E 129.H88C44 University Library

ILA
3 1924 028 727 687 a
Hudson Tercentenary

AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT

REGARDING THE OBJECT
AND QUEST OF AN ALL-
WATER ROUTE FROM
EUROPE TO INDIA; THE
OBSTACLES IN THE WAY;
AND ALSO HUDSON’S VOY-
AGE TO AMERICA IN 1609
AND SOME OF ITS RESULTS

BY
FRANK CHAMBERLAIN

—

ALBANY
J. ». LYON COMPANY, PRINTERS
1909

+
COPYRIGHT 1909
By Frank CHAMBERLAIN
HUDSON TERCENTENARY

Let us turn back the pages of history and take
a cursory view of what gave the wonderful stim-
ulus to maritime adventure; and what so long
delayed the discovery of the western world. by the
Europeans.

Civilized mankind scarcely secures the neces-
saries of life before the desire for the luauries
springs up and is cherished.

For untold centuries all of eastern Asia forbade
the entrance of foreigners into its territories. To
Europeans it was an unknown land.

In the year 326 B. C. Alexander the Great
marched his conquering Macedonian legions
against the myriads of Asiatic troops, subdued
them and marched on to the Hindus, where he
‘¢ improvised a fleet ’’ for his army, sailed down
that river, called Sacred, to the Indian ocean.
Astonished at the wealth of the country and hav-
ing amassed precious gems and hundreds of
millions of dollars he returned loaded with his
treasures up the Euphrates, to that most wonder-
4 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

ful city of ancient times, Babylon, where he died.
He opened the western doors of India, which
exposed its great wealth, excited the avarice of
the small number of Greeks who knew of his
exploits; and for centuries it was the Europeans’
Eldorado, which ultimately, by its luxury and
effeminacy, undermined western manhood and led
to the decay of Greece and Rome.

Asia, beyond the Euphrates, except by a few,
was an unknown country to Europeans until
Marco Polo in 1271 A. D., in the company of his
father and uncle, met Kublai Khan, the Mongol
Emperor, won his confidence and esteem and by
him was entrusted with the most important mis-
sions. During the seventeen years he remained
he visited the most important places in China,
India and the East Indies, and returned to Italy
loaded with the rarest, most precious gems and
immense wealth, published a book telling his
experience and picturing the East in the most
roseate colors, generally emanating from fancy,
but in this case resting upon facts of which he.
was able to furnish satisfactory proof.

The fact established that India—'the East
Indies had the gold, silver, precious gems and
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 5

stones, ebony, ivory, cloves, cinnamon, cassia,
spices and the most beautiful and costly fabrics,
articles not obtainable elsewhere and the great
desiderata of the Europeans, the question arose
as to how they could the most easily, quickly and
cheaply be obtained. They could, without much
difficulty, find their way to the Indian ocean, but
the transportation thence to Hurope must be by
‘“the ship of the desert,’’ the camel, across the
Arabian desert and the Isthmus of Suez, ‘‘ the
bridge of nations ’’ to the Mediterranean or by a
more northerly route through the Caspian and
Black seas. Caravans must be formed by the
merchants and armed troops to protect them
against the robbers. The land route by the cara-
vans was slow and very expensive, and the hope
was cherished that an all-water route might be
found which would not only shorten the time, but
greatly lessen the expense of transportation. For
a considerable time the Phcenicians, occupying a
little skirt of land on the eastern end of the
Mediterranean, and the first distinctly commercial
nation in the world’s history, virtually monopo-
lized this land transportation; and then distributed
the articles along the shore of the Mediterranean,
6 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

where they had planted colonies clear up to the
Pillars of Hercules. But Venice and Genoa, rival
and wealthy cities of Italy, with fine harbors on
this inland sea, sought the India trade, supplanted
Pheenicia and became greatly enriched by it. The
great desideratum—an all-water route from west-
ern Europe to the Indies — had not yet been found,
but after the Italian cities had enjoyed, monopo-
lized the trade with India for a period of 150
years, another little skirt of land on the west end
of the Mediterranean and on the Atlantic ocean,
Portugal, brought about a complete change in the
transportation which deprived Venice and Genoa
of that business.

