to know Christ and humanity, whose labours with discretion will triply reward thy charge and paine; what so truly sutes with honor and honesty, as the discouering things vnknowne, erecting Townes, peopling Countries, informing the ignorant, reforming things uniust, teaching vertue and gaine to our native mother Country; to finde imploiment for those who are idle, because they know not what to doe; so farre from wronging any, as to cause posterity to remember thee, and remembering thee, euer honor that remembrance with praise." "Then," reversing the picture, he proceeds, "who would live at home idly, or thinke in himselfe any worth to live, onely to eate, drinke, and sleepe, and so die; or by consuming that carelesly, his frinds got worthily, or by vsing that miserably that maintained vertue honestly, or for being descended nobly, and pine with the vaine vaunt of great kindred in penury, or to maintaine a silly shew of bravery," (finery,) "toile out thy heart, soule, and time basely; by shifts, tricks, Cards and Dice, or by relating newes of other mens' actions, sharke here and there for a dinner or supper, deceive thy friends by false promises and dissimulation, in borrowing where thou never meanest to pay, offende the Lawes, surfet with excesse, burthen thy Countrie, abuse thy selfe, despair in want and then cousen" (cozen) "thy kindred, yea, even thy owne brother, and wish thy Parents' death, (I will not say damnation,) to haue their estates, when thou seest what honours and rewards the world yet hath for them, that will seeke them and worthily deserve them." The full merits of Smith, as the earliest and most indefatigable promoter of the colonization of New England, have never been adequately appreciated. By his personal exertions in the survey and exploration of that neglected region, and by the continual publications which, at great pains and expense, he industriously circulated in England, he awakened the public interest in an enterprise which otherwise, for many years, might have been slighted and deferred. He lived to see the foundations of a great nation firmly laid, both at the south and north, and though, like many other great projectors and laborers in the same field of action, he reaped no personal advantage (but rather much loss) from his exertion and enterprise, he continued, to the day of his death, to regard the two colonies with the fond partiality of a parent, and to do all he could for their advancement. "By that acquaintance I haue with them," he says, “I call them my children, for they haue beene my Wife, my Hawks, Hounds, my Cards, my Dice, and, in totall, my best content, as indifferent to my heart as my left hand to my right. And notwithstanding all those miracles of disasters have crossed both them and me, yet were there not an Englishman remaining, as God be thanked, notwithstanding the massacre, there are some thousands; I would yet begin againe with as small meanes as I did at first, not that I have any secret encouragement (I protest) more than lamentable experience; for all their discoveries I haue yet heard of, are but Pigs of my owne Sow, nor more strange to me, than to heare one tell me hee hath gone from Billingsgate and discouered Gravesend, Tilbury, Quinborow, Lee, and Margit." It only remains to be added that, although, so far as we are informed, never married, the gallant captain was (and deservedly) a general favorite with the ladies. There seems to have been a certain manhood and kindliness in his very look, which, almost at a glance, conciliated to him the good-will of the fairer and weaker portion of humanity. These favors, so flattering to the natural vanity of man, he bears worthily and with no offence to the givers, ever speaking with the utmost modesty and gratitude of the kindness he had so often experienced at their hands. His acknowledgment to the sex reminds us of the celebrated eulogy pronounced by Ledyard. It occurs in his dedication to the duchess of Richmond-"I confesse, my hand, though able to weild a weapon among the Barbarous, yet well may tremble in handling a pen among so many Iudicious. * * Yet my comfort is, that heretofore honourable and ver tuous Ladies, and comparable but among themselues, haue offered me rescue and protection in my greatest dangers; even in forraine parts I haue felt reliefe from that sex.-The beauteous Lady Tragabigzanda, when I was a slaue to the Turkes, did all she could to secure me" (i. e. make me secure). "When I overcame the Bashaw of Nalbrits, in Tartaria, the charitable Lady Callamata supplied my necessities. In the vtmost of many extremities, that blessed Pokahontas, the great Kings daughter of Virginia, oft saved my life. When I escaped the crueltie of Pirats and most furious stormes, a long time alone in a small Boat at Sea, and driven ashore in France, the good Lady Madam Chanoyes bountifully assisted me." CAPTAIN HENRY HUDSON, AND THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW YORK. CHAPTER I. ACCOUNT OF HENRY HUDSON-HIS VOYAGES IN SEARCH OF A NORTHERLY VERY little is known of the early life of Henry Hudson, one of the boldest and most renowned discoverers of his day. He was a Londoner, and a friend of the famous Captain John Smith-with whom, it would seem, he often conferred upon the engrossing topic of discovery and exploration in the New World. His first known expedition was one recorded by himself, undertaken at the instance of "certaine worshipfull merchants of London," as he says, "for to discover a passage by the North Pole to Japan and China."* For this gigantic undertaking, which to this day has baffled the entire exertion of the British empire, his only equipment was a little vessel, manned by ten mariners. With these, and with his little son John, after all had solemnly partaken of the sacrament, he set sail from Gravesend, on the 1st of May, 1607, to explore the fearful recesses of the Arctic Zone. Compared with the hardihood of such an undertaking, all modern enterprise sinks into insignificance. On the 13th of June he made the coast of Greenland, where * "Diuers Voyages and Northern Discoueries of that worthy irrecouerable Discouerer, Master Henry Hudson." he saw "a very high mount, like a round castle," which he named the Mount of God's Mercy. This coast he explored for a considerable distance and to a high latitude, "considering," he says, "wee found Lande contrarie to that our cards" (charts) "made mention of. * * * And for aught we could see, it is like to be a good land, and worth the seeing." He then stood to the north and east, in so high a latitude, that the sun was continually above the horizon, and in seventy-eight degrees fell in with Spitzbergen. About this island he hovered for some time, opposed by contrary winds, and entangled among huge masses of ice, hopelessly endeavoring to work his way to the northward. Convinced that, from the lateness of the season, it would be impossible to achieve his purpose, he sailed westward, vainly attempting to pass to the north of Greenland, and thence returned on the 15th of September to the Thames, having attained a higher latitude (eighty-two degrees) than any navigator who had preceded him. The next year (April 22d, 1608,) he again sailed, with his son and thirteen others, to seek a passage to India by the north of Nova Zembla. He kept east and north until he gained so high a latitude that at midnight, the sun was five degrees and a half above the horizon, on the northern meridian. He reached Nova Zembla, which, he says, "is to a mans eye a pleasant Land; much mayne high Land with no Snow on it, looking in some places greene, and Deere feeding thereon. * * This place vpon Nova Zembla is another than that which the Hollanders call Costing Sarch, discouered by Oliver Brownell," who, many years before, sailing northward, "moved by the hope of gain," had suffered shipwreck in these dreary seas. * Hudson, as before, strove with much patience and fortitude to accomplish his purpose; but constant head winds and floating ice prevented his little ship from proceeding, and after making considerable survey in these desolate regions, he returned (August 26th,) to England. On this voyage, like Columbus, he chronicles the appearance of a couple of mer |