FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   >>  
vision in which he foresaw that when the last remnant of the structure had fallen, and not one stone had been left on another, the Indian race would vanish from this continent. The work of its extermination seems, indeed, to have begun with the possession of the coast by white men, and the fate of the aborigines is easily read. ORIGIN OF A NAME The origin of many curious geographical names has become an object of mere surmise, and this is the more the pity because they suggest such picturesque possibilities. We would like to know, for instance, how Burnt Coat and Smutty Nose came by such titles. The conglomerate that strews the fields south of Boston is locally known as Roxbury pudding-stone, and, according to Dr. Holmes, the masses are fragments of a pudding, as big as the State-house dome, that the family of a giant flung about, in a fit of temper, and that petrified where it fell. But that would have been called pudding-stone, anyway, from its appearance. The circumstance that named the reef of Norman's Woe has passed out of record, though it is known that goodman Norman and his son settled there in the seventeenth century. It is Longfellow who has endowed the rock with this legend, for he depicts a wreck there in the fury of a winter storm in 1680--the wreck of the Hesperus, Richard Norman, master, from which went ashore next morning the body of an unknown and beautiful girl, clad in ice and lashed to a broken mast. But one of the oddest preservations of an apposite in name is found in the legend of Point Judith, Rhode Island, an innocent _double entendre_. About two centuries ago a vessel was driving toward the coast in a gale, with rain and mist. The skipper's eyes were old and dim, so he got his daughter Judith to stand beside him at the helm, as he steered the vessel over the foaming surges. Presently she cried, "Land, father! I see land!" "Where away?" he asked. But he could not see what she described, and the roar of the wind drowned her voice, so he shouted, "Point, Judith! Point!" The girl pointed toward the quarter where she saw the breakers, and the old mariner changed his course and saved his ship from wreck. On reaching port he told the story of his daughter's readiness, and other captains, when they passed the cape in later days, gave to it the name of Point Judith. MICAH ROOD APPLES In Western Florida they will show roses to you that drop red dew, like blood, and have been doing
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   >>  



Top keywords:
Judith
 

Norman

 

pudding

 

passed

 

vessel

 
legend
 
daughter
 

skipper

 
entendre
 

apposite


preservations

 

beautiful

 
unknown
 

oddest

 
lashed
 

broken

 
centuries
 
morning
 

Island

 

innocent


double

 

driving

 

captains

 

readiness

 

reaching

 

APPLES

 

Western

 

Florida

 

ashore

 

father


foaming

 
surges
 

Presently

 

quarter

 

breakers

 
mariner
 

changed

 
pointed
 

shouted

 
drowned

steered
 

object

 
surmise
 
geographical
 

origin

 

curious

 
Smutty
 

instance

 
picturesque
 

suggest