The Story of the Voyages and Discoveries of Henry Hudson

Northward from his anchorage after his vessel had entered New York Bay, Hudson saw a broad stream rising and falling with the tide, which the Indians told him came from beyond the pale blue mountain ranges in the distance. He believed it was a strait through which he might pass into the Indian Ocean; so he sailed up the stream a few miles, and anchored. Natives came to him in canoes from the shores with fruits and vegetables, and friendly gestures. The men were athletic; the women were graceful and the young ones often beautiful. All were half-clad in mantles made of skins or feathers depending from one shoulder and the waist, or in colored hempen tunics; and some of the women who came in the canoes, whose hair, long and black, hung loosely over their shoulders and bosoms, wore fillets ornamented with shells and the quills of the porcupine. They seemed anxious for friendly intercourse, but Hudson repelled and offended them.

The Half-Moon went leisurely up the river, anchoring here and there, whilst her commander held intercourse with the natives, sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile. When he passed the great mountains which he had seen in the distance, and found the water freshening, he was satisfied that he was not in a passage to India. It was only a beautiful river flowing down from more lofty hills three hundred miles from the sea, and called Mahicannituck by the natives. The Dutch afterwards called it the Mauritius, and the English gave it the name of Hudson's River.

Hudson went up the stream with the Half-Moon and his small boats as far as Albany, and perhaps to the mouth of the Mohawk, and looked upon the foaming falls of Cohoes. Then he sailed leisurely back, everywhere charmed with the beauty and grandeur of the scenery and apparent fertility of the soil. He had discovered one of the richest portions of America. From New York Bay he sailed for England, after formally taking possession of the whole domain which he had discovered in the name of the States-General of Holland. Landing at Dartmouth in November, he hastened to London and told the story of his discoveries. The unworthy monarch on England's throne, jealous of the advantages which the Dutch might derive from these discoveries, would not let Hudson, an English subject, leave the realm. The navigator had outwitted the sovereign. Knowing his mean character, he had sent to his Amsterdam employers, by a trusty hand, all of his log-books, maps, charts, and a full account of his voyage and discoveries. These led to the commercial ventures between the Texel and the Hudson rivers which immediately followed, and which resulted in the planting of the City of New Amsterdam (now New York) at the mouth of the latter, and of New Orange (now Albany) at near the head of its navigable waters. These were the germs of the commonwealth of New Netherland, the domain of which is now known as the State of New York.

The fate of Hudson, the last of the discoverers who revealed the Atlantic coast of the American continent to Europe, may be told in a few words. He sailed from England in the spring of 1610 on his fourth voyage in search of a polar ocean passage, this time in the northwest. He discovered, far up North America, the Bay that bears his name, and intended to winter there, but a majority of his crew became mutinous and compelled him to sail homeward. On the way he, his son and seven of his men who had remained faithful to him were seized, pinioned, placed in an open shallop and abandoned on the icy sea, where, of course, they soon perished. Abacuck Pricket, one of Hudson's crew, who was confined to the cabin with lameness at the time, in his published account of the circumstances, after relating how he opposed the cruel proceedings, says: "Now were all the poore men in the shallop, whose names are as followeth: Henrie Hudson, John Hudson, Arnold Lodlo, Sidrack Faner, Philip Staffe, Thomas Woodhouse or Wydhouse, Adam Moore, Henrie King, Michael Bute. The carpenter got of them a Peece, and Powder, and Shot, and some Pikes, an Iron Pot, with some meale and other things. They stood out of the Ice, the Shallop being fast to the Sterne of the Ship, and so (when they were nigh out, for I cannot say they were cleane out) they cut her head fast from the Sterne of our Ship, then out with there Top-sayles, and toward the East they stood, in a cleare Sea."

End of Book I