both the 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, uniting 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.
