The Hudson | Page 5

Hudson, with a mixed crew of eighteen or twenty men in the "Half Moon," to explore the river from Sandy Hook to Albany, and carry back to Europe a description of its beauty. He had previously made two fruitless voyages for the Muscovy Company--an English corporation--in quest of a passage to China, via the North Pole and Nova Zembla.
In the autumn of 1608 he was called to Amsterdam, and sailed from Texel, April 5, 1609, in the service of the Dutch East India Company. Reaching Greenland he coasted southward, arriving at Cape Cod August 6th, Chesapeake Bay August 28th, and then sailed north to Sandy Hook. He entered the Bay of New York September the 3d, passed through the Narrows, and anchored in what is now called Newark Bay; on the 12th resumed his voyage, and, drifting with the tide, remained over night on the 13th about three miles above the northern end of Manhattan Island; on the 14th sailed through what is now known as Tappan Zee and Haverstraw Bay, entered the Highlands and anchored for the night near the present dock of West Point. On the morning of the 15th beheld Newburgh Bay, reached Catskill on the 16th, Athens on the 17th, Castleton and Albany on the 18th, and sent out an exploring boat as far as Waterford. He became thoroughly satisfied that this route did not lead to China--a conclusion in harmony with that of Champlain, who, the same summer, had been making his way south, through Lake Champlain and Lake George, in quest of the South Sea.
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O mighty river of the North! Thy lips meet ocean here, and in deep joy he lifts his great white brow, and gives his stormy voice a milder tone.
William Wallace
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There is something humorous in the idea of these old mariners attempting to sail through a continent 3,000 miles wide, seamed with mountain chains from 2,000 to 15,000 feet in height. Hudson's return voyage began September 23d. He anchored again in Newburgh Bay the 25th, arrived at Stony Point October 1st, reached Sandy Hook the 4th, and returned to Europe.
=First Description of the Hudson.=--The official record of the voyage was kept by Robert Juet, mate of the "Half Moon," and his journal abounds with graphic and pleasing incidents as to the people and their customs. At the Narrows the Indians visited the vessel, "clothed in mantles of feathers and robes of fur, the women clothed in hemp; red copper tobacco pipes, and other things of copper, they did wear about their necks." At Yonkers they came on board in great numbers. Two were detained and dressed in red coats, but they sprang overboard and swam away. At Catskill they found "a very loving people, and very old men. They brought to the ship Indian corn, pumpkins and tobaccos." Near Schodack the "Master's mate went on land with an old savage, governor of the country, who carried him to his house and made him good cheere." "I sailed to the shore," he writes, "in one of their canoes, with an old man, who was chief of a tribe, consisting of forty men and seventeen women. These I saw there in a house well constructed of oak bark, and circular in shape, so that it has the appearance of being built with an arched roof. It contained a large quantity of corn and beans of last year's growth, and there lay near the house, for the purpose of drying, enough to load three ships, besides what was growing in the fields. On our coming to the house two mats were spread out to sit upon, and some food was immediately served in well-made wooden bowls."
"Two men were also dispatched at once, with bows and arrows in quest of game, who soon brought in a pair of pigeons, which they had shot. They likewise killed a fat dog, (probably a black bear), and skinned it in great haste, with shells which they had got out of the water."
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Down whose waterways the wings of poetry and romance like magic sails bear the awakened souls of men.
Richard Burton.
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The well-known hospitality of the Hudson River valley has, therefore, "high antiquity" in this record of the garrulous writer. At Albany the Indians flocked to the vessel, and Hudson determined to try the chiefs to see "whether they had any treachery in them." "So they took them down into the cabin, and gave them so much wine and aqua vitae that they were all merry. In the end one of them was drunk, and they could not tell how to take it." The old chief, who took the aqua vitae, was so grateful when he awoke the next day, that he showed them all the country, and gave them venison.
Passing down