NATURE NAMES IN AMERICA 67 



emptying into their tidal waters. The mouths of these are often deep 

 enough to make a shelter for vessels, and they were undoubtedly so 

 used by the early settlers. Hence the term ' creek ' and its extension 

 to the entire stream and to other similar streams far inland through- 

 out a wide extent of country. 



In portions of the middle Atlantic region the word ' cripple ' was 

 formerly used for dense, low-lying thickets, especially in wet ground. 

 As a boy I occasionally heard it applied in this way, and it is quoted 

 by Murray as occurring in the Penn-Logan Correspondence (1705). 

 None of the dictionaries, however, attempt to trace it back to any 

 dialectic source, nor is it given, with like meaning, in the vocabularies 

 of provincial English. In the dialect of east England ' creeple ' means 

 to compress or squeeze, which might suggest the notion of a thicket. 

 But words were not coined by the early settlers through mere sug- 

 gestion; they had an ample supply for every-day use. This word 

 ' cripple,' from its very local character, is undoubtedly a corruption of 

 the Dutch word ' kreupelbosch,' signifying ' underwood,' the Anglicized 

 form having been shortened by dropping the terminal ' bosch,' which 

 means a wood or forest, and is allied to our now obsolete words, bosky 

 and boscage. ' Kreupel ' is an adjective meaning lame and suggests 

 a creeping or halting mode of progression as in the common use of the 

 English word. One who toils painfully through thickets with much 

 inward, if not with outward, cursings will appreciate this most ex- 

 pressive word borrowed by our English settlers from their Dutch neigh- 

 bors on the Hudson. 



Swamp is more generally used in the United States than in Eng- 

 land. It does not occur in the writings of either Shakespeare or Mil- 

 ton, though some of the minor poets make use of it and it is frequently 

 found in the early descriptions of the colonies. The word implies wet, 

 boggy ground in woods, with rank undergrowth, and is eminently 

 characteristic of the wilder conditions of this country as compared 

 with the more highly cultivated lands of Europe. The settlers, in 

 this instance, had a keen sense of the fitness of the name. They early 

 distinguished the treeless stretches of salt grass along the seacoast and 

 river estuaries by the word marsh. Fen rarely if ever finds its way 

 into American speech and writings, except when used in a poetical 

 sense, as in Longfellow's ' fens of the Dismal Swamp.' Swale appears 

 to have two meanings, a shady spot and a low rise of land. In pro- 

 vincial dialects it means both a vale and a shady place and in North- 

 amptonshire e a gentle rising in the ground.' In the western United 

 States it refers to a boggy depression in a generally level stretch of 

 country, and as a local word in New England it signifies an interval 

 (intervale) or hollow, an umbrageous spot — the haunt of woodcock 

 and other wild folk. Valley has replaced the older ' vale,' which now 

 is found only in the poets' verse, and ' dale ' has likewise suffered a 



