The same prefix or its equivalent occurs in the name of a lake in Maine, near the source of the Alligash branch of St. John’s River.  Mr. Greenleaf, in a list of Indian names made in 1823,[83] gave this as “BAAM’CHE_nun’gamo_ or AhP’MOOJEE`_negmook_.”  Thoreau[84] was informed by his Penobscot guide, that the name “means ’Lake that is crossed;’ because the usual course lies across, not along it.”  There is another “Cross Lake,” in Aroostook county, near the head of Fish River.  We seem to recognize, and with less difficulty, the same prefix in Pemigewasset, but the full composition of that name is not clear.

[Footnote 83:  Report of American Society for Promoting Civilization of the Indian Tribes, p. 52.]

[Footnote 84:  Maine Woods, 232.]

PEMI- denotes, not a crossing of but deviation from a straight line, whether vertical or horizontal.  In place-names it may generally be translated by ‘sloping’ or ‘aslant;’ sometimes by ‘awry’ or ‘tortuous.’ Pemadene, which Rale gives as the Abnaki word for ‘mountain,’ denotes a sloping mountain-side (pemi-adene), in distinction from one that is steep or precipitous. ‘Pemetiq,’ the Indian name of Mount Desert Island, as written by Father Biard in 1611, is the Abnaki peme’teki, ‘sloping land.’ Pemaquid appears to be another form of the word which Rale wrote ‘Pemaa[n]kke,’ meaning (with the locative suffix) ‘at the place where the land slopes;’ where “le terre penche; est en talus."[85] Pymatuning, in Pennsylvania, is explained by Heckewelder, as “the dwelling place of the man with the crooked mouth; Pihmtonink” (from pimeu and ’t[oo]n).

[Footnote 85:  Abnaki Dictionary, s.v.  PENCHER.  Compare, p. 545, “bimk[oo]e, il penche naturellement la tete sur un cote.”]

WANASHQUE, ANASQUI, ‘at the extremity of,’ ‘at the end;’ Abn. [oo]anask[oo]i[oo]i, ‘au bout;’ Cree, wannusk[oo]tch; Chip. ishkue, eshqua.  See (pp. 18, 19,) Wanashqu-ompsk-ut, Wonnesquam,[86] Winnesquamsaukit, Squamscot. Wonasquatucket, a small river which divides North Providence and Johnston, R.I., retains the name which belonged to the point at which it enters an arm of Narragansett Bay (or Providence River), ’at the end of the tidal-river.’  A stream in Rochester, Mass., which empties into the head of an inlet from Buzzard’s Bay, received the same name. Ishquagoma, on the upper Embarras River, Minnesota, is the ’end lake,’ the extreme point to which canoes go up that stream.

[Footnote 86:  Wonnesquam (as should have been mentioned on the page referred to) may possibly represent the Abnaki [oo]anask[oo]a[n]a[n]mi[oo]i or _-mek_ ‘at the end of the peninsula’ (’au bout de la presqu’ile.’  Rale).]