the people and the mountains are now known is, not improbably, the bare remnant of the original word, which may very well have been something like Amerristiquiqque shortened successively to Amerristique and Amerrisque.