Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Nomenclature of Cities and Towns in the United States: Lecture of David Dudley Field, Before the American Geographical Society, February 26, 1885
A great wrong was done to Columbus in giving to the new world which he discovered a name not his, but that of another Italian, his follower. In a vain endeavor to right this wrong the two names have become strangely interchanged and misapplied. We, of this country, are embarrassed by the confusion which follows their use in two different senses. We call our country America, and ourselves Americans, but we sing Hail Colum bia as our national song, while British Columbia flanks us on the northwest and the United States of Colombia face us from the Isthmus of Darien. We visit Niagara and cross from the American to the Canadian side of the great cataract. If we pass beyond the equator, we find a groupof republics, all calling them selves American. An enterprising countryman proposes to build a railway from the northmost to the southmost countries of this hemisphere, and to call it the Three Americas Railway. I make my boast that I am an American, as the Roman boasted that he was a Roman citizen, when the words were potent from one end of the earth to the other, but the Brazilians and the Peruvians claim also to be Americans, and the claim cannot be denied. Our fair countrywomen whose bright faces are seen so often in the streets of Paris and among the monu ments of Rome never think of calling themselves by any other name than American, forgetting that the same belongs also to the matrons of Venezuela and the daughters of Chili. Whether there be now any remedy for these inconveniences I will not under take to say, but I wish that this society, which has earned its title to the highest respect among geographers everywhere, would study the subject and give us the fruit of its studies. The modems, unlike the ancients, seem to have a passion for mis nomer. Why else should the great island of the eastern sea, greatest of all islands, be called New Guinea instead of Papua, or that English island, which pushes its green shores far down towards the Antarctic, be baptized New Zealand instead of Maoria, or worse still, the oldest province of Australia burden itself with the unspeakable name of New South Wales, which by natural sequence would make its people N ew-south-walers! About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