Henry, Prince of Portugal, surnamed the Navi-
gator, far in advance of his time in geographical
knowledge and in the science of navigation, intro-
duced the compass and the astrolabe, which he
furnished with nautical maps and other guides for
his mariners, whom he inspired to sail along the
western coast of Africa and double the Cape of
Good Hope. This, Bartholomew Diaz, a Portu-
guese navigator, did in 1486, and then it seemed
certain that an all-water route from western
Europe to India had been found, but it was not
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 7

an accomplished fact until Vasco da Gama, a
Portuguese navigator, availing himself of Diaz’s
discovery of 1486, made a voyage in 1497 from
Lisbon to Calicut (not Calcutta) in southwestern
India.

Henry ‘‘ the Navigator ’’ was the father of what
may be called ocean, in contradistinction to coast,
navigation, scientific, instead of chance navigation,
although he died before the Cape of Good Hope
had been doubled. After Diaz had doubled the
Cape of Good Hope in 1486, the furor of every
mariner was to point the prow of his vessel
toward India to share in its precious gems, its
beautiful and costly fabrics, articles of luxury,
and its great wealth. The India fever seized all
the maritime nations of Europe, Portugal, Spain,
France, the Netherlands, England, Sweden and
Denmark. Christopher Columbus in 1492 sought,
and thought he had found India by sailing west-
ward. Then Rodrigo Lenzoli Borgia, a Spaniard,
and the Pope, under the title of Alexander VI,
assuming to be vice-gerent of the world, made a
division of all the newly-discovered, or subse-
quently to be discovered, heathen lands between
the two great Catholic powers, Spain and Portu-
8 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

gal, by drawing a line from pole to pole one hun-
dred leagues west of the Azores and the Cape de
Verde islands (this line was subsequently changed)
and declared that all lands discovered west of that
line and not belonging to some Christian prince
should belong to Spain, and all similar lands east
of that line should belong to Portugal. The two
great maritime and exploring nations of the fif-
teenth and sixteenth centuries were Portugal and
Spain — the former in the east and the latter in
the west. Alas! their great fame is in the past.
Spain hoped to reach the Indies by a shorter all-
water route, sailing westward, and that was
Columbus’s mission, purpose and hope.

The edict of the Pope did not, in the least,
restrain France, England or the Netherlands from
attempting to make discoveries, and France, Eng-
land, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark
granted charters to companies of their own sub-
jects, granting them great and exclusive rights,
and calling them East India companies. At the
close of the year A. D. 1600, Queen Elizabeth char-
tered the English East India Company with most
extraordinary rights and privileges, and thus laid
the foundations for Great Britain’s Asiatic
empire.
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 9

The Dutch East India Company charter was
‘granted in 1602, to trade to the East Indies by the
Cape of Good Hope and the Strait of Magellan
for twenty-one years, and no other of the East
India companies has been so successfully man-
aged. The Dutch have derived large revenue from
the islands they still hold there, viz.: Java, the
Moluccas or Spice islands, a large part of Borneo,
Sumatra, Celebes and several small islands in
the Malay Archipelago.

Cornelius Hartman, a Dutch navigator, who had
spent some time in Lisbon, Portugal, returned in
1594 to Amsterdam, where he gave such a glowing
account of the rich and wonderful products of the
East, which covered the quays of the Tagus, in
Lisbon, that nine prominent merchants of Amster-
dam formed a company, equipped a fleet of four
ships, fitted for war (a war then prevailing be-
tween Holland and Spain) and for trade, and put
Hartman in command. He followed the Portu-
guese route, and two years later returned with
cargoes far surpassing the expectations or even
the hopes of the company.

