HISTORICAL SKETCH. 3 



these exceptions the Indian names of the region have Ihrgely passed into 

 the possession of hotels and manufacturing- companies. There is, on the 

 other hand, a great poverty of names for all the natural features of the 

 country, "mount" and "hill," "brook" and "river," serving rather indis- 

 criminately for all elevations and streams. One longs for the rich vocabu- 

 lary of Spain and Scotland. Again, the names given are often trivial and 

 constantl}^ repeated. All the larger streams have an east, west, and middle 

 branch, and I remember hearing one brook called the "West Branch of the 

 Middle Branch of the Westfield River." There are several "Swift" rivers, 

 "Roaring" brooks, "Muddy" brooks, and eleven "Mill" rivers (and brooks) 

 within the limits of the three counties. 



The early settlers had little appreciation of the natural beauties of the 

 landscape, or they would not have offended the poetical ear of President 

 Hitchcock by naming our finest peaks Mount Toby and Bull Hill, and 

 have left so many striking objects unnamed entirely. Certain ijeculiarities 

 of nomenclature have grown up in the valley, as the naming of mountain 

 gorges "gutters" (e. g.. Running Gutter in Hatfield and Rattlesna'ke Gutter 

 in Leverett), of alluvial bottoms "meadows" (Hadley Meadows), and of 

 deep narrow valleys "gulfs" (Gulf road in Northfield). 



In 1810 Prof. Benjamin Silliman, of Yale College, ^dsited the lead mine 

 in Southampton at the request of the proprietors and drew up a report for 

 their use. This does not seem to have been printed by them separately, 

 but was published by the author the same year in the second number of 

 Bi-uce's Mineralogical Journal, in which also a paper descriptive of some of 

 the minerals found at the mine was published, from the pen of Dr. William 

 Meade. 



The publication of Cleaveland's Mineralogy (1816) and of the first 

 volume of Silliman's Journal (1818), and the influence of Amos Eaton in 

 Albany, mark the beginning of a strong movement toward the study of 

 mineralogy and geology in New England. The first articles of Edward 

 Hitchcock^ appear in these years, one of them, "with a sketch by Mrs. 

 Hitchcock," marking the beginning of a scientific partnership which was to 

 last so long, and which has made this region classic ground for the geologist. 

 From this time on for a half century nearly all that became known con- 



' Obituary: Proc. Am. Acad. Arts Sci., Boston, Vol.VI, p. 291; Hist. Conn. Valley, 1879, Vol. II, 

 I). 617. 



