ington are The Little Dalles, and in
Oregon, The Dalles; and in Utah, the Du Chasne River. Thus we have
tracked the French across the continent, from the St. Lawrence to the
Pacific. What travelers they were! But southward, along the great
River, there we come, not into scattering communities, but into a
veritable New France. Their names monopolize geography. Scan a map of
Louisiana, and see how populous it is with French patronymic locatives.
New Orleans (pronounce it New Or-le-ans, and hear French pride rising
in the word) is there, and St. John Baptist; Baton Rouge, and
Thibodeaux, and Prudhomme, and Assumption, and Calcasieu, and Saint
Landry, and Grand Coteau, and scores besides, tell how surely Louisiana
was a land peopled from the French kingdom and for the French king,
and, as those who discovered and those who settled fondly thought,
forever. So evanescent are the plans of men! The word "bayou," so
common in the regions neighboring the Mississippi, is a French word.
Prairie, butte, bayou, three terms in perpetual geography of this
Western World, are bequests of a departed people. The farthest west
and south I have tracked the French discoverer in a name is in
Nebraska, where they are identified in the name of the River Platte.
La Plata is the Spanish form, as will be seen to the south--say in
Texas--and here in the north is the French imprint in Platte, that wide
but shallow stream, flowing over its beds of shifting sands. Verily,
the French _regime_ in America was more than fiction. The names it
left will keep an eternal remembrance.

And the English came, and seeded down a land with their ideas,
language, laws, literature, political inclinations, and homestead
names. Those early emigrants, though refugees from oppressive misrule,
loved England notwithstanding. Of her they dreamed, to her they clung,
from her they imported sedate and musical names for their new homes
this side the sea. New England was the special bailiwick for such
sowing, though Virginia partakes of this seed and harvest. The rich
old English names, having in them so much history and memory,--how good
to see them on our soil! Those early colonists were not original, nor
particularly imaginative, but loyal lovers they were; and to give to
their home here the name attaching to their home there was pledge of
fidelity to dear old England. In Virginia, one will find what he can
not find in New England, namely, assertions of loyalty