RETURN AND FATE OF HENRY HUDSON.

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Traditions of that visit were long preserved by the little River Tribe, and the stories are still told to the children of the neighborhood. The navigator had found a balmier climate than England, or, above all, Holland, ever knew. No river in Europe could match in the magnificence of its flood and forest scenery the lordly stream he had discovered. The soil was a miracle of fertility; the woods were haunted with game; and the contented and friendly inhabitants had added to all these attractions, the charms of the most abundant hospitality. Of all the lands,' said Hudson, on which I ever set my foot,

this is the best, for tillage.'

He describes the month he passed in the North River as one of constant delight and strange surprises. And well he may, for as the shores of the Hudson must then have appeared, still clothed with the unmarred beauty of nature, water, mountain, and sky all bathed in the gorgeous atmosphere of the Indian summer-it must have made a spectacle of which even those of us who dwell here to-day can form no just conception except by the witchery of fancy. But these halcyon days could not last forever: the Halfmoon had made profitable traffic, and she was ready for sea.

Hudson Returns, Oct. 4, 1609.—On this day he sailed out of the great mouth of the great river,' for home. A prosperous voyage of a little more than a month brought the Half-moon into the port of Dartmouth. Here she and her cargo were seized by the British authorities, on the alleged superiority of the claims of England to the regions she had invaded. The Half-moon was indeed afterwards restored to the Amsterdam merchants, and the written report of their commander had been already forwarded. But he was never again to gaze on the shores of the Hudson, nor reap any reward for his signal services to the Netherlands of the Old World, or the New. His name, however, was to be a household word in the myriad homes that were to adorn the green banks of his lordly river.

Hudson's Fate, 1610.-Still swayed by his ruling passion, and believing that he could yet find a new passage to China, the English merchants equipped for Hudson another vessel, the Discoverer, with which he put to sea. Climbing beyond the fires of Hecla, the coast of Greenland, and Frobisher's Straits, till he entered 'a great sea to the westward,' he believed he had realized the dream of his life. But he found himself in the midst of an inextricable labyrinth of bays and islands, from which there was no escape. Amidst the discontent of his crew and the merciless frost he passed the long, dark winter. It was far into the next year before spring came, and his crew had grown too mutinous to be any longer controlled. His provisions had given out, and when he handed to his men the last crust, 'he wept as he gave it them.' Maddened by hunger, they vented all their wrath upon the unfortunate commander. He was seized and cast into the shallop; his little on was pitched in after him, and then seven others, four of whom were in a dying state 'Seeing his commander thus exposed, Philip Staffe, the carpen

78

BLOCK DISCOVERS THE CONNECTICUT.

ter, demanded and gained leave to share his fate; and just as the ship made its way out of the ice on a midsummer day, in a latitude where the sun at that season hardly goes down, and evening twilight mingles with the dawn, the shallop was cut loose. What became of Hudson? Did he die miserably of starvation? Did he reach land, to perish from the fury of the natives? Was he crushed between ribs of ice? The returning ship encountered storms by which he was probably overwhelmed. The gloomy waste of waters which bears his name is his tomb and his monument!''

Adriaen Block.

1611-1613.-Between these years, however, private enterprise profited by Hudson's discovery. The wealthy Adriaen Block, with Hendrik Christiansen, chartered a ship with the skipper Ryser,' and made a successful trading voyage to New York, bringing back with them two of the sons of the native sachems.

March 27, 1614.-In the delay of granting the West India Company's charter, a privilege was conceded to any adventurers for four successive voyages, and the merchants sent out a fleet of five small vessels-the Fortune, of Amsterdam, commanded by Christiansen, the Tiger, by Adriaen Block, and three others, sailed for New York. The Tiger was burned in New York, but Adriaen Block constructed for his own explorations a little yacht of sixteen tons, which he called the Unrest. Passing up the East River, then new sailing ground, he was the first European sailor to pass through Hell Gate, and into the calmer waters of Long Island Sound.

Gliding by the islands that cluster in front of Norwalk, he discovered the beautiful river still called the Housatonic. Further on, he entered the mouth of the Freshwater,' which has always persisted in bearing its native name, Connecticut. Its banks were clothed with heavy forests, except in some grassy reaches cultivated by the Indians, one being where Wethersfield now stands; another, the site of Hartford. Reaching the Sound again, he found the Pequods living on the bank of their river Thames. He touched at Montauk Point, then inhabited by a savage race. But beyond it opened the Atlantic, when he made the discovery that he had circumnavigated what was afterwards appropriately called Long Island. Exploring the shores to the East, he gave to the land encircled by the two channels the name of Roode Eiland. He followed the coast as far as Nahant, ignorant that John Smith was at the same time mapping the coast of Maine and Massachusetts. Cornelis Hendrickssen was doing so well in the fur trade, that Block left with him his first Americanbuilt yacht, and returned to Holland in one of the other vessels of the fleet.

