62           THE DUTCH AND QUAKER COLONIES
traded with the natives for furs ; and the name is often said to be Indian.1
But a very different explanation of Norumbega, suggested in 1884 by Arthur James Weise, of Troy, has some strong points in its favour.2 Mr. Weise maintains that the River of Norumbega was the Hudson and that the town was on Manhattan Island. The name is evidently connected with Ver-razano's8 voyage, and the Hudson River is the only one which in his letter he speaks of entering. How many other streams he may have entered without seeing fit to mention the fact, we cannot say; but clearly the Hudson River and Narra-gansett Bay were the two localities which most deeply impressed him. He describes the Hudson as a very broad river running between small steep hills, which indicates that he may have gone up as far as Spuyten Duyvil. Now if this was really the River of Norumbega, visited and described by this party of Frenchmen, it is fair to ask if the name may not be some French epithet, mutilated and disguised in its pilgrimage among the map-makers. Might not the map-name Norumbega be simply a Low-Latin corruption of Anor-ThePaii- m^e Berget In sixteenth century French that sades means Grand Scarp, and where could one find a better epithet for the majestic line of cliffs that we call the Palisades ? a feature so unusual and so striking that one could hardly fail to select it for description.   The River of Norum-
1 In recent years it has been maintained, by the late Professor E. N. Horsford, of Cambridge, that the River of Norumbega was the Charles, and that at its junction with Stony Brook stood a city founded by Northmen early in the eleventh century; we are asked to believe that after keeping up a trade with Europe for three hundred years this Norse colony vanished, leaving no trace in European tradition, but the Indians remembered its name for two centuries longer and imparted that name to the whites, Norumbega being the Indian attempt at pronouncing Norvega, the Latin form of Norway. In accordance with these views a tower with a commemorative inscription has been somewhat prematurely erected on the supposed site of the city.
' The Discoveries of America to the Year 1525.   New York, 1884.
* It first appears as Aranbega on Hieronimo da Verrazano's map, of which there is an engraving in Brevoort's Verrazano the Navigator.