The Story of Manhattan | Page 3

the short cut to India had not been found, and they thought very little of the vast storehouse of furs which he had discovered. Neither did the Company care a great deal about Hudson, for they soon fell out with him, and he went back to the English company and made another voyage for them, still in search of the short passage to India. But in this last voyage, he only succeeded in finding a great stretch of water far to the north, that can be seen on any map as Hudson's Bay. His crew after a time grew angry when he wanted to continue his search. There was a mutiny on the ship, and Hudson and his son and seven of the sailors who were his friends were put into a small boat, set adrift in the bay to which he had given his name, and no trace of them was ever seen again. Long, long years after that time, another explorer found the passage that Hudson had lost his life searching for. It is The Northwest Passage, far up toward the North Pole, in the region of perpetual cold and night. So Hudson never knew that the passage he had looked for was of no value, and we may be sure he had never imagined that there would ever be a great city on the island he had discovered.
The Dutch came to think a great deal of Hudson after he was dead. The stream which he had called "The River of the Mountains" they named Hudson's River. They even made believe that Hudson was a Dutchman--although you will remember he was an Englishman--and were in the habit of speaking of him as "Hendrick" Hudson.
The Indians were scattered over America in great numbers. The tribe on the island were called Manhattans, and from that tribe came the name of the Island of Manhattan. All the Indians, no matter which tribe they belonged to, looked very much alike and acted very much the same. Their eyes were dark, and their hair long, straight, and black. When they were fighting, they daubed their skins with colored muds--war paint the white men called it--and started out on the "war-path". They loved to hunt and fish, as well as to fight, and they fought and murdered as cruelly and with as little thought as they hunted the wild animals or hooked the fish. They held talks which were called "councils," and one Indian would speak for hours, while the others listened in silence. And when they determined upon any action, they carried it out, without a thought of how many people were to be killed, or whether they were to be killed themselves.
[Illustration: Earliest Picture of Manhattan.]
CHAPTER II
THE FIRST TRADERS on the ISLAND
For several years after the return of Hudson, Dutch merchants sent their ships to the Island of Manhattan, and each ship returned to Holland laden with costly furs which the Indians had traded for glass beads and strips of gay cloth. The Indians cared a great deal more for glittering glass and highly colored rags than they did for furs.
One trader above all others whose name should be remembered, was Adrian Block. He came in a ship called the Tiger. This ship was anchored in the bay close by what is now called the Battery, and directly in the course that the ferry-boats take when they go to Staten Island.
[Illustration: Indians Trading for Furs.]
On a cold night in November it took fire and was burned to the water's edge. Block and those who were with him would all have been burned to death had they not been strong and hardy men who were able to swim ashore in the ice-cold water. Even when they reached the shore they were not safe, for there were no houses or places of shelter; the winter was coming on, and the woods were filled with wild beasts. But Block and his men very soon built houses for themselves; rude and clumsy buildings to look at, but warm and comfortable within. They were the first houses of white men on the Island of Manhattan. If you wish to see where they stood, take a walk down Broadway, and just before you reach the Bowling Green, on a house which is numbered 41, you will find a tablet of brass which tells that Block's houses stood on that self-same spot.
As soon as the hard winter was over, Block and his men began to build a new ship, and before another winter had come they had one larger than the Tiger. It was the first vessel to be built in the new world, and was called the Restless.
That same year the Dutch merchants decided that they were giving too many glass beads for the furs, and that if