102 NATURAL HISTORY AND TOPOGRAPHY OF GROTON, MASS. 



town, New Hampshire. If seen from a great distance, these 

 separate hills appear to run into one continuous range extend- 

 ing to the Merrimack River. 



The next reference to the Wachusett Mountain is also found 

 in Winthrop's Journal, under the date of March 7, 1643-4, 

 where the writer speaks of " two sachems near the great hill 

 to the west called Wachusett," showing that it was then known 

 to the English by the present name. 



The word " Wachusett " is of Indian origin, and signifies 

 near the hill or vioiintain. " Wadchu " in the Indian language 

 means hill or mouiitain, and the affix " sett " means near ox in 

 the neighborhood of. The Indians of course applied the word 

 to the region, but the early settlers soon restricted its mean- 

 ing to the mountain itself. The name of the Commonwealth 

 is substantially the same word, with the prefixed adjective 

 " Massa," which means great. In the course of time, with 

 the natural elision of syllables used in speech, the word has 

 become " Massachusetts." The same adjective is found in 

 the composition of" Massapaug," well known in Groton as the 

 name of a pond near its eastern boundary. "Paug" is the 

 Indian word for pond ; so that " Massapaug " in the Indian 

 tongue means great pond; and "Massapaug Pond" is a 

 duplicated expression. 



The Indians had no written language, and the early settlers 

 took the geographical names of the country, by sound, and 

 wrote them down accordingly, without knowing their meaning. 

 This was phonetic spelling, pure and simple, and explains the 

 diversified orthography of Indian words which is so common. 

 With an unwritten language the Indians themselves had no 

 proper standard of pronunciation ; and their own usage, there- 

 fore, in regard to the same words often varied at different 

 times. A peculiarity of their language was that the geo- 

 graphical names, as applied by them to hills, mountains, 

 ponds, rivers, etc., were common nouns and had a meaning, 

 but the same words, when used by the English, in the 

 course of time became proper nouns and lost their original 

 significance. 



In " A Dictionary of Altitudes in the United States " pub- 



