Got it in One

I was sitting idly in my chair, looking for ways to kill time while the appliance repairmen worked on our fridge and dryer, when I decided to check out the online world geography challenge, Worldle, where players are challenged to identify the border map of a different country each day. In general, I'm not that accomplished at the game. Beyond the obvious ones, it usually takes me three or four guesses to narrow it down. And if it's a Pacific island? No way. So today, when presented with something that resembled a sea cucumber with a posse of amoebas, I surprised myself when I correctly recognized it as New Caledonia.

Later, I was trying to figure out how I knew that, and at first I considered an association to Little Caledonia, a tiny Scots-influenced gift shop in Georgetown that closed in 2002 after 50 years in business. They carried all sorts of pretty little knick-knacks and were always good for a last-minute Christmas or hostess gift. In 1988, in an article called "The Right Stuff and a Bit of the Wrong Stuff, Too," The Washington Post Magazine stated that "Walking into Little Caledonia is like entering Charles Dickens' Old Curiosity Shop."

But the map itself of New Caledonia looked so familiar to me that I felt it was more than just the name that jogged my memory. Then I remembered reading the novel Miss Benson's Beetle, the story of a teacher and amateur entomologist in post-WW II London who sets off to find the Golden Beetle of New Caledonia. It is a quirky tale, but one that had me studying the map of that French territory for a few days after I finished.

But how was a French territory named after Scotland, you may wonder. James Cook dubbed the island in 1774 because, to him, its landscape resembled the Scottish Highlands. The indigenous name of the island is Kanaky, however, from the Polynesian word "kanaka," meaning human. I like that better, but what are the chances of a shop named Little Kanaky ever opening in Georgetown?