W

HEN the hope of finding a northwest passage to India to India began to die out, a company of "certain worshipful merchants" of London employed Henry Hudson, an Englishman and an experienced navigator, to go in search of a northeast passage to India, around the Arctic shores of Europe, between Lapland and Nova Zembla and frozen Spitzbergen. These worthy gentlemen were convinced that since the effort to find a northwest passage had failed, nothing remained but to search for a northeast passage, and they were sure that if human skill or energy could find it, Hudson would succeed in his mission. They were not mistaken in their man, for in two successive voyages he did all that mortal could do to penetrate the ice-fields beyond the North Cape, but without success.

An impassable barrier of ice held him back, and he was forced to return to London to confess his failure. With unconquerable hope, he suggested new means of overcoming the difficulties; but while his employers praised his zeal and skill, they declined to go to further expense in an undertaking which

promised so little, and the "bold Englishman, the expert pilot and the famous navigator' found himself out of employment. Every effort to secure aid in England failed him, and, thoroughly disheartened, he passed over to Holland, whither his fame had preceded him.

The Dutch, who were more enterprising and more hopeful than his own countrymen, lent a ready ear to his statement of his plans, and the Dutch East India Company at once employed him and placed him in command of a yacht of ninety tons, called the "Half Moon," manned by a picked crew. On the twenty-fifth of March, 1609, Hudson set sail in this vessel from Amsterdam and steered directly for the coast of Nova Zembla. He succeeded in reaching the meridian of Spitzbergen, but here the ice, the fogs and the fierce tempests of the north drove him back, and turning to the west ward, he sailed past the capes of Greenland, and on the second of July was on the banks of Newfoundland. He passed down the coast as far as Charleston Harbor, vainly hoping to find the northwest passage, and then in despair turned to the northward, dis covering Delaware Bay on his voyage.

He

the boldest navigators of his time. made a voyage to Manhattan Island in 1614, then the site of a Dutch trading-post, and secured a cargo of skins, with which he was about to return to Holland, when a fire consumed both his vessel and her cargo, and obliged him to pass the winter with his crew on the island. They built them log huts on the site of the present Beaver Street-the first houses erected on the island-and during the winter constructed a yacht of sixteen

HENRY HUDSON.

was engaged by an English company to make further explorations in their behalf. He sailed to the north of his former route, reached the coast of Labrador, and passing through the straits, entered the bay which bears his name. He spent the remainder of the season in exploring its coasts, and resolved to winter there, hoping to push his discoveries still further northward in the spring. In the spring of 1611 he found it impossible to continue his voyage, as his

tons, which Block called the "Onrust". the "Restless." In this yacht Block made several voyages of discovery, and explored the coasts of Long Island Sound, and gave his name to the small island near the eastern end of the sound. He soon after went back to Europe.

In the meantime Hudson had not been permitted by the English king to take service again with the Dutch, and after apprising his employers in Holland of his discoveries, he

provisions had begun to run low, and with tears turned his vessel's prow homeward. His men now broke out into mutiny, and seizing Hudson and his son and four others, who were sick, they placed them in the shallop and set them adrift. And so the great navi. gator, whose memory is perpetuated by one of the noblest of the rivers of America, and whose genius gave the region through which it flows to civili. zation, perished amid the northern seas. "The gloomy waste of waters which bears his name is his tomb and his monument."

Forts Along the Hudson.

In 1614 the Dutch built a fort on the lower end of Manhattan Island, and in the next few years established forts or trading houses along the river as far as Fort Orange, on the

site of Albany. These were merely trading-posts, no effort being yet made to occupy the country with a permanent colony. In 1621 the Dutch West India Company was organized for the purpose of trading with America, and took possession of the country along the Hudson, intending to hold it merely as temporary occupants. The States General of Holland granted them the monopoly of trade from Cape May to Nova Scotia, and named the whole region New Netherland. The Dutch thus extended their

dam to escape religious persecution in their own country. They were sound, healthy, vigorous and pious people, and could be relied upon to make homes in the new world. The majority of them settled around the fort on the lower end of Manhattan Island, and the colony was named New Amsterdam. The remainder established themselves on Long Island, about where the Brooklyn navy yard now stands, and there Sarah de Rapelje, the first white child born in the province of New Netherlands, saw the light. Eighteen families ascended the river and settled around Fort Orange.

In the same year (1623) a party under command of Cornelis Jacobsen May, who gave his name to the southern cape of New

sau, on the east side of the river, a few miles below the present city of Camden. This was done in order to establish the claim of the Dutch to this re gion.

In 1626 the West India Company sent out to New Amsterdam the first regular governor of the province, Peter Minuits by name. He brought with him a koopman, or general commissary, who was also the secretary of the province, and a schout, or sheriff, to assist him in his government. The only laws prescribed for the colony were the

HUDSON STRAIT.

instructions of the West India Company. The colonists, on their part, were to regard the orders of the governor as their law. He was authorized to punish minor offences at his discretion, but cases requiring severe or capital punishment were to be sent to Holland for trial. Minuits set to work with great vigor to lay the foundations of the colony. He called a council of the Indian chiefs, and purchased the island of Manhattan from them for presents valued at about twenty-four dollars in American money. He thus secured an equitable title to the island