The identity of the river called by the French writer “Norombègue,” now the Hudson, is satisfactorily established by the statement that the water of the river is salty to the height of forty leagues or eighty-eight miles. This fact is incontrovertible. The Hudson is salty or brackish beyond the city of Poughkeepsie, which is about ninety-three miles north of Sand Hook.[454] The assertion could not be verified were it assumed that the description applies to the Penobscot, or the Kennebec, or the Merrimack, or the Connecticut River. It would seem that the writer speaks of the Palisades bordering the west side of the river, opposite the Indian village of “Norombègue,” when he says: “On the side toward the west of the said town there are many rocks which extend to the sea, about fifteen miles.” [Illustration: Copy of the map of “Terre de la Franciscane” in the MS. of the “Cosmographie de Jehan Allefonsce et Raulin Secalart,” 1545.] “I say that the Cape of St. John, called Cape Breton, and the Cape of the Franciscan, are northeast and southwest, and range a point from an east and west course, and there are one hundred and forty leagues on the course, and which makes one cape, called the Cape of Norombègue. The said cape is in forty-one degrees of the height of the arctic pole. The said coast [_i. e._ of Connecticut] is all sandy, ...[455] flat, without any mountain. And along this coast there are many isles of sand and the coast very dangerous on account of banks and rocks. “The people of this coast and of Cape Breton are an ill-disposed race, powerful, great arrow-makers, and live on fish and on flesh, and are not talkative, and speak almost the same language as those of Canada, and are a great people. And those of Cape Breton go to make war upon those of the New Land when they are fishing, and not for any thing do they spare the life of any one when they take him, unless it is a young boy or a young girl; and they are so cruel that if they take a man having a beard, they cut off his legs and arms and carry them to their wives and children, in order to be avenged in that way. And there are among them many peltries of all animals. “Beyond the Cape of Norombègue, the river of the said Norombègue descends about twenty-five leagues from the cape. The said river is wider than forty leagues of latitude at its mouth [entrance of Long Island Sound], and within, this width is as much as thirty or forty leagues, and it is full of isles which stretch out ten or twelve leagues in the sea [or Sound], and it is very dangerous on account of rocks and swashings. The said river is in forty-two degrees of the height of the arctic pole.