﻿I38 SMITHSONIAN" MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



Sakonnet River ; and would leave the Eastern Channel with its lateral 

 branch, called Bristol Narrows, a good title to be called a river, as 

 the popular equivalent for a strait. The steep Fall River hills would 

 supply the crags called for by the saga, and the upper end of what is 

 now Aquidneck Island would be the point on the southern side of the 

 entrance, which the Indians passed in paddling from the south and 

 returning the same way. There would be plenty of marshland for 

 the wild rice. 



It fits well in the main, but of course the rest would go for nothing 

 without a loch-like bay of some size ; and this item looks more doubt- 

 ful than if the present depth were generally greater ; yet that objection 

 is probably not fatal. Verrazano seems to describe a transitional 

 condition of Narragansett Bay, when its mouth did not freely let 

 in so great a volume of water as now before the sweep of the storms. 

 Curiously he does not allude to Mount Hope Bay ; but he does not 

 allude to Mount Hope either ; so perhaps his trips by land and water 

 were rather to the westward^ or those who doubt his interesting story 

 may be right though in most of its items there is a notable veri- 

 similitude. Certainly the hill was there, small but dominating the 

 low landscape. 



The name Mount Hope is somewhat mysterious, but probably a 

 corruption of Montaup ; which Mr. Mooney does not consider iden- 

 tical with Montauk, Manotuck or Montanutt, defined by Trumbull's x 

 dictionary as meaning in substance a place of outlook. Montauk is 

 at least applied to several hills, and its meaning would seem to fit 

 the present one well enough. But the words may not be related. 



Now Munro's History of the town of Bristol, before referred to, 

 a work rather notable for care in collecting local data from deeds and 

 records, declares in a note that Haup and Montaup were applied 

 by Indians to this region when the white settlers came. He offers 

 the solution that the Norsemen left the name Hop, which the Indians 

 turned to Haup and the English to Hope as we now write it. He 

 thinks two or three Norsemen may have remained and married among 

 the Indians, thus anchoring the name ; an improbable supposition, 

 considering the hostility of these natives, and one for which we have 

 no basis whatever. The true explanation of the origin of the word 

 must be left to our Indian linguists, who, however, are more con- 

 versant with surviving languages. No argument can be safely 

 founded on it in the present state of our knowledge. 



1 J. H. Trumbull: Indian Names of Places in and on the Borders of 

 Connecticut. 



