hallowed by its associations, only the etymologist can detect the
primitive 'bitterness.' Boston is no longer 'St. Botolph's Town;'
there is no 'Castle of the inhabitants of Hwiccia'
(_Hwic-wara-ceaster_) to be seen at Worcester; and Hartford is neither
'the ford of harts,' (which the city seal has made it,) nor 'the red
ford,' which its name once indicated.

In the same way, many Indian geographical names, after their adoption
by Anglo-American colonists, became unmeaning sounds. Their original
character was lost by their transfer to a foreign tongue. Nearly all
have suffered some mutilation or change of form. In many instances,
hardly a trace of true original can be detected in the modern name.
Some have been separated from the localities to which they belonged,
and assigned to others to which they are etymologically inappropriate.
A mountain receives the name of a river; a bay, that of a cape or a
peninsula; a tract of land, that of a rock or a waterfall. And so
'Massachusetts' and 'Connecticut' and 'Narragansett' have come to be
_proper names_, as truly as 'Boston' and 'Hartford' are in their
cis-Atlantic appropriation.

The Indian languages tolerated no such 'mere marks.' Every name
_described_ the locality to which it was affixed. The description was
sometimes _topographical_; sometimes _historical_, preserving the
memory of a battle, a feast, the dwelling-place of a great sachem, or
the like; sometimes it indicated one of the _natural products_ of the
place, or the _animals_ which resorted to it; occasionally, its
_position_ or _direction_ from a place previously known, or from the
territory of the nation by which the name was given,--as for example,
'the land on the other side of the river,' 'behind the mountain,' 'the
east land,' 'the half-way place,' &c. The same name might be, in fact