Seeing this Indian wealth upon their own docks,
other associations and companies were formed in
10 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

the Netherlands to engage in this lucrative trade.
Rivalry between them became so great as to dimin-
ish the profits that a consolidation of the com-
panies was effected by Barneveldt. This company
consisted of six branches called chambers, each
of which was to be managed by its own directors
(originally fifty-three in all) in different parts of
the country.

A general council of seventeen directors (Am-
sterdam eight, Zealand four, Rotterdam, Hoorn
and Enkhuizen each one, and the seventeenth to be
chosen by the chamber of Zealand, the Maas and
North Holland) were by a majority of votes to
determine all voyages. This arrangement was
made to protect the small chambers against the
power and policy of Amsterdam if against their
interests. Hach locality was secured in its due
proportion of the business of the company. Hach
chamber had the exclusive management of its ships
sent out by it and was held responsible for the
property coming into its possession. The general
council of seventeen did not meet often, but the
subordinate chambers could legislate upon subjects
appropriate, and which did not trench upon the
general policy and course of the company.
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 11

The Dutch East India Company was clothed
with extraordinary powers and privileges and
became very wealthy; not alone in the pursuit of
the East India trade, but by capturing in the West
Indies galleons containing great quantities of gold
and silver, which the Spaniards, by the most cruel
methods, had taken in Mexico and Peru. .

The ancients held different opinions about the
form, dimensions, the proportion of land to water,
of the earth, and as to whether it was motionless,
around which all the universe revolved, as the
great center, and of supreme importance, or
whether it was merely a satellite revolving around
the sun. It seems flat and the heavenly bodies
seem to revolve around it. Others thought the
earth was a sphere because ‘‘ the sphere is the
most perfect form; it was the center of the uni-
verse because that is the place of honor; and it is
motionless, because motion is less dignified than
rest.’? Some believed that the earth is round and
rests upon the ocean. Homer (900 B. C.) taught
that the earth is flat, and so, too, did some of the
learned men of Greece and Rome, in the Augustan
age. The great Church of Rome, of unequaled
influence and power, taught that the earth is flat
12 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

and the center of the universe and interdicted, and
for centuries punished as heretics, those denying
the infallibility of the Popes and teaching other-
wise. It is probable that about 600 B. C., Thales
of Miletus, one of the ‘‘ Seven Wise Men of
Greece,’’ a famous astronomer and geometer, was
the first to teach that the earth is round. About
550 B. C. Pythagoras, the renowned Greek phi-
losopher and mathematician, taught that ‘‘ the
earth is a globe which admits of antipodes; that
it is in motion; is not the center of the universe,
but revolves around the sun.’’ Plato, Aristotle,
Hipparchus, Pliny, Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Eratos-
thenes and many others, the most eminent schol-
ars of their times, believed that the earth is a
sphere; and Eratosthenes, an Alexandrian phi-
losopher, astronomer, geometer and geographer
about 210 B. C. thought that the had not only
proved that by scientific astronomical observations
but also the speed of the earth in its revolutions;
its magnitude and also the relative proportion of
its constituent elements of land and water.
Claudius Ptolemy, about 150 A. D., a celebrated
Alexandrian astronomer, geographer and mathe-
matician, held the opinion and promulgated it,
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 13

that the earth is a sphere and that the sun, planets
and stars revolve around it as the grand center.
He was the founder of the Ptolemaic System which
was almost universally received for 1,350 years,
when the system of Copernicus (a revival of the
system of Pythagoras) permanently displaced it,
notwithstanding the violent opposition, extending
to persecution, of the Church of Rome against it.

Claudius Ptolemy had calculated the equatorial
girth of the earth to be 20,400 miles. Making
allowance for latitude, the circumference at the
Canaries would be about 18,000 miles and the
diameter about one-third of that, or 6,000 miles.
Columbus was a student of everything accessible
concerning geography and navigation and a devout
Roman Catholic. He credited the statement in the
Apochrypha of the Bible, Second Esdras, chap-
ter 6, verse 42, which says: ‘‘ Upon the third day
Thou didst command that the waters should be
gathered in the seventh part of the earth, six parts
has Thou dried up and kept them,”’ etc., ete.

