from the far corners of the world. Any of
these people (we met some) can tell you that "Sagg" Harbor or the
"Harbor of Sagg" (it's dropped the "g," as lots of smart people do in
England!) came from the word Sagma, or chief. Jack likes to believe
that, just as he likes to find a romantic connection between Sagma,
chief, or great man, and saga, or great song. But there are other less
picturesque suggestions. If you'd seen what a fine old place Sag Harbor
is, you'd hate to think it owed its name to a mere ground-nut the
Indians called "Sagabon," or, still worse, "sagga," "thick-growing,"
which these ground-nuts were: "tubers big as eggs and good as potatoes,
40 on a string, not two inches underground."

Poor Jack simply stubbed his brain against the hardest of these Indian
words at first, but now he has developed an almost inconvenient passion
for them. When he looks at me steadily, and I think he is about to
exclaim a sonnet to my eyebrow, he bursts out: "Tomahawk comes from
'tumetah-who-uf,' he who cuts off with a blow"; or, "Syosset _sounds_
Indian, but is Dutch in origin. It came from 'Schouts'--'sheriff'"; and
so on. I never know when I'm safe, but I'm as pleased as he is with the
old Long Island place-names, English as well as Indian. Lots of them
seem to tell as much about their meanings in a few syllables as an
intimate chapter of history; Forge River, Sachem's House, Canoe Place,
Baiting Hollow, Execution Rocks, Harbor Hill, South Manor, Bethpage,
and a whole pink and green mapful of others. Of course Jamesport was
named after horrid old King James the Second, when the Island was under
English rule; and every governor and grandee must have a place named
after himself! But those names I've jotted down do call up pictures of
life in the first settlers' days, don't they?

I suppose while people are alive, they never realize how romantic their
own times are! They always look back. What kind of creature will sigh
for the far-off quaintness of _our_ days and make fun of our spelling?
Those colonists who came in droves from France and Holland and England,
to chase away Indians as dawn chases away the shadows of night, would
have been surprised if they'd heard their times called romantic, yet how
thrilling they seem to Jack and me, as we repeat the old names they
gave, and see the "havens" which welcomed them in the New World!

If we hadn't felt already that Long Island was one big haven, we should
have begun to feel i