ians said to have once
inhabited that country," who, after great battles fought in
pre-historic times, were driven from it by the all-conquering
Delawares,[23]--is of no value, unless supported by other testimony.
The identification of _Alleghany_ with the Seneca "_De o' na gae no_,
cold water" [or, cold spring,[24]] proposed by a writer in the
_Historical Magazine_ (vol. iv. p. 184), though not apparent at first
sight, might deserve consideration if there were any reason for
believing the name of the river to be of Iroquois origin,--if it were
probable that an Iroquois name would have been adopted by Algonkin
nations,--or, if the word for 'water' or 'spring' could be made, in
any American language, the substantival component of a _river_ name.

[Footnote 19: Grammar of the Lenni-Lenape, transl. by Duponceau, p. 43.
"_Wulit_, good." "_Welsit_ (masc. and fem.), the best." "Inanimate,
_Welhik_, best."]

[Footnote 20: Morgan's League of the Iroquois, p. 436.]

[Footnote 21: Published in London, 1759, and re-printed in Appendix to
Proud's Hist. of Penn., vol. ii. pp. 65-132.]

[Footnote 22: Shea's Early Voyages on the Mississippi, p. 75.

La Metairie's '_Olighinsipou_' suggests another possible derivation
which may be worth mention. The Indian name of the Alleghanies has
been said,--I do not now remember on whose authority,--to mean
'Endless Mountains.' 'Endless' cannot be more exactly expressed in any
Algonkin language than by 'very long' or 'longest,'--in the Delaware,
_Eluwi-guneu_. "The very long or longest river" would be _Eluwi-guneu
sipu_, or, if the words were compounded in one, _Eluwi-gunesipu_.]

[Footnote 23: Paper on Indian names, _ut supra_, p. 367; Historical
Account, &c., pp. 29-32.]

[Footnote 24: Morgan's League of the Iroquois, pp. 466, 468.]

From the river, the name appears to have been transferred by the
English to a range of the "Endless Mountains."

3. NIPPE, NIPI (= _n'pi_; Narr. _nip_; Muhh. _nup_; Abn. and Chip.
_nebi_; Del. _m'bi_;) and its diminutives, _nippisse_ and _nips_, were
employed in compound names to denote WATER, generally, without
characterizing it as 'swift flowing,' 'wave moved,' 'tidal,' or
'standing:' as, for example, in the name of a part of a river, where
the stream widening with diminished current becomes lake-like, or of a
stretch of tide-water inland, forming a bay or cove at a river's
mouth. By the northern Algonkins, it appears to have been used for
'lake,' as i