The event is well described in a ballad by Longfellow.The name of Norumbega and the tradition of its glories survived SirHumphrey Gilbert. In a French map of 1543, the town appears with castleand towers. Jean Allfonsce, who visited New England in that year,describes it as the capital of a great fur country. Students of Indiantongues defined the word as meaning "the place of a fine city"; while thelearned Grotius seized upon it as being the same as Norberga and soaffording a relic of the visits of the Northmen. As to the locality, itappeared first on the maps as a large island, then as a smaller one, andafter 1569 no longer as an island, but a part of the mainland, borderingapparently on the Penobscot River. Whittier in his poem of "Norumbega"describes a Norman knight as seeking it in vain. "He turned him back, 'O master dear, We are but men misled; And thou hast sought a city here To find a grave instead. * * * * * "'No builded wonder of these lands My weary eyes shall see; A city never made with hands Alone awaiteth me.'"So Champlain, in 1604, could find no trace of it, and said that "no suchmarvel existed," while Mark Lescarbot, the Parisian advocate, writing in1609, says, "If this beautiful town ever existed in nature, I would liketo know who pulled it down, for there is nothing here but huts made ofpickets and covered with the barks of trees or skins.
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