may be accepted as a fact that the Indians had little of poetry in their" composition, and that, while many of their terms can be made poetical, they were originally of the plainest statement

and simplest descriptive equivalents. a large hill or a small one, a small

A black hill or a red hill, stream of water or a larger

one, or one which was muddy or stony, a field of maize, or of leeks, overhanging rocks or dashing waterfalls (patternack),

almost invariably denoting some physical peculiarity, or some Their commemorative terms were few. product of the soil.

Manhattan has already been explained as signifying island, " the to the its as

or, in

plural form, islands; applied people, The extreme point of land between people of the islands." the junction of East and North rivers, of which the battery is

now a part, was called Kapsee, and is still known to many per sons as the Copsie point. The term appears to have denoted a " safe place of landing," formed by eddy waters. Sappokanikan, a point of land on the Hudson below Greenwich avenue,

supposed to indicate, and oumgan, a portage.

is

" the

carrying place," from sipon^ river,

The Indians carried their canoes either

over the point or across the island to East river, at this place, to save the trouble of paddling down to the foot of the island and

then up the East river.

(O* Callaghari).

called Naghtognk, according to Benson.

Corlear's

hook was

The name is also given