ioo The National Geographic Magazine 



types of civilization — oriental and oc- 

 cidental — and by doing so to bring forth 

 a new type of civilization, in which 

 the culture and science of the two hemi- 

 spheres will meet, not in conflict, but in 

 harmony, so as to enable us to share the 

 inheritance of Christian religion, ori- 



ental philosophy, Greek art, Roman 

 law, and modern science. 



Thus we hope in the course of the 

 twentieth century to have at least one 

 fruit out of our earnest and persevering 

 efforts to contribute to the progressfof 

 mankind. 



GEOGRAPHIC NAMES IN THE UNITED 

 STATES AND THE STORIES 

 THEY TELL 



By R. H. Whitbeck, New Jersey State Normal School 



THE geographical names of a 

 country tell much of its history. 

 Each race that inhabits a region 

 gives its own names to mountains, rivers, 

 and lakes, or adopts names previously 

 given. A stronger people may, in later 

 centuries, destroy or drive out every 

 member of the earlier race. The latter 

 may hand down no written sentence of 

 its own history, yet some record of the 

 race will be preserved in the geograph- 

 ical names which survive. The Romans 

 were not able to vanquish the Britons. 

 Comparatively little of Roman civiliza- 

 tion penetrated the British Isles. The 

 fact that the Roman ' ' conquest ' ' was 

 little more than a military occupancy is 

 attested by the geographic names which 

 the Romans left, most of which termi- 

 nate in -caster or -Chester, from the 

 Roman military word castra, a camp. 

 Each wave of invasion — Roman, Angle, 

 Danish, Saxon, or Norman — left its 

 story in the names which it gave, and 

 which remain like the stranded boulders 

 of a glacier long since melted away. 



The varied history through which dif- 

 ferent sections of the United States have 

 passed is told in the varied nature of its 

 geographic names. The red man built 

 no cities in whose ruins we may read the 

 story of his past, for the Indian was not 



a builder. He has left no roads or for- 

 tresses or castles ; his methods of warfare 

 called rather for a forest trail and an 

 ambuscade, and these leave no ruins. 

 Were a traveler to examine every valley 

 and hill, every pass and ford and moun- 

 tain from Maine to Florida, he would 

 now find few traces of the red man in 

 any material thing which survives him. 

 But on every hand he would find the 

 record of Indian occupancy in the names 

 of rivers, creeks, and lakes in which the 

 red man fished and on whose shores he 

 camped and hunted and warred. The 

 mountains seem to have had little at- 

 traction for the Indian, and it is seldom 

 that a mountain bears an Indian name. 

 The red man cared little for the bays 

 and inlets along the coast ; he made little 

 use of the oifshore islands; hence it is 

 that among the hundreds of local names 

 given to islands and bays along the coast 

 of America one seldom meets an Indian 

 word. But the streams and lakes were 

 the Indian's delight. On their surfaces 

 or along their banks most of his time 

 was spent. Along their sides ran his 

 trails and on their shores stood his vil- 

 lages. Every considerable stream and 

 every lake had its name. When the 

 pale face came he found the lake and the 

 stream already named. When he traded 



