Spaniards would learn naval warfare by exercise; and the little fleets of the provinces could hardly blockade an ocean, or quarrel with Spain for a continent; the costs of defence would exceed the resources of the state; home would be lost in the search for a foreign world, of which the air breathed pestilence, the natives were cannibals, the unoccupied regions were infinitely and hopelessly wild. The party which desired peace with Spain, and which counted Grotius and Olden Barneveldt among its ornaments, for a long time succeeded in repressing the energy of hope, and defeating every effort at Batavian settlements in the West.(1)

While the negotiations with Spain postponed the formation of a West-India Company, the Dutch found their way to the United States through another channel.

The first efforts of the Dutch merchants to share in the commerce of Asia, were accompanied with a desire to search for a north-west passage; and the ill success of Cabot and Frobisher, of Willoughby and Davis, did but animate the Netherlands to a generous rivalry. Twice in the sixteenth century did they seek a passage by the north, and vainly coasted along Nova Zembla and Mus

covy. Again did the envoy of Amsterdam descend 1596. within ten degrees of the pole, passing a winter in Nova Zembla, rendered horrible by famine, by the ferocity of polar beasts of prey, and by ice; the ship was frozen in hopelessly; in two little vessels the wretched crew hardly escaped. The voyages of the Dutch were esteemed without a parallel, for their daring.

1602.

The establishment of an East-India Company, with the exclusive right to commerce beyond the Cape of Good Hope on the one side, and beyond the Straits of Magellan on the other, with all powers requisite for conquests, colonization, and government, covered the seas of Asia with fleets of Indiamen. The provisions in the charter of this first in the series of commercial companies were not new; they did but convey to a corporation the baronial privileges which had in England been granted to Cabot and to Raleigh. Analogous to feudal privileges, they equally suited the genius of the aristocratic republic; the states, unwilling to pledge themselves to warfare in the East, purposely secured the interests of the company by the largest privileges.

(1) Grotii Hist. lib. xvi. p. 721-725. Bentivoglio, i. 37. Research would be a pleasure, with guides like Grotius and Bentivoglio.

Meantime, Europe had not relinquished the hope of a 1605. nearer passage to Asia; and Denmark took its place 1606. among the states whose ships vainly toiled for the discovery.

No sooner was the failure known, than a company of London merchants, excited by the immense profits of voyages to the East, contributed the means for a new attempt; and HENRY HUDSON was the chosen leader of the expedition. Sailing to the north, with his only son for his companion, he coasted the shores of Greenland, and hesitated whether to attempt the circumnavigation of that country, or the passage across the pole. What though he came within eight degrees of the pole, thus surpassing every earlier navigator? After renewing the discovery of Spitzbergen, vast masses of ice compelled his return.(1)

But the zeal of Hudson could not be quenched; and the next year beheld him once more engaged in a voyage,

and cherishing the deceitful hope that, through the icy 1608. seas which divide Spitzbergen from Nova Zembla, he might find a path to the genial clime of Southern Asia.

The failure of two expeditions daunted the enterprise of Hudson's employers; they could not daunt the courage of the great navigator, who was destined to become the rival of Smith and of Champlain. He longed to tempt once more the dangers of the northern seas; and, repairing to Holland, he offered, in the service of the Dutch East-India Company, to explore the icy wastes in search of the coveted passage. The Voyage of Smith to Virginia stimulated desire; the Zealanders, fearing the loss of treasure, objected; but, by the influence of Balthazar Moucheron, the directors for Amsterdam resolved on equipping a small vessel of discovery; and on the fourth day of April, 1609, the Crescent, commanded by Hudson, and manned by a mixed crew of Englishmen and Hollanders, his son being of the number, set sail for the north-western passage.

1609.

Masses of ice impeded the navigation towards Nova Zembla; Hudson, who had examined the maps of John Smith of Virginia, turned to the west; and passing beyond Greenland and Newfoundland, and running down the coast of Acadia, he anchored, probably, in the mouth of the Penobscot. Then, following the track of Gosnold, he came upon the promontory of Cape Cod, and, believing himself its first discoverer, gave it the name of New (1) Purchas, in N. Y. Hist. Coll. i. 61. Compare Lambrechtsten.

Holland. Long afterwards, it was claimed as the northeastern boundary of New Netherlands. From the sands of Cape Cod, he steered a southerly course till he was opposite the entrance into the bay of Virginia, where Hudson remembered that his countrymen were planted. Then turning again to the north, he discovered the Delaware Bay, examined its currents and its soundings, and, without going on shore, took note of the aspect of the country.