If Ptolemy’s calculation had been correct and
Esdras’s statement reliable, 18,000 miles divided
by 7, giving a quotient of 2,571 miles, would have
been the distance Columbus would have had to
14 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

sail from the Azores to Japan. He estimated he
might have to sail 4,000 miles (to reach the west
coast of India facing Europe) by being deflected
from a straight course. The real distance from
the Canaries to Japan is 12,000 miles, and the
relative proportion of salt water on the surface
of the earth to the land is three-quarters. Colum-
bus, believing that he was inspired and commis-
sioned by God to convert the heathen, sailed and
thought he had reached India, called the natives
Indians (so they have been called ever since) and
he died so thinking.

If the magnitude of the earth—its diameter
had been ascertained and the relative proportion
of land to water with the known longitude and
latitude of India, then the problem was easily
solved that an all-water route to India from
Europe, whether by sailing westward or north-
ward, would greatly diminish the distance (about
8,000 miles) covered by sailing around Cape Good
Hope. That was a great desideratum — the aim
of individuals and nations, which would seem to
warrant the belief of speedy accomplishment. Let
us not forget that we must consider the conditions
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 15:

of the past and not of the twentieth or nineteenth
centuries.

Notwithstanding ‘‘ Henry, the Navigator ’’ ap-
plied the inventions and equipments so indispen-
sable to scientific navigation, and did all he could
to inspire his sailors to sail around South Africa,
it was forty years before that was an accomplished
fact. So inferior, so inadequate, for ocean naviga-
tion, were the vessels then, and so little was known
about ocean currents and the trade winds, that we
can easily imagine that long sea voyages were
discouraging.

There is no other class of men so superstitious
as were the sailors, nor as are the sailors now.
Everything that they see or hear of, that is
unusual or they don’t understand, frightens them
as foreboding evil. It is an experience reported
by so many of the famous navigators. You will
recall Columbus’s experience in his first voyage
across the Atlantic, and not only the evasive
answers he gave when the sailors noticed a varia-
tion of the needle and his threats to enforce his
orders, that he might continue his voyage.

About 480 B. C., Pindar, the greatest of the
lyric poets of Greece, declared that ‘‘ Beyond
16 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

Cades (Cadiz in Spain) no man, however bold and
brave, could pass; only a god might voyage those
waters.’’ The Atlantic was deemed a dangerous
ocean. Thus we are reminded of some of the
obstacles which delayed European discovery of the
western world.

All that is known of the life, education, pursuits
and achievements of Hudson, the Navigator, whose
name is perpetuated in monuments (‘‘ more endur-
ing than brass’’) upon the face of nature (its
waters and land) in North America, is contained
in the brief period of five years, or from 1606 to
1611, and is almost entirely contained in his log-
books of his four voyages.

That so little about Hudson is known is not
because efforts have not been made by competent
and zealous investigators. It is greatly to be
regretted that Richard Hakluyt and Samuel Pur-
chas, Englishmen and contemporaries of Hudson,
so greatly condensed in their writings the material
they had and which is the chief source of infor-
mation.

Hessel Gorritsz and Emanuel Van Meteren,
Hollanders, also contemporaries of Hudson, his-
torians, geographers, map-makers and publishers,
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 17

threw much side-light upon the discoveries which
had been made in search of an all-water route to
India (describing and illustrating by maps) before
Hudson made any of his four famous voyages.

Coming down to the nineteenth century we find
prominent among Hudson’s biographers, Henry
R. Cleveland’s Life of Hudson, in Sparks’ Library.
of American Biography, vol. 10, 1838; Henry
Hudson in Holland, by the Hon. Henry C. Murphy,
United States Minister at The Hague in 1859; Gen.
John Meredith Read, Jr.’s elaborate historical
research about Hudson published in 1866; Dr.
G. M. Asher’s article on Henry Hudson, printed
for the Hakluyt Society in London, 1860; and John
Knox Laughton, Professor of Modern History in
Kings College since 1885, whose article appears
in the Dictionary of International Biography,
vol. 28, pp. 147-149, stating that Dr. Asher’s arti-
cle of 400 pages covers almost everything known
about Henry Hudson, and Justin Winsor’s
America, eight volumes, in 1889; John Brodhead’s
History of New York, 1871, etc., etc.

