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Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892

"Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy"

"
Then a Nevada paper chronicles the departure of a mining party from
Reno: "The toughest set of roosters that ever shook the dust off any
town left Reno yesterday for the new mining district of Cornucopia.
They came here from Virginia. Among the crowd were four New York
cock-fighters, two Chicago murderers, three Baltimore bruisers,
one Philadelphia prize-fighter, four San Francisco hoodlums, three
Virginia beats, two Union Pacific roughs, and two check guerrillas."
Among the far-west newspapers, have been, or are, _The Fairplay_
(Colorado) _Flume, The Solid Muldoon_, of Ouray, _The Tombstone
Epitaph_, of Nevada, _The Jimplecute_, of Texas, and _The Bazoo_, of
Missouri. Shirttail Bend, Whiskey Flat, Puppytown, Wild Yankee Ranch,
Squaw Flat, Rawhide Ranch, Loafer's Ravine, Squitch Gulch, Toenail
Lake, are a few of the names of places in Butte county, Cal.
Perhaps indeed no place or term gives more luxuriant illustrations
of the fermentation processes I have mention'd, and their froth and
specks, than those Mississippi and Pacific coast regions, at the
present day. Hasty and grotesque as are some of the names, others are
of an appropriateness and originality unsurpassable. This applies to
the Indian words, which are often perfect. Oklahoma is proposed
in Congress for the name of one of our new Territories. Hog-eye,
Lick-skillet, Rake-pocket and Steal-easy are the names of some Texan
towns. Miss Bremer found among the aborigines the following
names: _Men's_, Horn-point; Round-Wind; Stand-and-look-out;
The-Cloud-that-goes-aside; Iron-toe; Seek-the-sun; Iron-flash;
Red-bottle; White-spindle; Black-dog; Two-feathers-of-honor;
Gray-grass; Bushy-tail; Thunder-face; Go-on-the-burning-sod;
Spirits-of-the-dead.


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