180 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
in the Acadian period, applied to the basin or harbour now called Bathurst Harbour, 
at the mouth of the river, and extended to include the old Acadian settlements 
around the basin. ‘The word is pronounced as though spelled NEP-IZ’-A-GWIT. 
Although the name is universally in use on maps and in writings, and is still 
perfectly understood locally, it is being replaced in the speech of guides, lumber- 
men and local residents, so far at least as concerns the river, by the shorter and 
more familiar name Bathurst, extended from the town at its mouth. The river is 
also called locally Big River in distinction from the three Jose rivers which 
empty into the same harbour. 
Hisrory or tHe Worp.—It occurs for the first time, so far as known, in the 
year 1643, in one of the Relations of the Jesuit Missionaries, in the form NEPEG- 
{GS8IT (Thwaites’ Jesuit Relations, XXIV, 150). This word must have been pro- 
nounced by the missionaries as if spelled NEP-PEJ-IG’-OO-IT, for the first G 
would naturally be soft before I, while other confirmatory evidence follows below; 
the 8, as is well known, was used by the French writers for the sound oo or ou (as 
in TOO or YOU); and the accentuation would of course accord with the Indian 
word, noted below, with which it is almost identical. The word occurs several 
times in the Relations during the next few years in the forms NEPEGIGOUIT 
NEPIGIGUIT, NIPIGIGSIT, NIPIGIGSI and NEPIGIGOUIT (op. cit., through 
the index). The Jesuits established on the border of the basin an important Indian 
mission, which inaugurated a settlement, and a prominence in Acadian affairs, 
almost unbroken to the present; and thus their form of this name came into uni- 
versal use, and has descended from them to us with only insignificant changes. 
An inde Garin: Relation, by the Capuchin Father Ignace, of 1656, has NEPIGI- 
GOUIT (Report on Canadian Archives, 1904, 334). Nicolae Denys, who knew this 
region intimately from his long residence at the basin, writes the name, in his well- 
known book, either NEPIGIGUIT or NEPIZIGUIT, the latter form showing, if 
further evidence were needed, that the first G of the Jesuits’ form was soft, while 
it marks a stage in the transition from their soft G to our S (Description geogra- 
phique, 1, 44, 183; Champlain Society’s edition 118, 198). It next appears on a 
inap of 1685, by lather Jumeau, in the form NIPIZIGUI (these Transactions, I], 
1897, 1i, 363, and Father le Clereq’s New Relation, mentioned below, opposite page 
10), while the great Franquelin-de Meulles map of the next year (1686), which 
became the original for the French maps for a century after, has NEPISIGUY, the 
earliest known use of the S (these Transactions, III, 1897, ii, 364). Denys’ son 
Richard, in a document of 1688, used the form NIPIZIQUIT, the earliest use of 
the Q, which still sometimes reappears (Collections of the New Brunswick His- 
torical Society, ff, 1907, 34) Father le Clereq, who knew the place well, 
uses the forms NIPISIGUIT and NIPISIQUIT in his book of 1691, showing that 
the S had then become well fixed in place of the Z and G, (Nouvelle Relation de la 
Gaspesie; published by the Champlain Society as New Relation of Gaspesia.) The 
important map and report of Sieur l’Hermitte, of 1723, have NEPISIGUI (Ms. in 
Canadian Archives). Thereafter the word occurs frequently, with, of course, sundry 
variants and aberrations of spelling, through the maps and documents of the French 
period. 
The earliest English use of the word is found on a curious crude map of about 
1700 by Southack, in the greatly corrupted form PISGUY (these Transactions, IX, 
i891, ii, 72), and it appears thereafter on numerous English maps, obviously follow- 
ing French originals, whose forms are variously misspelled even to such extremes 
as NEPISIKI and MISSISQUIT. One of these misspelled forms, however, arose 
to marked historical importance, for the NIPISIGHIT used on Jeffrey’s chart 