We do know that Hudson, the Navigator’s name
was Henry and not Hendrick, as so often called
and even now blazoned on the newest and finest
18 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

steamboat on the Hudson river, as evidenced in
his contract with the Amsterdam directors of the
Dutch East India Company, a copy of which
follows. We know that he was and remained an
Englishman when on his return from his third
voyage (for the Dutch) the English government
forbade him and all the Englishmen with him to
enter any service other than for her own country.

As Hudson did not understand the Dutch lan-
guage he employed, as his interpreter in his con-
ference with the two Amsterdam directors of the
Dutch East India Company, a learned Hollander
named Jodocus Hondius, who signed the contract
as a witness.

CONTRACT.

‘‘ On this eighth day of January in the year of
our Lord 1609, the directors of the East India
Company of the Chamber of Amsterdam, of the
ten year’s reckoning of the one part, and Mr
Henry Hudson, Englishman assisted by Jodocus
Hondius of the other part have agreed in manner
following, to wit: That the said directors shall
in the first place equip a small vessel or yacht of
about thirty lasts (about 60 tons) burden with
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 19

which well provided with men, provisions, and
other necessaries the aforesaid Hudson shall about
the first of April sail in order to search for a
passage by the North, around by the North side
of Novaya Zemlya and shall continue thus along
that parallel until he shall be able to sail south.
ward to the latitude of 60 degrees. He shall
obtain as much knowledge of the lands as can be
done without any considerable loss of time, and
if it be possibie return immediately, in order to
make a faithful report and relation of his voyage
to the directors, and to deliver over his journals,
log books and charts together with an account of
everything whatsoever which shall happen to him
during the voyage, without keeping anything back;
for which said voyage the directors shall pay to
the said Hudson as well as for his outfit for the
said voyage as for the support of his wife and
children the sum of 800 guilders; (about 320 dol-
lars) and, in case (which God prevent) he do not
come back or arrive hereabouts within a year the
directors shall further pay to his wife 200 guilders
in cash; and thereupon they shall not be further
liable to him or his heirs, unless he shall either
afterward or within the year arrive and have
20 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

found the passage good and suitable for the com-
pany to use; in which case the directors will
reward the aforenamed Hudson for his dangers,
trouble and knowledge in their discretion, with
which the before mentioned Hudson is content. And
in case the directors think proper to prosecute and
continue the same voyage it is stipulated and
agreed with the aforenamed Hudson that he shall
make his residence in this country with his wife
and children, and shall enter into the employment
of no other than the Company and this at the dis-
cretion of the directors, who also promise to make
him satisfied and content for such further service
in all justice and equity. All without fraud or
evil intent. In witness of the truth, two contracts
are made hereof, of the same tenor and are sub-
seribed by both parties and also by Jodocus Hon-
dius as interpreter and witness.
‘« Dated as above
Signed ‘¢ DIRK VAN OS

“¢ J. POPPE

‘“* HENRY HUDSON

‘¢ JODUCUS HONDIUS

‘« Witness ”’
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 2

The period of the tercentenary of Henry Hud-
son’s exploration, in 1609, of the ‘‘ Grande river,’’
which for centuries has been called the ‘‘ Hudson
river,’’ approaches, and already plans and prepa-
rations, on a grand scale, have been begun to com-
memorate that highly important event.

