ral rivers in England with the name of _Avon_, and this is an old
British name. The rivers _Usk_, _Esk_, and _Ouse_ were all christened
by the Britons, and all these names come from a British word meaning
"water." Curiously enough, the name _whisky_ comes from the same word.
From all these different ways in which places have got their names we
get glimpses of past history, and history helps us to understand the
stories that these old names tell us.

CHAPTER IV.

NEW NAMES FOR NEW PLACES.

We have seen in how many different ways many of the old places of this
world got their names. Some names go so far back that no one knows
what is their meaning, or how they first came to be used. But we know
that a great part of the world has only been discovered since the
fifteenth century, and that a great part of what was already known has
only been colonized in modern times.

With the discovery of the New World and the colonization of the Dark
Continent and other far-off lands, a great many new names were
invented. We could almost write a history of North or South America
from an explanation of their place-names.

In learning the geography of South America we notice the beautiful
Spanish names of most of the places. The reason for this is that it
was the Spaniards who colonized South America in the sixteenth
century. Very little of this continent now belongs to Spain, but in
those days Spain was the greatest country in Europe. The proud and
brave Spanish adventurers were in those days sailing over the seas
and founding colonies, just as the English sailors of Queen Elizabeth
soon began to do in North America.

Let us look at some of these names--_Los Angelos_ ("The Angels"),
_Santa Cruz_ ("The Holy Cross"), _Santiago_ ("St. James"), all names
of saints and holy things. Any one who knew no history at all might
guess, from the number of places with Spanish names spread over South
America, that it was the Spaniards who colonized this land. He would
also guess that the Spaniards in those days must have been a very
great nation indeed. And he would be right.

He would guess, too, that the Spaniards had clung passionately to the
Catholic religion. Here, again, he would be right. Any great
enthusiasm will make a nation great, and the Spaniards in the
sixteenth century were filled with a great love for the old Church
against which the new Protestantism was fighting. The Pope looked upon
Spain as the great bulwark of Cathol