Note 343 — Chapter VI

On the signification of this word see “The Lost City of New England” in Magazine of American History, i. no. 1, and printed separately. The most notable monograph that has appeared in connection with the general subject is that by M. Eugène Beauvois, entitled, La Norambegue. Découverte d’une quatrième colonie Pré-Colombienne dans le Nouveau Monde. Bruxelles, 1880, pp. 27-32. This very learned author labors with great ingenuity to prove that the word is of old northern origin, and that by a variety of transformations, which he seeks to explain, it means Norrœnbygda, or the country of Norway; and that, consequently, it must be regarded as showing the early occupation of the region by Scandinavians. [Cf. also the paper by the same author on “Le Markland et l’Escociland,” in Congrès des Américanistes; Compte rendu, 1877, i. 224.—Ed.] To the claim that the word is of Indian origin we may oppose the statement in Thevet’s Cosmographie (ii. 1009), evidently derived by that mendacious writer from an early navigator, to the effect that, while the Europeans called the country Norumbega, the savages called it Aggoncy. Father Vetromile reported that he found an Indian who knew the word Nolumbega, meaning “still water;” yet he does not say whether he recognized it as an aboriginal or an imported word. [Vetromile, History of the Abnakis, New York, 1866, p. 49; and assented to by Murphy, Verrazano, p. 38. Father Vetromile says in a letter: “In going with Indians in a canoe along the Penobscot, when we arrived at some large sheet of water after a rapid or narrow passage, men would say Nolumbeghe.” Dr. Ballard, in a manuscript, says the coast Indians in our day have called it Nah-rah-bĕ-gek.—Ed.]