Albanians are especially interested and partici-
pating in the preparations for this celebration,
for the site of Albany was deemed the most im-
portant in the New Netherlands, that of the city
of New York alone excepted, and in many respects,
early, even more important than that. For at
Albany, near the confluence of the two great rivers
of the territory of New York, the Hudson from
the north and the Mohawk from the west, the
Indians from the north and west came in their
canoes with their peltry and furs, as a market
place, designed by nature, for the exchange of
articles between the red men and the white men
for what they did not want, to get what, respect-
ively, they did want. Then, too, it was where the
Indians assembled to make their important
treaties; where the governors of the American
provinces met to consider and decide important
measures; and where the first provincial congress,
22 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

in 1754, met and prepared a plan for the union of
the colonies. It was, moreover, the great strategic
point contended for by the French and English
on American soil, and later by the English against
the United States in the War of the American
Revolution. Albany’s charter, as a city, under
the date of 1686, is the oldest unrevoked charter
of a city in the United States and during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries no place in
the western world surpassed it in historic interest;
and for the last hundred years and more, as the
capital of the Empire State, it has been con-
sidered, next to Washington, the most influential
and important legislative center in the United
States.

The Scandinavians were the earliest and boldest
Arctic navigators and Iceland was their ren-
dezvous. A great part of the Arctic shores that
have been visited in modern times was known to
the Scandinavians.

Columbus visited Iceland fifteen years before
he sailed in 1492. S. Cabot went to North America
in 1498 by way of Iceland. Scandinavians were
seeking fisheries, as were the exploring nations of
that period, and many of their acts were those of
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 23

freebooters. The Portuguese, the Spanish, and
the French, the three nations which had followed
in the track of Cabot and his English companions
and had then arrived at the northern shores of
America in search of a passage to Asia, did not
abandon the newly explored region.

The Portuguese continued their surveys of the
northern coasts most likely to discover advan-
tageous fisheries. They advanced slowly along
the shores of Newfoundland and then up to the
mouth of Hudson strait, then through that strait,
and at last into Hudson bay. With a certain num-
ber of ancient maps, ranging from 1529 to 1570,
before us we can trace the progress step by step.
In 1554 the Portuguese seemed not yet to have
reached the mouth of the Hudson strait. In 1558
their geographical knowledge extended beyond the
mouth of the strait and in 1570 they had reached
the bay. The authorities for all this are our
ancient geographical delineations. Much geo-
graphical intelligence in those days was kept
secret. We can therefore state with the greatest
certainty that Hudson bay had been discovered
before the publication of Ortelius’s Atlas, pub-
lished 1570. So said Dr. Asher.
24 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

General J. M. Read, Jr., with competent assist-
ants, much time and ample means, pursued a
thorough, exhaustive examination to ascertain all
possible about the Hudsons, of which Henry was
one; and while the book is very interesting and
many ingenious theories presented, yet rock-
foundation of evidence seems to be lacking.

While neither the parents of Henry Hudson nor
the date of his birth have been ascertained, that
he was born in England, and almost beyond ques-
tion in Hoddersdon (where so many of the Hud-
sons lived) in Hertfordshire, about seventeen
miles north by east of London, seems settled. It,
moreover, seems highly probable that our Henry
Hudson was the grandson of Henry Hudson, a
Londoner of great wealth and influence, one of
the founders and the first president of the Mus-
covy or Russian Company which Sebastian Cabot
suggested and of which he became its first gov-
ernor, and that.in the service of that company our
navigator there had his first service and won the
rank and distinction of captain. The Muscovy or
Russian Company was formed of London mer-
chant adventurers for the purpose of seeking an
all-water route to the Indies by sailing north of
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 25

