Things Seen in Holland
up the Connecticut River, entered Narragansett Bay, and sailed past Cape Cod as far as Boston Harbour. He gave his name to a large island which he visited, and which is known to the present day as Block Island.
The names of places tell eloquent stories, and indicate fords, castles, dams, havens, and churches; drecht, burg, kerk, bosch, hout, heiden, poort, and haven, are respectively ford, burgh or borough, church, wood, timber, heath, port, and haven. Dordrecht is the “tower of the ford”; Holland, woodland; Het Loo, the grove, the affix loo being found in many other names of places throughout the country and in Belgium—Waterloo, for instance. Veen, or ven, means peat-bog, and is coupled with loo in Venlo; and we find the two words coupled again in Louvain, or Loo-Veen, in Belgium.
212
