So Champlain, in 1604, could find no trace of it, and said that "no such
marvel existed," while Mark Lescarbot, the Parisian advocate, writing in
1609, says, "If this beautiful town ever existed in nature, I would like
to know who pulled it down, for there is nothing here but huts made of
pickets and covered with the barks of trees or skins." Yet it kept its
place on maps till 1640, and even Heylin in his "Cosmography" (1669)
speaks of "Norumbega and its fair city," though he fears that the latter
never existed.

It is a curious fact that the late Mr. Justin Winsor, the eminent
historian, after much inquiry among the present descendants of the Indian
tribes in Maine, could never find any one who could remember to have heard
the name of Norumbega.



XVIII

THE GUARDIANS OF THE ST. LAWRENCE


When in 1611 the Sieur de Champlain went back to France to report his
wonderful explorations in Canada, he was soon followed by a young
Frenchman named Vignan, who had spent a whole winter among the Indians, in
a village where there was no other white man. This was a method often
adopted by the French for getting more knowledge of Indian ways and
commanding their confidence. Vignan had made himself a welcome guest in
the cabins, and had brought away many of their legends, to which he added
some of his own. In particular, he declared that he had penetrated into