Page:Don Coronado through Kansas.djvu/14

SPANISH GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. 3 of "fire water." The following incident demon- strates the appetite' which the Indian has for whisky: Several of them were partaking from a bottle when one averred, "he wished his throat was a mile long so he could taste it while running down." The world's history is a marvelous thing. Let us view events from an American standpoint. The Spaniards discovered North and South America; conquered and colonized a large part of it, and to this day the original names given various regions still retain them. B. g.. Vol. I, page 400, 14th Annual Keports of the Bureau of Ethnology, by the Smith- sonian Institution of the United States, contains a map published in Spain in the year 1597; and this is how California is speUed: ^ "CALI-FORNIA. " Florida, the land of flowers, was so designated by Ponce de Leon in 1521. Colorado received its name in 1540 by the explorer Coronado. He named the river thus because of its reddish tinge. Montana was a province of Peru when Pizarro conquered that country. Argentine, or La Plata, so christened in 1516 by De Solis because the natives had such an abundance of silver ornaments. Venezuela was dis- covered by Columbus in 1498. A strange village was found built over a lake upon piles, and the country W|is so namcid, meaning little Venice. It is a conservative estimate to state that one- fourth of the American Continent will retain its Spanish names to the end of time; and when it comes to the Oceans, the Pacific being the largest and the river Mississippi the longest, and the thousands of provinces and cities which abound in geography, to