Russia and then down the Pacific, greatly shorten-
ing the route via the Cape of Good Hope. ‘This
company was held in such high esteem that both
England and Russia granted it a charter in 1555.
Several unsuccessful voyages for this purpose
were made, the ice and storms proving insurmount-
able obstacles. It was in the employ of this com-
pany where, and in his own journal, our Henry
Hudson first makes himself known as the captain
of the ‘‘ Hopeful,’’ which sailed April 19, 1607,
with ten sailors and his son John, a boy, aboard,
with directions to explore the coast of Greenland,
pass around it to the northeast, or directly under
the Pole or, in his own words, ‘‘ for to discover
a passage by the North Pole to Japan and China.’’
The ‘‘ Hopeful ’’ left Gravesend May 1, 1607, and
in twenty-six days reached the Shetland Islands,
where supplies were taken on. Four days after
leaving these islands it was observed that the mag-
netic needle was deflected, which created conster-
nation among the sailors. They believed the
voyage was under an evil spell and would meet
with disaster. Then the resources of the captain
were evoked to carry out instructions or plans
and prevent mutiny. Hudson managed his crew,
26 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

sailed along the east coast of Greenland and
thence along the ice barrier to Spitzbergen (dis-
covered by the Dutch in 1596), going as far north
as 80° 23’. Prevented by ice, he sailed back to
England, which he reached September 15, 1607.
The Muscovy Company still believed that an
all-water and a very much shorter route than that
via Cape of Good Hope from Western Europe to
India could ‘be found by the northeast, fitted out
a vessel with a larger crew and gave our Captain
Henry Hudson the command of it and under the
same instructions as before. His son, as well as
several others of his crew on the ‘‘ Hopeful,”’
went with him on this second voyage. He sailed
from London April 25, 1608, and, obstructed by
the ice, he could go no further than Nova Zembla,
which had been discovered in 1553. He promptly
returned to England and reported to the company.
Hudson asked for more men and less rigid orders
that he might make another voyage, but the com-
pany did not comply with his request. ‘‘ It is
not known whether it was because it had aban-
doned the hope of finding a northeastern route
or had lost confidence in Hudson’s ability.’’
Navigators, like prophets, ‘‘ are not without honor
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 27

save in their own country; ’’ as examples, Colum-
bus, John Cabot, Verazzano, Magellan and
Americus Vespucius, whose discoveries were for
nations not their own.

Hudson, firm in the belief that he could find a
much shorter all-water route than then was
known, sought employment from the Dutch Hast
India Company, which had heard of him as an
able, brave and skilled navigator who had been
in the employ of their rival — the English — an
incentive to secure his services. Hudson was
invited to Amsterdam to confer with the directors
of the Dutch East India Company. He went
and there met the Amsterdam directors of the
Dutch East India Company. The Amsterdam
directors thought favorably of securing Hudson’s
services for the Dutch Hast India Company —
at all events to prevent him from entering any
other service and it is said they asked him to come
to them a year later for employment as a matter
of that importance could be acted on only by
the Council of Seventeen. This was to postpone
the matter, much to Hudson’s disappointment and
detriment — ending, possibly, in mere talk. The
Dutch East India Company was then the most
28 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

prosperous of the Hast India companies and was
really more anxious to prevent any other company
from discovering a new all-water route (the com-
pany had resolved to do that at any cost) than to
find one themselves. However, the Amsterdam
directors did not hoodwink Hudson by their excuse
for delay, which would bind him for a year and
leave them free. A former director of the Dutch
Kast India Company, who thought he had been
ill treated by the company, resigned, became a
bitter opponent of the company and resided in
Paris. He told Hudson of the duplicity and pur-
pose of the Amsterdam directors in holding him
in suspense. ‘The then French King, Henry IV,
felt chagrined that France, through oversight or
neglect, had not in any due proportion, consider-
ing her dignity and importance, shared in the
India trade and that her expeditions to Canada
had not proved a success, determined to seek and
obtain an experienced navigator to take command
of a well-equipped expedition in quest of the best
all-water route to India. The French King was
advised to communicate with James Lemaire, a
Dutch navigator of great wealth and residing in
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 29

Paris. He did so and Lemaire knew Hudson and
named him as the best man for the position.

