Henry Hudson | Page 2

a previously
unknown assurance, his River clearly is marked. The inadequate
indication of his Bay probably is taken from Weymouth's chart--the
chart that Hudson had with him on his voyage. A curious feature of this
map is its marking--in defiance of known facts--of two straits, to the
north and to the south of a large island, where should be the Isthmus of
Panama.
The one seemingly fanciful picture, that of the mermaids, is not
fanciful--a point that I have enlarged upon elsewhere--by the standard
of Hudson's times. Hudson himself believed in the existence of
mermaids: as is proved by his matter-of-fact entry in his log that a

mermaid had been seen by two of his crew.

A BRIEF LIFE OF HENRY HUDSON

HENRY HUDSON
I
If ever a compelling Fate set its grip upon a man and drove him to an
accomplishment beside his purpose and outside his thought, it was
when Henry Hudson--having headed his ship upon an ordered course
northeastward--directly traversed his orders by fetching that compass to
the southwestward which ended by bringing him into what now is
Hudson's River, and which led on quickly to the founding of what now
is New York.
Indeed, the late Thomas Aquinas, and the later Calvin, could have
made out from the few known facts in the life of this navigator so
pretty a case in favor of Predestination that the blessed St. Augustine
and the worthy Arminius--supposing the four come together for a
friendly dish of theological talk--would have had their work cut out for
them to formulate a countercase in favor of Free Will. It is a curious
truth that every important move in Hudson's life of which we have
record seems to have been a forced move: sometimes with a look of
chance about it--as when the directors of the Dutch East India
Company called him back and hastily renewed with him their
suspended agreement that he should search for a passage to Cathay on a
northeast course past Nova Zembla, and so sent him off on the voyage
that brought the "Half Moon" into Hudson's River; sometimes with the
fatalism very much in evidence--as when his own government seized
him out of the Dutch service, and so put him in the way to go sailing to
his death on that voyage through Hudson's Strait that ended, for him, in
his mutineering crew casting him adrift to starve with cold and hunger
in Hudson's Bay. And, being dead, the same inconsequent Fate that
harried him while alive has preserved his name, and very nobly, by

anchoring it fast to that River and Strait and Bay forever: and this
notwithstanding the fact that all three of them were discovered by other
navigators before his time.
Hudson sought, as from the time of Columbus downward other
navigators had sought before him, a short cut to the Indies; but his
search was made, because of what those others had accomplished,
within narrowed lines. In the century and more that had passed between
the great Admiral's death and the beginning of Hudson's explorations
one important geographical fact had been established: that there was no
water-way across America between, roughly, the latitudes of 40° South
and 40° North. Of necessity, therefore--since to round America south of
40° South would make a longer voyage than by the known route around
the Cape of Good Hope--exploration that might produce practical
results had to be made north of 40° North, either westward from the
Atlantic or eastward from the North Sea.
Even within those lessened limits much had been determined before
Hudson's time. To the eastward, both Dutch and English searchers had
gone far along the coast of Russia; passing between that coast and
Nova Zembla and entering the Kara Sea. To the westward, in the year
1524, Verazzano had sailed along the American coast from 34° to 50°
North; and in the course of that voyage had entered what now is New
York Bay. In the year 1598, Sebastian Cabot had coasted America from
38° North to the mouth of what now is Hudson's Strait. Frobisher had
entered that Strait in the year 1577; Weymouth had sailed into it nearly
one hundred leagues in the year 1602; and Portuguese navigators, in the
years 1558 and 1569, probably had passed through it and had entered
what now is Hudson's Bay.
[Illustration: FAC-SIMILE OF TITLE-PAGE OF A SEA
HANDBOOK OF HUDSON'S TIME]
As the result of all this exploration, Hudson had at his command a mass
of information--positive as well as negative--that at once narrowed his
search and directed it; and there is very good reason for believing that
he actually carried with him charts of a crude sort on which, more or
less clearly, were indicated the Strait and the Bay and the River which

popularly