and especially are they disguised by the varying powers of the German, the French, and the English alphabets in which they were written by educated as well as by uneducated scribes, and by traders who were certainly not very familiar with the science of representing spoken sounds by letters. In one instance the same name appears in forty-nine forms by different writers. Many names, however, have been recognized under missionary standards and their meanings satisfactorily ascertained, aided by the features of the localities to which they were applied; the latter, indeed, contributing very largely to their interpretation. Probably the reader will find geographical descriptions that do not apply to the places where the name is now met. The early settlers made many transfers as well as extensions of names from a specific place to a large district of country. It must be remembered that original applications were specific to the places which they described even though they were generic and applicable to any place where the same features were referred to. The locatives in Indian deeds and original patents are the only guide to places of original application, coupled with descriptive features where they are known. No vocabularies of the dialects spoken in the lower valley of the Hudson having been preserved, the vocabularies of the Upper-Unami and the Minsi-Lenape, or Delaware tongues on the south and west, and the Natick, or Massachusetts, on the north and east, have been consulted for explanations by comparative inductive methods, and also orthographies in other places, the interpretations of which have been established by competent linguists. In all cases where the meaning of terms has been particularly questioned, the best expert authority has been consulted. While positive accuracy is not asserted in any case, it is believed that in most cases the interpretations which have been given may be accepted as substantially correct. There is no poetry in them--no "glittering waterfalls," no "beautiful rivers," no "smile of the Great Spirit," no "Holy place of sacred feasts and dances," but plain terms that have their equivalents in our own language for a small hill, a high hill, a mountain, a brook, a creek, a kill, a river, a pond, a lake, a swamp, a large stone, a place of small stones, a split rock, a meadow, or whatever the objective feature may have been as recognized by the Indian. Many of them were particular names in the form of verbals indicating a place where the action of the verb was performed; occasionally the name of a sachem is given as that of his place of residence or the stream on which he resided, but all are from generic roots.