# Myths and Legends Beyond Our Borders/Some Names

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SOME NAMES
IN the names of places we often find as great a could go to the bottom of the mystery we might discover an incident or a faith of some account; in fact, much history has been written in names, while a public temper or humor is often disclosed in the same way. In eastern Canada all the saints in the calendar, and some who do not belong there, have fastened their names to the French villages, recording the occupancy and rule of the land by a religious folk. If we go west and find places called Hell Roaring Creek, Last Chance, Hardscrabble, Silver King, Whoop-Up, and that sort of thing, it indicates a people whose motives are less religious than material, and who succeed in getting fun out of difficulties. The devil has fared in the West as well as the saints in the East, in which more peaceful district others have had in a few cases to take the brunt of his unpopularity, for Devil's Head, New Brunswick, was named for a settler named Duval. Hard luck for Duval! Old France and ​Old England have often been drawn upon, while the strong, quaint, often musical speech of the aborigines is perpetuated in too few lakes and rivers. Anglicism of names sometimes results oddly, as in the conversion of Chapeau Dieu to Shapody Mountain, and of Portage du Rat to Rat Portage. Though the two latter are the same, yet locally the French rat stands for muskrat, and the same word in English does not. Montreal is the Royal Mountain; Smoky Cape, or Cap Enfumé, is so called because of the mists that toss about it; Quebec is "Quel bec!" ("What a cape!") that being the exclamation of its discoverers (unless it is true that there is an Indian word, Quebego, meaning narrow river), while at Ha-ha Bay the Frenchmen laughed with joy at sight of the green expanse after their voyage up the Saguenay. We have forgotten what haunted Bleak House, where the commandant of Quebec once lived, but we know that Sault de Matelot, in the same city, is so called because a sailor, who had been relieving at a tavern "the enforced horrors of a long sobriety," leaped off to escape a troop of yellow giraffes and pink monkeys with horses' tails.
Lachine, or La Chine, means China, because the St. Lawrence was first thought to be a northwest passage to that land. This is the old name, but in other cases such changes have been made by later comers that it is hard to recognize the originals. The Portuguese Baya Fondo is not so different from ​the Bay of Fundy, the Shubenacadie, haunted by ghosts of fishermen caught in its tides, is heard under the common "Shippensckety," we guess that Blow-me-down is Blomidon, but who would suppose that Acadie was the Micmac word Quoddy? In fact, some believe that the name was borrowed from the other side of the sea, to denote the discovery of a New-World Arcadia.
The turbulent Newfoundlanders, who, being mostly Celtic, are thorns in the sides of the Canadian and English governments, have not recorded in their names the fires, the riots, the shootings, the lurings to wreck, the extermination of the Boethuks, or other incidents that have made the history of their island exciting, and the traveller wonders what may have been the original meanings of Exploits, Topsail, Killigrew's, Joe Batt's Arm, Seldom-come-by, Little-seldom-come-by, Fogo, Brigus, Hell Hill, Quiddy Viddy, Bally Haly, Maggoty Cove, Heart's Content, Bay of Despair, Dead Islands, and Rose Blanche.
Because Cartier happened to reach it in a time of sultry weather, we have the Baie des Chaleurs. There is little doubt that Stanstead, province of Quebec, is named after one of the three Stansteads in England, yet it is alleged that the surveyors who laid off the township were a drunken lot, and were often heard calling to their chainmen, and even to their theodolites, to "stan' stead" (stand steady), when it was their own legs that were out of plumb. ​And, apropos of thirst, More-Rum Brook, in Yarmouth County, Nova Scotia, has been a name of dread to prohibitionists, and is likely to be changed to Smith's "Crick" as soon as they can acquire sufficient influence, as in its present form it is wicked. Sundry years ago, when a surveyor was going over this region, his chain-bearers and others constantly clamored for strong waters, finally refusing to budge until they had some grog. The surveyor had sent to a distance for the rum, and told his reprehensible associates to drink from the brook until they got it. That is how it came to be More-Rum Brook.