On the third day of September, almost at the time when Champlain was invading New York from the north, less than five months after the truce with Spain, which gave the Netherlands a diplomatic existence as a state, the Crescent anchored within Sandy Hook, and from the neighbouring shores, that were crowned with "goodly oakes," attracted frequent visits from the natives. After a week's delay, Hudson sailed through the Narrows, and at the mouth of the river anchored in a harbour which was pronounced to be very good for all winds. Of the surrounding lands, the luxuriant grass, the flowers, the trees, the grateful fragrance, were admired. Ten days were employed in exploring the river; the first of Europeans, (1) Hudson went sounding his way above the Highlands, till at last the Crescent had sailed some miles beyond the city of Hudson, and a boat had advanced a little beyond Albany. Frequent intercourse was held with the astonished natives of the Algonquin race; and the strangers were welcomed by a deputation from the Mohawks. Having completed his discovery, Hudson descended the stream to which time has given his name; and on the fourth day of October, about the season of the return of John Smith to England, he set sail for Europe, leaving once more to its solitude the land, that his imagination, anticipating the future, described as the most beautiful" in the world.(2)

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Sombre forests shed a melancholy grandeur over the useless magnificence of nature, and hid in their deep shades the rich soil which the sun had never warmed. No axe had levelled the giant progeny of the crowded groves, in which the fantastic forms of withered limbs, that had been blasted and riven by lightning, contrasted

(1) Vander Donck, Beschryvinge van Nieuw-Nederlant, p. 3.

(2) Nieuw-Nederland (om Hudson's eigen woorden te gebruiken) was het schoonste land, dat men met voeten betreden kon, &c. &c. In Lambrechtsten, Korte Beschrijving, &c. p. 17.

strangely with the verdant freshness of a younger growth of branches. The wanton grape-vine, seeming by its own power to have sprung from the earth, and to have fastened its leafy coils on the top of the tallest forest-tree, swung in the air with every breeze, like the loosened shrouds of a ship, Trees might everywhere be seen breaking from their root in the marshy soil, and threatening to fall with the first rude gust; while the ground was strown with the ruins of former forests, over which a profusion of wild flowers wasted their freshness in mockery of the gloom. Reptiles sported in the stagnant pools, or crawled unharmed over piles of mouldering trees. The spotted deer couched among the thickets, but not to hide, for there was no pursuer; and there were none but wild animals to crop the uncut herbage of the productive prairies. Silence reigned, broken, it may have been, by the flight of landbirds or the flapping of water-fowl, and rendered more dismal by the howl of beasts of prey. The streams, not yet limited to a channel, spread over sand-bars, tufted with copses of willow, or waded through wastes of reeds or slowly, but surely, undermined the groups of sycamores that grew by their side. The smaller brooks spread out into sedgy swamps, that were overhung by clouds of mosquitoes; masses of decaying vegetation fed the exhalations with the seeds of pestilence, and made the balmy air of the summer's evening as deadly as it seemed grateful. Vegetable life and death were mingled hideously together. The horrors of corruption frowned on the fruitless fertility of uncultivated nature.

;

And man, the occupant of the soil, was wild as the savage scene, in harmony with the rude nature by which he was surrounded: a vagrant over the continent, in constant warfare with his fellow-man; the bark of the birch his canoe; strings of shells his ornaments, his record, and his coin; the roots of the forest among his resources for food; his knowledge in architecture surpassed both in strength and durability by the skill of the beaver; bended saplings the beams of his house; the branches and rind of trees its roof; drifts of forest-leaves his couch; mats of bulrushes his protection against the winter's cold; his religion the adoration of nature; his morals the promptings of undisciplined instinct; disputing with the wolves and bears the lordship of the soil, and dividing with the squirrel the wild fruits with which the universal woodlands abounded.

The history of a country is always modified by its climate, and, in many of its features, is determined by its geographical situation. The region which Hudson had discovered, possessed on the seaboard a harbour unrivalled in its advantages; having near its eastern boundary a river that admits the tide far into the interior; extending to the chain of the great lakes, which have their springs in the heart of the continent; containing within its limits the sources of large rivers that flow to the Gulf of Mexico and to the Bays of Chesapeake and of Delaware; inviting to extensive internal intercourse by natural channels, of which, long before Hudson_anchored off Sandy Hook, even the warriors of the Five Nations availed themselves in their excursions to Quebec, to the Ohio, or the Susquehannah; with just sufficient difficulties to irritate, and not enough to dishearten ;— New York united most fertile lands with the highest adaptation to foreign and domestic commerce.

The manner in which civilized man can develop the resources of a wild country, is contained in its physical character; and the results which have been effected, are

necessarily analogous to their causes. And how 1837. changed is the scene from that on which Hudson gazed! The earth glows with the colours of civilization; the banks of the streams are enamelled with richest grasses; woodlands and cultivated fields are harmoniously blended; the birds of spring find their delight in orchards and trim gardens, variegated with choicest plants from every temperate zone; while the brilliant flowers of the tropics bloom from the windows of the green-house and the saloon. The yeoman, living like a good neighbour near the fields he cultivates, glories in the fruitfulness of the valleys, and counts with honest exultation the flocks and herds that browse in safety on the hills. The thorn has given way to the rosebush; the cultivated vine clambers over rocks where the brood of serpents used to nestle; while industry smiles at the changes she has wrought, and inhales the bland air which now has health on its wings.

And man is still in harmony with nature, which he has subdued, cultivated, and adorned. For him the rivers that flow to remotest climes, mingle their waters; for him the lakes gain new outlets to the ocean; for him the arch spans the flood, and science spreads iron pathways to the recent wilderness; for him the hills yield up the shining