faith and the power of France amid its ancient barbarism."* III. HENRY HUDSON. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the little Republic of Holland had already become one of the first commercial and maritime powers of the world. In those days hardy navigators and bold explorers were flocking from every nation in Europe to sail under the Dutch standard in search of fame and fortune. Among the most noted of these was Henry Hudson, a mariner of England, who was the discoverer and first' explorer of the river that now bears his name. Henry Hudson was born about the middle of the sixteenth century, but of his early life little is known. His first voyage was in 1607, in the employ of a company of London merchants, to the east coast of Greenland, in the search for a northwest passage to India. On the 6th of April, 1609, he began a voyage in the service of the Dutch East India Company, to the northern coast of Asia. For some reason or other he turned his ships toward North America, and on the twelfth day of September in that year, discovered and entered the mouth of the beautiful river now called by his name that serves to drain the waters of the mountain belt of the Great Wilderness of Northern New York. It is believed that Hudson explored the stream as far up * See Parkman's Pioneers of France, Palmer's History of Lake Champlain, Champlain's Voyages de la Nouv. France, and Documentary History of New York. as the old Indian hunting ground called Nach-te-nak, which lies around and upon the islands that cluster among the In his voyage up the stream he had numerous adventures and two or three battles with the Indians, who were jealous of the strange intruders. The staunch little ship in which he sailed up the river was named the Half-Moon. He named the stream the River of the Mountains, which is a literal translation of the Algonquin name of it, Ca-ho-ta-te-a. It was reserved for his countrymen, who took the province from the Dutch in 1664, first to call it in honor of its immortal discoverer. Hudson, a year or two afterward discovered the great northern bay, which was also named in his honor. His ship's crew then mutinied; he was sent adrift with eight men in a small boat upon the wild northern ocean, and was never heard of more. From these explorations and discoveries by navigators sailing in the interests of rival powers, there sprang up conflicting claims to the territory of Northern New York. Out of these claims arose a long series of bloody conflicts between the French and the English and their respective Indian allies, of which the soil of Northern New York formed the battle ground, until the brave Montcalm yielded to the chivalrous Wolfe, one hundred and fifty years afterward, on the plains of Abraham. Since these discoveries and explorations, two centuries. * The Mohawk, just before it flows into the Hudson, separates into four spreading branches, which the early Dutch settlers significantly called Spruytes, which is from the Danish Spruiten or Saxon Spryttan, from which comes our English word Sprouts.-Vide Annals of Albany, vol. 2, page 226. and a half have passed away, and how manifold and vast are now the human interests that lie stretched along the lakes and rivers which are still linked with the names of those three kindred spirits of the olden time, romanceloving explorers," each immortalized by his discoveriesJacques Cartier, Henry Hudson, and Samuel de Champlain. 66 CHAPTER IV. THE GREAT WILDERNESS. Where the red deer leaps and the panther creeps, I. COUCH-SACH-RA-GE. The gloomy solitudes of a great wilderness still cover the larger part of the territory of Northern New York. On Governor Pownal's map of the northern British colonies of 1776, across the region that comprises the wilderness, is written the following inscription: THIS VAST TRACT OF LAND, WHICH IS THE ANTIENT COUCHSACHRAge, one of the Four OF THE SIX NATIONS, IS NOT YET So this great wilderness was the old Indian hunting ground, Couch-sach-ra-ge of the Iroquois, which, like the ocean and the desert, refuses to be subdued by man. The But a more euphonious Indian name for the great wilderness, or rather for the mountainous or eastern part of it, has long usurped the place of its ancient but more significant title Couch-sach-ra-ge. This name is Adirondack. Montagnais, those wild rovers of the country of the Saguenay, who subsisted entirely by the chase, were often during the long Canadian winters, when their game grew scarce, driven by hunger to live for many weeks together upon the buds and bark, and sometimes even upon the wood of forest trees. This led their hereditary enemies, the more favored Mohawks, to call them, in mockery of their condition, Ad-i-ron-daks or tree-eaters.* This Iroquois name of an Algonquin tribe, thus born in derision, was first given, it is said, by Prof. Emmons to the principal mountain chain of the wilderness, but it is now by common consent applied to the whole mountainous region of it. In the year 1798, John Brown of Providence, Rhode Island, bought a tract of two hundred and ten thousand acres, lying in the western part of the wilderness, and made upon it a fruitless attempt at settlement. The name John Brown's Tract, so often applied to the whole region, comes from this purchase. Can we not have some more appropriate name than either for the great wilderness, and is there one more full of wild significance than the old Indian Couch-sach-ra-ge? II. ITS GENERAL ASPECTS AND ITS IMPORTANT USES. A line beginning at Saratoga Springs, and running westerly across the country to Trenton Falls, near Utica, on the Mohawk; thence northerly to Potsdam, near Ogdensburgh, on the St. Lawrence; thence easterly to Dannemora, near Plattsburgh, on Lake Champlain, and thence southerly to the place of beginning, will nearly coincide with the boundaries of the wilderness. * On trouve aussi Adirondaks c'est-à-dire mangeurs d'arbres. Ce nom leur a été donné par les Iroquois pour se moquer de leur jeûne à la chasse. Il a été transformé plus tard en celui d' Algonquins.—Jesuit Relations. |