1609.] HUDSON'S RETURN TO ENGLAND. 357 of the great river which she had been the first vessel to ascend; her disorderly crew were little inclined for any fresh adventures; and disputes, which continued even after she set sail, had begun, as to her next destination. As she again weighed anchor and sailed across the upper bay, whose shores may have begun already to show the bright colors of autumn foliage, officers and crew wrangled over their plans for the future. The Dutch mate desired to winter in Newfoundland, and explore Davis' Straits during the next spring; the crew "threatened savagely" if they were not taken back to Europe; and Hudson's Hudson feared their violence, and wished besides to carry the return news of his discoveries at once to Holland. It was not until 1609. the yacht had passed through the Kills on her outward route, and had dropped below Sandy Hook, that a compromise was at last effected. It was decided to make first of all for the British Islands, and two days later they were well out at sea upon an eastern course. The voyage was prosperous; and on the seventh of November the ship lay safely in Dartmouth Harbor, her turbulent sailors contented for the time, and her master sending his report to the Amsterdam directors of the Dutch East India Company. November, land. Hudson had of course intended to go in person to his employers, as soon as he should reach a European port; but he was not permitted to do so. In spite of the frequency with which, at that period, men entered foreign service, the obligations of nationality were arbitrarily enforced when any advantage was to be gained there- His detenby; and the English government saw that they had let a tion in Engman of too great ability enter the employ of their energetic neighbors. When the news of the Half Moon's arrival was received in London an order was issued forbidding her captain to leave the country, and reminding him and the Englishmen on his vessel that they owed their services to their own nation. Hudson entered again the employ of the Muscovy Company, to whose efforts his success seems to have given new energy; and in the spring of 1610 he sailed on his last and fatal voyage to the northwest, to be abandoned by his brutal crew among the ice-fields of the great and desolate bay which bears his name and was the last of his discoveries. The Half Moon was detained for months at Dartmouth, and was only permitted to return to Amsterdam in July of the year of her captain's departure. to their Hudson's discovery was received in the Netherlands in a way characteristic of the people. It had opened to the government Indifference of the States General a broad and fertile territory, untouched of the Dutch before by any European nation, and undoubtedly their own American by right of first occupation; yet this seems to have been only a secondary consideration in their minds. Territorial increase seemed discoveries. at first sight a comparatively unimportant matter; the first thought of government and people was the commercial value of the new region. For several years the States did little in the matter but to give official information about the situation of the new river and the course necessary to reach it, formal inquiries on these subjects having reached them from the cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Enckhuysen, and Hoorn. They did not in set terms affirm their right to the discovered territory, extend its boundaries indefinitely, as England, France, and Spain had done in similar cases, or make grants to encourage colonization an idea which does not seem even to have occurred to them until very much later. This was not the course of the government alone; the East India Company itself did nothing farther with regard to the west. The short passage to Cathay was still the absorbing scheme with its directors; another unsuccessful expedition was soon to be sent to the northeast, urged by the indefatigable Plantius. The discovery of the "Great River of the Mountains" by Hudson did not seem to them a compensation for his failure to find a Northeast passage. Beginning of While these stood aloof, however, private enterprise, as so often before in Holland, stepped in to seize the advantages of the new region. No sooner had the Half Moon come back to Amsterdam, than a few shrewd merchants of the city, who saw the advantage of buying costly furs for trifles from ignorant and friendly savages, engaged a part of her crew to guide a vessel of their own to the great bay and river, and bring her back laden with good peltries. The venture was highly successful; and a trade quickly sprang up, that constantly attracted new vessels and fresh competition, and grew quietly but steadily till it held a high place in Netherland commerce, and furnished a new channel for the private capital now set free from the dangers and disturbances of the long Spanish war. Dutch trad the Hudson. Thus the three years following the return of Hudson's expedition saw the lonely "River of the Mountains" traversed by the little ing boats in round-prowed vessels of the Dutch, with their crews of eager traders, making their slow way up or down the stream from one Indian village to another; or lying at anchor in the sheltered bays, while canoes laden with skins thronged about them, and the savages flocked aboard for the beads and knives and hatchets which they took in payment. Manhattan Island, though only a fort and one or two small buildings had been erected upon it—perhaps not even these till 1613-had become the chief station for the collection of the peltries and their shipment to home ports; and an unsuccessful attempt even had been made to keep European goats and rabbits there 1614.] EXPEDITIONS OF ADRIAEN BLOCK. 359 for the traders' use. The river began to be called Mauritius, after the Stadtholder Maurice of Orange. Not only its waters, but the bays of the present New Jersey, and the coast as far south as Delaware Bay, were embraced in the territory of the Dutch fur-trade; and the energetic Netherland seamen began to push out right and left from their new station, and to add fresh discoveries to their scanty knowledge of the neighboring shores. post built. Foremost in these enterprises were Hendrick Christaensen, Adriaen Block, and Cornelis Jacobsen May, three Dutch captains, First trading who, by the end of the four years following Hudson's voyage, had grown most familiar with the new region, and had engaged their ships most successfully in its trade. Christaensen, who by that time had made ten voyages to the river, built the first great trading post upon it, in 1614,- Fort Nassau, on Castle Island, close by Albany, and was appointed its commander. Block spent the winter of 1613-14 on Manhattan Island, in building a yacht of six- Exploring teen tons, the Onrust (Restless), to take the place of his voyage of ship, the Tiger, which had accidentally been burned. In Block. the spring he sailed eastward, passing through the rapids of Hell-Gate in the East River, Island Sound from end to end, discovered and entered the Quonehtacut, or Connecticut River, and made his way up the New England coast as far as what he called Pye Bay, now the bay of Nahant, which he called "the limit of New Netherland." He visited the shores of Nar Nahant. Adriaen ragansett Bay, and saw within it that "Roode" or "Red" island from which the modern State of Rhode Island derives its name. 1 Wassenaar's Historische Verhael, vol. ix., p. 44, quoted by Brodhead, vol. i., p. 47. Captain Argall is said, on doubtful authority, to have visited Manhattan Island, on his return from Port Royal, and to have found four or five houses there. |