34. _De Monts's Island_. Of this island Champlain says: "This place was named by Sieur De Monts the Island of St. Croix."--_Vide_ Vol. II. p. 32, note 86. St. Croix has now for a long time been applied as the name of the river in which this island is found. The French denominated this stream the River of the Etechemins, after the name of the tribe of savages inhabiting its shores. _Vide_ Vol. II. p. 31. It continued to be so called for a long time. Denys speaks of it under this name in 1672. "Depuis la riviere de Pentagouet, jusques à celle de saint Jean, il pent y avoir quarante à quarante cinq lieues; la première rivière que l'on rencontre le long de la coste, est celle des Etechemins, qui porte le nom du pays, depuis Baston jusques au Port royal, dont les Sauvages qui habitent toute cette étendue, portent aussi le mesme nom."--_Description Géographique et Historique des Costes de L'Amerique Septentrionale_, par Nicholas Denys, Paris, 1672, p. 29, _et verso_. 35. Champlain had, by his own explorations and by consulting the Indians, obtained a very full and accurate knowledge of this island at his first visit, on the 5th of September, 1604, when he named it _Monts-déserts_, which we preserve in the English form, MOUNT DESERT. He observed that the distance across the channel to the mainland on the north side was less than a hundred paces. The rocky and barren summits of this cluster of little mountains obviously induced him to give to the island its appropriate and descriptive name _Vide_ Vol. II. p. 39. Dr. Edward Ballard derives the Indian name of this island, _Pemetiq_, from _pemé'te_, sloping, and _ki_, land. He adds that it probably denoted a single locality which was taken by Biard's company as the name of the whole island. _Vide Report of U. S. Coast Survey_ for 1868, p. 253. 36. Penobscot is a corruption of the Abnaki _pa'na8a'bskek_. A nearly exact translation is "at the fall of the rock," or "at the descending rock." _Vide Trumball's Ind. Geog. Names_, Collections Conn. His. Society, Vol. II. p. 19. This name was originally given probably to some part of the river to which its meaning was particularly applicable. This may have been at the mouth of the river a Fort Point, a rocky elevation not less than eighty feet in height. Or it may have been the "fall of water coming down a slope of seven or eight feet," as Champlain expresses it, a short distance above the site of the present city of Bangor. That this name was first obtained by those who only visited the mouth of the river would seem to favor the former supposition.