484 
RURAL HOURS. 
both tlie mother country and her daughter should be wanting in 
what would seem at first a necessary item in national existence, a 
distinctive name. The citizens of the United States are compelled 
to appropriate the title of the continent, and call themselves 
Americans, while the subjects of the British Empire spread the 
name of England over all their possessions ; their sovereign is 
known as Queen of England, in spite of her heralds ; their armies 
are the armies of England, their fleets are English fleets, and the 
people are considered as Englishmen, by their neighbors, whether 
born in the Hebrides, or at Calcutta, at Tipperary, or the Cape 
of Good Hope. 
Fortunately for us, the important natural features of this country 
had already been well named by the red man. The larger rivers, 
for instance, and the lakes, are known by fine Indian words, unit- 
ing both sound and' meaning, for the Indian, the very opposite of 
the Yankee in this respect, never gives an unfitting name to any 
object whatever. As the larger streams of this country are among 
the finest waters on the earth, it is indeed a happy circumstance 
that they should be worthily named ; no words can be better for 
the purpose than those of Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Alabama, 
Altamaha, Monongahela, Susquehannah, Potomac, &c., &c. The 
lakes, almost without an exception, are well named, from the broad 
inland seas of Huron, Michigan, Erie, Ontario, to the lesser sheets 
of water which abound in the northern latitudes of the Union ; it 
is only when they dwindle into the mere pond of a neighborhood, 
and the Indian word has been forgotten, that they are made over 
to the tender mercies of Yankee nomenclature, and show us how 
fortunate it is that we escaped the honor of naming Niagara and 
Ontario. 