In upper Lake Huron lies the chain of Manitoulins, large islands now occupied by graziers and farmers, but formerly a favorite visiting-place of the Indians. They never abode there long, for they looked on the islands as dwelling-places of the spirits of the earth, water, and air, spirits that required reverence and propitiation, and they dared not attempt familiarity. Manitoulin means spirit-land, or land of the gods. Manitoba, likewise, preserves the name of the Manitou, or Great Spirit. That name applied originally to Lake Manitoba, whose waters the Indians believed to be stirred by the spirit.
Moose Jaw is only a contraction of "Place-where-the-white-man-mended-his-cart-wheel-with-the-jawbone-of-a-moose," which was thought to be too numerous a name for busy people. Calling River commemorates an echo, and Pipestone River ​refers to the material from which the red men make their ceremonial pipes. Pie Island and the Sleeping Giant, known to voyagers on Lake Superior, have reference only to the outlines of those heights, but the Petits Ecrits was so called because of the picture-writings found on the face of the rock, representing men, animals, and canoes cut in the lichen. West of the Wild-Cat Hills Ghost River flows past the column-like mountain of Devil's Head. Old maps call the river Dead Man's Creek. The Assiniboins are responsible for both names, since they declare it to be haunted by the ghost of an old chief who rides up and down its banks on a horse. Devil's Lake, near Banff, was a resort of malignant spirits, and Cascade River, its outlet, was the scene of a murder in which the victim's head was struck from his shoulders. A cave on the Bow near Canmore is haunted by a spirit, and is held in much regard by the natives. Near Banff is Stony Squaw Mountain, thus called from the tradition that when an old man of the Stony tribe lay ill and helpless in his lodge at the foot of this height, his old wife took his weapons and did a man's work as hunter, killing enough big-horns to feed them both until he recovered. Dr. James Hector, exploring the Canadian Rockies in 1857, was kicked by his horse in the shadow of Mount Stephen. Hence we have Kicking Horse Pass. The name Wapta, applied to the stream that flows through it, means only river. Wait-a-Bit Creek ​was so called by the first explorers, who were constantly fetched up with a short turn by a brier that grows thickly along its shores. When caught by the thorns, the victims called to their companions to "Wait a bit." The Arctic-looking Hermit Mountain on the north side of Rogers' Pass takes its name from a shape of stone far up under the sky. It looks like a cowled hermit talking to a dog. Close by is Cheops, recalling the Egyptian pyramid by its form as well as its name. Mount Grizzly explains itself, and Asulkan means wild goat.
Sibilants multiply as we near the Pacific, for the Siwash—probably a corruption of Sauvage—intersperse many s's in their weak, choking, clicking language, as we find in Spuzzum, Spatsum, Scuzzy, Snohomish, Squallyamish, Shuswap, Sicamous, Spallumsheen, Sumas, Skagit, Similkameen, Osyoos, Spokane, Semiamoo, Swinonish, Stillaguamish, Nooksak, and Snoqualmie. These uncouth names often have agreeable meanings, however. Lee's Post, on Pincher Creek, suffered so from the cold that its name came to be Freeze Out. Slide-Out, on Belly River, was convenient to hiding-places to which traders in unlawful whiskey "slid out" when the mounted police approached, and at Stand-Off the traders kept a band of marauding Indians at bay. Polly Cow's Island, in Katchewanook Lake, is named for an Indian girl who is buried there. Handsome Jack, an Otonabee River Indian, had courted her, but, believing that she was not strong ​enough to do his housework, he married a more buxom damsel, and Polly pined into her grave.
Juan de Fuca, the old Greek pilot, found the strait that bears his name in 1592, but for a century or more thereafter this region was half mythical. Bacon thought it a safe place for his Atlantis, and Swift for his land of giants, Brobdingnag. The old Indian, Spanish, and Russian names were complacently wiped off from the map by Mr. Vancouver, who fixed his own name on a great island, while Puget Sound and Mount Baker celebrate a couple of his shipmates. Mount Tacoma was called Mount Rainier to flatter an Englishman who never saw it. Captain Gray, of Boston, was leaving Puget Sound as Vancouver entered it in the Discovery, but any names that the Americans appended to the islands, capes, and mountains were not allowed to stay.