Moosilaukc.
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��ABOUT THE NAMES OF MOOSILAUKE, AND OF SOME OTHER
PLACES.
By William Little.
1. MoosiLAUKE. Two years later, 179.3, he pul)lisliecl This mountain is a huge mass of his History of New Hampshire, and in rock 4,<S11 feet high. It presents a Vol. IH, p. 32, he says, in descrihing grand appearance from whatever the mountains of the state,— Thirty point viewed. From the east or west milfs ""'th of this [Grand Monad- it shows a south peak, a high crest, "<>ck] lies Sunapee Mountain, and and a blue dome, lying almost in a forty-eight miles farther in the same north and south line. The peak and direction is ' Mooshelock.'" the crest are bald : the blue dome is These are all the authors we have covered with a dense forest of Hr. met who mention Mooselock or Moo- The correct way of spelling the shelock previous to 1800. After this name isMoosilauke. Its meaning and ^^^^ reference to this mountain is origin have been the subjects" of some mn^'li more frequent ; and some writ- discussion. We shall try to state, ers make a farther change in the or- with pel haps a few digressions, how thography of its name, it has been si)elled, what it means. Tlie first to do this was Dr. Dwight, and what has been said of its origin, once president of Yale college. In The first mention of this mountain we his "• Travels," written about 1803, have met — we wish we could find an Vol. I, p. 31, he says, — "The principal earlier one — is by Samuel Holland, eminences in the White Mountains Esq. He was the surveyor of the are Monadnock, in Jaffrey and Dub- King's woods, northern New Hamp- lin : Sunai)ee, in Fishersfield, twenty- shire, in 1 773-'74 ; and on his map of seven miles east of Cliarlestown ; the stat^, published in 1784, appears Mooshelock or Moosehillock, eight " Mooselock Mount"" (Moo-se-lock). miles from Haverhill," etc. It is located in what was the town of But Lewis, in his map of New Fairfield, a j)art of which is now Hampshire, Phila., 1804, in Arrow- Woodstock. From whom he learned smith & Lewis's General Atlas, seems the name and its orthograp>hy, or to j^refer '* Mooshelock m," and thus whether or not he ever knew its mean- spells it.
ing, we should certainly like to know. D. R. Preston, also, in his '■'• Won- In 1791 Dr. Belknap, historian of ders of Creation," Boston, 1807, on New Hampshire, published a map of page 27, copying from Dr. Belknap, the state to illustrate his forthcoming speaks of " Mooshelock " mountain, history. On it, in bold round print, Farmer & Moore, in their Gazet- is " Mooshelock M." (Moo-she-lock), teer of New Hampshire, 1823, the an /t having been put in the second best work of the kind of this state, syllable of the name as Holland say, on page 190, — " Moosehillock, or spelled it. Why he changed the Mooshelock, is a noble and lofty em- spelling of the word, or what the inence in the S. E. part of Coventry name means, he does not tell us. [Benton], and ranks amongst the
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