108 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



extreme, it happens that in this case their statements are confirmed 

 from other unimpeachable sources. Thus the late A. S. Gatschet, a 

 trained philologist and expert in the Indian language, has also written 

 in connection with Norumbega: "The name does not stand for any 

 Indian settlement, but is a term of the Abnâki languages, which in 

 Penobscot sounds nalambigi, in Passamaquoddy nalabégik — both 

 referring to the 'still, quiet' (nala — ) stretch of a river between two 

 riffles, rapids, or cascades; — bégik, for nipégik, means 'at the water'. 

 On the larger rivers and watercourses of Maine ten to twenty of these 

 'still water stretches' may occur on each" {National Geographic 

 Magazine, VIII, 1897, 23). A root -bega, in the locative case -begak 

 or -BEGAT, is very common in place-names of Maine and Eastern 

 Canada associated with standing water, as manifest by the fact that 

 the sixth paper of a series appearing in these Transactions, gives a 

 list of approximately one hundred of them; and a root nol- or nolum- 

 occurs in words meaning still or quiet, referring to water (Hubbard, 

 Woods and Lakes of Mairie, 205). It is wholly probable that a name 

 Nawlombages applied to a Pond at the head of the Souadabscook 

 branch of the Penobscot on a Ms plan of 1767 in the Massachusetts 

 Archives involves both of these roots, though nowhere else have I 

 been able to find them actually used together, and nowhere in all of 

 the existent maps and records have I been able to find any trace of 

 the actual application of an Indian name Nolumbega, or equivalent, 

 to the Penobscot River, or any part of it. 



Thus, in summary, roots NOL-, or nolum-, and -bega, meaning 

 still water, and applied to quiet reaches along rivers, do occur in 

 the Penobscot tongue, although there is no reason for connecting 

 them with the Penobscot River in preference to any other river of 

 that region. On the other hand we must not fail to note that other 

 interpretations of the name as Indian have been given. Thus De 

 Costa, repeating the explanation above given by Ballard, adds that 

 of Sewall who makes it mean place of a fine city {op cit. 15). Sewall, 

 in his Ancient Dominions of Maine, (31), made the word apply to 

 an Indian village westward of the Penobscot, as did an Indian 

 mentioned by Godfrey. Horsford in a number of his earlier writings 

 made it mean divider of a bay {Discovery of America hy North- 

 men 43), though later he connected it with the name Norway. In 

 the latter conclusion he followed Beau vois, who wrote a mono- 

 graph to prove that Norumbega is derived from a form of the name 

 Norway as result of early Scandinavian voyages {La Nornmhegue, 

 Brussels, 1880). A French origin, from old roots L'Anormée Berge, 

 meaning The Grand Scarp, in description of the Palisades of the 

 Hudson, was guessed and elaborated wholly without evidence by 



