The adjective anormée and the noun berge definitely describe the steep and extensive wall of stone which borders the noble river, now bearing the name of a later explorer. Anormé, an obsolete form of the adjective énorme, signifies that which is grand, vast, majestic.[444] The noun berge, besides meaning an elevated border of a river, a scarp of a fortification, a steep side of a moat or of a road, is a designation for certain rocks elevated perpendicularly above the water.[445] In an old French lexicon it is said: “They likewise call in marine phraseology bèrges or barges those great rocks, rugged and perpendicularly elevated, that is to say, uprightly and plumb, as the bèrges or barges of Olone: such rocks as are Scylla and Charybdis, toward Messina.”[446]
A more appropriate name could not have been selected to designate geographically this part of New France than that of The Land of the Grand Scarp (La Terre d’Anormée Berge), or, in more familiar phraseology, The Land of the Palisades. The words, scarp and palisade, are terms of fortification. The first designates the steep slope below the parapet of a fortification, next to the ditch; the second an upright row of strong stakes set firmly in the ground in front of the counter-scarp, on the opposite side of the moat from the scarp.
The mispronunciation of the peculiar geographical name was evidently the cause of its orthography being obscured so soon after it was used as the designation for the elevated border of the Grande River. The more frequent use thereafter of énorme for anormé made the term more unfamiliar. It would seem also that when the name should have been written La Terre d’Énorme Berge, that it was inscribed, La Terre de Normeberge. The change of the qualifying term to a word of two syllables, as norom, norum, nurum, and norim, rendered the name more ambiguous. In like manner the noun berge was corrupted, being spelled bergue, bega, berg, and bagra. In this way the territorial designation became La Terre de Norumbega, La Terre de Norembegue, La Terre de Noromberge, and La Terre de Norembergue, and its meaning and derivation incomprehensible to the descendants of its originators.
Gerard Mercator, on a terrestrial globe, (globus terrae), made in 1541, represents the Grande River as if its channel were filled with anormée bèrges, which he designates with the misspelled name “Anorumbega.”[447] On a map of the world, made about the year 1548, for King Henry II. of France, the appellation “Anorobagra” designates the river of the Grand Scarp.[448]
In the sixteenth century proper names less peculiar in construction than the appellation L’Anormée Berge, were written very irregularly. It is said by Disraeli that Leicester subscribed his name eight different ways, and that Villers is spelled fourteen times differently in the deeds of the family. Lower mentions that the name of Mainwaring, has the remarkable number of one hundred and thirty-one variations in different documents. Even in this age of dictionaries the spelling of uncommon geographical names does not always conform to their orthography. A record has been kept for a number of years of the different ways in which the name of the city of Cohoes, in the state of New York, has been spelled on letters addressed to that post-office, and the extraordinary number of one hundred and ninety-seven changes in the form of the appellation has been registered.
There seems to be but a single statement that might be used to support an assertion that the natives of the country of New France originated the name “Norumbega.” It is in Ramusio’s Italian translation of the French sea-captain’s description of Francesca, in which it is said: “This region is called by the peasants Norumbega.” René Goulaine de Laudonnière, a well-informed French naval officer, who had command of a French fort in Florida, in 1564, contradicts the assertion that the name was transferred from an early map of the eastern coast of Asia, saying: “It is called by the moderns Terre de Norumberge.” André Thevet, the French geographer, who sailed along its coast in 1556, declares that his countrymen called the Grande River “Norombègue,” and the Indians, “Aggoncy.”
One of the earliest accounts of the Land of the Grand Scarp extant is in the discourse of the unnamed sea-captain of Dieppe, written in 1539. Describing the country of Francesca, he says: “Beyond Cape Breton there is a region contiguous to this cape, the coast of which extends west and a quarter southwest as far as the region of Florida, and it stretches full five hundred leagues, which coast was discovered fifteen years ago, by Monsieur Giovanni da Verrazzano, in the name of King Francis and of Madame, the regent, and this region is called by many the land of the French (la Francese), and likewise by the Portuguese, and its termination toward Florida is in 78° west longitude and 30° north latitude.[449]
“The inhabitants of this domain are a tractable people, amiable and agreeable. The country abounds with all kinds of fruit. Oranges and almonds grow in wild forests, with many different varieties of odoriferous trees. This region is called by the peasants (paesani) Norumbega, and between it and Brazil there is a large gulf, extending west as far as the ninety-second meridian.”[450]
In 1540 Jacques Cartier again sailed to New France and ascended the St. Lawrence River. Jean François de la Roque, Sieur de Roberval, was placed in command of this expedition, and, by letters-patent, dated January 15, 1540, was commissioned viceroy and lieutenant-general of the new lands belonging to France in the western hemisphere. Jean Alphonse, an experienced navigator, a native of Saintonge, near the town of Cognac, France, accompanied Sieur de Roberval as chief pilot.[451]
In the manuscript of the cosmography of Raulin Secalart, written about the year 1545, preserved in the National library, in Paris, is a short description of the coast and people of La Terre d’Anormée Berge.[452] The writer, evidently Jean Alphonse, very faithfully describes Long Island Sound, the eastern entrance to the Grande River, when he says: “This river is wider than forty leagues of latitude at its mouth, and within, the width is as much as thirty or forty leagues, and it is full of islands, which extend ten or twelve leagues in the sea, and it is very dangerous on account of rocks and swashings.” These observations are remarkably consonant with those of a later writer: “Long Island Sound, a Mediterranean Sea, separating the island from the main-land of Connecticut, is connected with the ocean at each end of the island and affords a sheltered line of navigation of about one hundred and twenty miles in extent.... Opposite Harlem River is the noted pass or strait called Hell-Gate, which is crooked, and from the numerous rocks, islands, eddies, and currents, is somewhat difficult and dangerous.”[453]