[Footnote 76:  Chandler’s Survey and Map of the Mohegan country, 1705.  Compare the Chip. ashawiwi-sitagon, “a place from which water runs two ways,” a dividing ridge or portage between river courses.  Owen’s Geological Survey of Wisconsin, etc., p. 312.]

5.  ASHIM, is once used by Eliot (Cant. iv. 12) for ‘fountain.’  It denoted a spring or brook from which water was obtained for drinking.  In the Abnaki, asiem nebi, ‘il puise de l’eau;’ and ned-a’sihibe, ‘je puise de l’eau, fonti vel fluvio.’ (Rasles.)

Winne-ashim-ut, ‘at the good spring,’ near Romney Marsh, is now Chelsea, Mass.  The name appears in deeds and records as Winnisimmet, Winisemit, Winnet Semet, etc.  The author of the ‘New English Canaan’ informs us (book 2, ch. 8), that “At Weenasemute is a water, the virtue whereof is, to cure barrennesse.  The place taketh his name of that fountaine, which signifieth quick spring, or quickning spring.  Probatum.”

Ashimuit or Shumuit, an Indian village near the line between Sandwich and Falmouth, Mass.,—­Shaume, a neck and river in Sandwich (the Chawum of Capt.  John Smith?),—­Shimmoah, an Indian village on Nantucket,—­may all have derived their names from springs resorted to by the natives, as was suggested by the Rev. Samuel Deane in a paper in Mass.  Hist.  Collections, 2d Series, vol. x. pp. 173, 174.

6.  MATTAPPAN, a participle of mattappu (Chip. namatabi), ’he sits down,’ denotes a ‘sitting-down place,’ or, as generally employed in local names, the end of a portage between two rivers or from one arm of the sea to another,—­where the canoe was launched again and its bearers re-embarked.  Rale translates the Abnaki equivalent, mata[n]be, by ’il va au bord de l’eau,—­a la greve pour s’embarquer,’ and meta[n]beniganik, by ‘au bout de dela du portage.’

Mattapan-ock, afterwards shortened to Mattapan, that part of Dorchester Neck (South Boston) where “the west country people were set down” in 1630,[77] may have been so called because it was the end of a carrying place from South Bay to Dorchester Bay, across the narrowest part of the peninsula, or—­as seems highly probable—­because it was the temporary ‘sitting-down place’ of the new comers.  Elsewhere, we find the name evidently associated with portage.

[Footnote 77:  Blake’s Annals of Dorchester, p. 9; Winthrop’s Journal, vol. i. p. 28.]

On Smith’s Map of Virginia, one ‘Mattapanient’ appears as the name of the northern fork (now the Mattapony) of Pamaunk (York) River; another (Mattpanient) near the head waters of the Pawtuxunt; and a third on the ‘Chickahamania’ not far above its confluence with Powhatan (James) River.

Mattapoiset, on an inlet of Buzzard’s Bay, in Rochester, Mass.,—­another Mattapoiset or ‘Mattapuyst,’ now Gardner’s Neck, in Swanzea,—­and ‘Mattapeaset’ or ‘Mattabesic,’ on the great bend of the Connecticut (now Middletown), derived their names from the same word, probably.