PEOVINCETOWN. 
221 
Bailing up the St. Lawrence, showing that he knows what 
he is talking about, sajs in his ‘‘ Routier^’ (it is in Hack- 
la jt), have been at a bay as far as the forty-second de¬ 
gree, between JSTorimbegue [the Penobscot ?] and Florida, 
but I have not explored the bottom of it, and I do not 
know whether it passes from one land to the other,” i. e. 
to Asia. J’ai ete a une Baye jusques par les 42® degres 
entre la JSTorimbegue et la Floride; mais je n’en ai pas 
cherche le fond, et ne s^ais pas si elle passe d’une terre a 
I’autre.”) This may refer to Massachusetts Bay, if not 
possibly to the western inclination of the coast a little 
farther south. When he says, “I have no doubt that 
the Norimbegue enters into the river of Canada,” he is 
perhaps so interpreting some account which the Indians 
had given respecting the route from the St. Lawrence to 
the Atlantic, by the St. John, or Penobscot, or possibly 
even the Hudson River. 
We hear rumors of this country of “ Norumbega” and 
its great city from many quarters. In a discourse by a 
great French sea-captain in Ramusio’s third volume 
(1556-65), this is said to be the name given to the land 
by its inhabitants, and Verrazzani is called the discoverer 
of it; another in 1607 makes the natives call it, or the 
river, Aguncia. It is represented as an island on an 
accompanying chart. It is frequently spoken of by old 
writers as a country of indefinite extent, between Canada 
and Florida, and it appears as a large island with Cape 
Breton at its eastern extremity, on the map made accord¬ 
ing to Yerrazzanfs plot in Hackluy^’ “ Divers Voyages.” 
These maps and rumors may have been the origin of 
the notion, common among the early settlers, that New 
England was an island. The country and city of No¬ 
rumbega appear about where Maine now is on a map in 
