Henry Hudson | Page 6

wild beasts, brute or human, in strange new-found lands. It followed of necessity that men leading lives so full of physical hardship, and so beset by wondering dread, were moody and discontented--and so easily went on from sullen anger into open mutiny. And equally did it follow that the shipmasters who held those surly brutes to the collar--driving them to their work with blows, and now and then killing one of them by way of encouraging the others to obedience--were as absolutely fearless and as absolutely strong of will as men could be. All of these conditions we must recognize, and must try to realize, if we would understand the work that was cut out for Hudson, and for every master navigator, in that cruel and harsh and yet ardently romantic time.

IV
It is Hudson's third voyage--the one that brought him into our own river, and that led on directly to the founding of our own city--that has the deepest interest to us of New York. He made it in the service of the Dutch East India Company: but how he came to enter that service is one of the unsolved problems in his career.
In itself, there was nothing out of the common in those days in an English shipmaster going captain in a Dutch vessel. But Hudson--by General Read's showing--was so strongly backed by family influence in the Muscovy Company that it is not easy to understand why he took service with a corporation that in a way was the Muscovy Company's trade rival. Lacking any explanation of the matter, I am inclined to link it with the action of the English Government--when he returned from his voyage and made harbor at Dartmouth--in detaining him in England and in ordering him to serve only under the English flag; and to infer that his going to Holland was the result of a falling out with the directors of the Muscovy Company; and that at their request, when the chances of the sea brought him within English jurisdiction, he was detained in his own country--and so was put in the way to take up with the adventure that led him straight onward to his death. In all of which may be seen the working-out of that fatalism which to my mind is so apparent in Hudson's doings, and which is most apparent in his third voyage: that evidently had its origin in a series of curious mischances, and that ended in his doing precisely what those who sent him on it were resolved that he should not do.
All that we know certainly about his taking service with the Dutch Company is told in a letter from President Jeannin--the French envoy who was engaged in the years 1608-9, with representatives of other nations, in trying to patch up a truce or a peace between the Netherlands and Spain--to his master, Henry IV. Along with his open instructions, Jeannin seems to have had private instructions--in keeping with the customs and principles of the time--to do what he could do in the way of stealing from Holland for the benefit of France a share of the East India trade. In regard to this amiable phase of his mission, under date of January 21, 1609, he wrote:
"Some time ago I made, by your Majesty's orders, overtures to an Amsterdam merchant named Isaac Le Maire, a wealthy man of a considerable experience in the East India trade. He offered to make himself useful to your Majesty in matters of this kind.... A few days ago he sent to me his brother, to inform me that an English pilot who has twice sailed in search of a northern passage has been called to Amsterdam by the East India Company to tell them what he had found, and whether he hoped to discover that passage. They had been well satisfied with his answer, and had thought they might succeed in the scheme. They had, however, been unwilling to undertake at once the said expedition; and they had only remunerated the Englishman for his trouble, and had dismissed him with the promise of employing him next year, 1610. The Englishman, having thus obtained his leave, Le Maire, who knows him well, has since conferred with him and has learnt his opinions on these subjects; with regard to which the Englishman had also intercourse with Plancius, a great geographer and clever mathematician. Plancius maintains, according to the reasons of his science, and from the information given him, ... that there must be in the northern parts a passage corresponding to the one found near the south pole by Magellan.... The Englishman also reports that, having been to the north as far as 80 degrees, he has found that the more northwards he went, the less cold it became."
[Illustration: "HOW THE EARTH