The Charter Granted for New Netherland, Oct. 11, 1614.—The States. General granted to the same Company a three years' monopoly to trade from the 40th to the 45th degree of latitude, generously extending the rights of the Amsterdam merchants over the very territory that Capt. Smith had that same

1 Bancroft.

THE POLITICAL CONDITION OF HOLLAND.

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year mapped and called New England. For a time, however, there was nc conflict in their claims, and Christiansen ascended the Hudson river as far as Castle Island, just south of Albany, where for the convenience of traffic, and protection, he built a fortified 'truck-house,' which was garrisoned with a dozen To this station they gave the name of Nassau, and they called the Hudson river the Maurice, after their illustrious countryman. This was the first permanent establishment of the Dutch on the Hudson, and for a long period a profitable and extensive trade in peltry was carried on with the Indians.

men.

The Iroquois.-The Hollanders now began their long and friendly intercourse with the Six Nations,' which but for the injustice and tyranny of Kieft would never have been disturbed. The French had already founded Quebec and Montreal, and while Hudson was sailing up his great river, Champlain was penetrating the Northern frontier.

But the moment was approaching when the religious agitations throughout the Low Countries were to be renewed with intensity, and culminate in the Thirty Years' War of religion in Germany. It was still the development of the great principle of the Reformation which was dividing all communities into the two parties,—the one for progress, the other for conservatism, if not retrogression. Even in Holland, where the Reformation had achieved its chief conquests, two parties had grown up. The stadtholder led the one which represented the principles of close corporations and commercial monopolies. On his side were wealth and power; on the other, the popular interests. The one represented the spirit of Feudalism and monopoly, not only in commerce, but in land, carrying with it political power, and rendering deliberative assemblies aristocratic. While the stadtholder wished to centralize all power in the States-General, the truer republican spirit, represented by Olden Barneveldt and Grotius,—the former the founder of the republic, and the latter the greatest political writer of his age, and an authority still of frequent citation in matters of national and international law,-sided with the Provincial assemblies. They not only clearly defined the rights, but valiantly asserted the sovereignty of the old municipalities that had borrowed their civil franchises

1 New York, at the time of its discovery and settle inent by the Europeans, was inhabited by a race of men distinguished above all the other aborigines of this continent for their intelligence and prowess. Five distinct and independent tribes, speaking a language radically the same, and practising similar customs, had united in forming a confederacy which, for durability and power, was unequalled in Indian history. They were the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, called the Iroquois by the French, and the Five Nations by the English. In cases of great emergency each tribe or nation acted independently; but a general council usually assembled at Onondaga, near the centre of their territory, and determined upon peace or war, and all other matters which regarded the interests of the whole. The powers of this council appear to have been not much dissimilar to those of the United States Congress under the old confederation.

Their language, though guttural, was sonorous. Their orators studied euphony in their words and in their arrangement. Their graceful attitudes and gestures, and their verflowing sentences, rendered their discourses, if no always eloquent, at least highly impressive. An erect and commanding figure, with a blanket thrown loosely over the shoulder, with his na

ked arm raised, and addressing in impassioned strains a group of similar persons, sitting upon the ground around him, would, to use the illustration of an early historian of this State, give no faint picture of Rome in her early days.

They were very methodical in their harangues. When in conference with other nations, at the conclusion of every important sentence of the opposite speaker, a sachem gave a small stick to the orator who was to reply, charging him at the same time to remember it, After a short consultation with the others, he was enabled to repeat most of the discourse, which he answered article by article.

These nations were distinguished for their prowess in war, as well as for their sagacity and eloquence in council. War was their delight. Believing it to be the most honorable employment of men, they infused into their children in early life high ideas of military glory. They carried their arms into Canada, across the Connecticut, to the banks of the Mississippi, and almost to the Gulf of Mexico. Formidable by their numbers and their skill, they excited respect and awe in the most powerful tribes, and exacted tribute and obedience from the weak.-Introduction to Campbell's Border Warfare of New York.