There is some evidence that French traders visited the river, and that they constructed a fort on Castle Island, but none that they called the river "Norumbega." (See Muhheakunuk.) By the construction of an embankment and the filling of the passage between the island and the main land, the island has nearly disappeared.^ Norman's Kill, so well known locally, took that name from one Albert Andriessen, Brat de Noordman (the Northman), who leased the privilege and erected a mill for grinding corn, sometime about 1638. On Van Rensselaer's map of 1630 it is entered "Godyn's Kil and Water Val." a mill stream, not a cataract. Brat de Noordman's mill was in the town of Bethlehem, adjoining the city of Albany. The stream rises in Schenectady County and flows southeast about twenty-eight miles to tlie Hudson. The Mohawks called it Tawalsontha. In a petition for a grant of land near Schenectady, in 1713, is the entry, "By ye Indian name Tawalsontha, otherwise ye Norman's Kill" -- "A creek called D'Wasontha" (1726) -- from the generic Toowawsuntha (Gallatin), meaning, "The falls of a stream"; Twasenta (Bruyas), "Sault d'eau," applied by the Frendh to rapids in a stream -- a leaping, jumping, tumbling waterfall. Aside from the names of the stream it has especial historic interest in connection with early Dutch settlement and the location of Fort Orange where Indians of all nations and tongues assembled for intercourse with the government. (See Pachonahellick.) Dr. Schoolcraft wrote, without any authority that I have been able to find, Tazmsenfha as the name of the mound on which Fort Orange was erected, with the meaning, "Place of the many dead," adding that the Mohawks had a village near and buried their dead on this ;hill ; a pure fiction certainly in connection with the period to which 'he referred.