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manded by Macubah, meaning Captain Vancouver, and the other by Bensins, meaning Lieutenant Broughton. We are presuming that Captain Carver heard the name spoken by the Indians, improbable though that presumption seems to be.
A French word that does not vary much from Oregon in either spelling or sound is Ouragan, meaning "wind storm," "blizzard" or "tornado" and very literally descriptive of climatic conditions in the region where Captain Carver heard from the Indians that the River of the West tooks its rise. There is nothing in Carver's Travels to indicate that he himself could speak French ; some things in fact indicate the contrary. His getting the word from the Indians could have been in- directly through his own French-Canadian voyageur or in- terpreter, or some of the traders who expressed in their own tongue Ouragan (a descriptive name) given by the Indians to the upper reaches of the mythical River of the West. A Spanish word of similar sound and meaning, Huracan, offers room for further speculation along the same line. These suggestions carry Mr. Scott's theory further than he intended perhaps, but meet the conditions of Indian nomenclature ex- pressed in the French instead of the Indian tongue; and also offer a word quite within philological requirements.
The Spanish name Aragon fills the same requirements along with the prevailing association of Spanish discoveries with the mythical river. But the glory of Aragon as a kingdom had long since departed, and as a province of Spain was not then in special prominence, and if that is our source name it was more likely an instance of Carver's ingenuity in writing than of any spoken word he listened to when in the West.
The four principal rivers of the continent of North America were, according to Jonathan Carver, the Mississippi, the Saint Lawrence, the Bourbon and the Oregon or "River of the West ;" all rising very near together in the highlands west of Lake Superior. All the names above mentioned appeared upon maps then known and available except the name Oregon. The river Bourbon was the Nelson River of a few years later and