Governments employ a secret service to keep
a close watch upon other governments and to
report promptly what they are doing and con-
templating. King Henry learned about Henry
Hudson’s conference with the Amsterdam direct-
ors of the Dutch East India Company who wanted
to bind him to wait a year before engaging again
in a voyage of discovery for India and then come
to them for employment. :

The French King gave orders that Hudson be
engaged at once on most liberal terms in the ser-
vice of France, but the Amsterdam directors
learned of his decision and without any further
delay entered on the 8th of January, 1609, in a
contract with Hudson which resulted in the Dutch
claim of New Netherlands instead, perhaps, of
extended French claims in the New World. This
contract has been very sharply commented upon
as being very illiberal in the compensation stated
for the services and great risk that Hudson was
to undergo; that while clear in terms it was not
in perfect good faith for as it claimed to be an
act of the Dutch East India Company and was
30 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

signed by only two of the directors of the Amster-
dam chamber who had no authority to bind the
company in such a matter and that therefore it
was voidable if for any reason the company so
desired. It might have been merely an inex-
pensive scheme to prevent Hudson from entering
any other employ. Then, too, it appeared singu-
lar that either the Amsterdam directors or Hudson
should want to attempt the northeastern route
which so often had resulted in failure before our
Hudson’s time and that Hudson himself as a
master had signally failed in two expeditions and
probably before that while as a mariner in the
employ of the Muscovy Company. It seemed as
though Hudson who, after commanding two
searches for the Muscovy Company wanted
greater freedom in the pursuit and so asked of
that company. The belief on the part of some
was that there was a secret agreement or under-
standing between the contracting parties that
Hudson might, or was really, to ignore the con-
tract which was given to the public as a blind.
While subsequent events gave color, plausibility
to these thoughts, they were merely conjectures,
for it is most remarkable that there has so little
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 31

documentary evidence been found about a man
whose name appears so often and so prominently
in North America. Hudson’s last voyage was for
three wealthy Englishmen, viz.: Sir Thomas
Smythe, Sir Dudley Digges and John Wolsten-
holme. Doubtless very much of Hudson’s writ-
ings were not made public — probably publication
at that time was forbidden, fearing that rival
navigators would thereby gain some information
to their advantage and to the detriment of Hud-
son’s employers. Then, too, it has been thought
and said that if Hudson’s writings had been pub-
lished in full some things would have been
revealed that at least some of the contracting
parties were anxious to conceal. Although nearly
300 years have passed and the public has not been
fully enlightened on this subject there still
remains the belief that Hudson’s writings about
his contracts for searching for an all-water and
shorter route to India will yet be discovered and
published. To engage in any great and hazardous
undertaking there must be some adequate motive.
Considering the high demands and promises made
to bold and skillful navigators (perhaps in com-
pensation, rank, and authority none comparable
32 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

with the case of Christopher Columbus) it is
scarcely presumable that Henry Hudson entered
the service of the Dutch Hast India Company
merely for the paltry sum named in that contract
and in a route which he himself on two occasions
or more had found impracticable — presumably
impossible. Henry Hudson, a bold ‘and ex-
perienced navigator, well posted in the discoveries
made by maritime discoverers especially in the
New World; in the discoveries in geography,
geometry, and in possession of the latest and best
maps of the world, surely had some strong motive,
presumably a worthy ambition to become a dis-
coverer of a new all-water route to India, and in
his journal he told of his desire to seek that route
by sailing westward when his instructions were
distinct and positive to sail north and east.

If, then, such were the views and purposes of
Hudson when he made the contract (which is
quoted herein) with the Amsterdam directors of
the Dutch Hast India Company, let us see, if we
may, the real and principal motives actuating that
company, so powerful, so dominant in the Nether-
lands, to engage Hudson by contract and whether
either party was not going to live up to it in good
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 383

faith or whether the strong presumption is that
it was merely a blind to deceive rivals and that
there was another and very different secret
agreement.

Charles V, German Emperor, was born at
Ghent, Flanders, 1500. He was the eldest son of
Philip, Archduke of Austria, and of Joanna, the
daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain.
Philip’s parents were the Emperor Maximilian
and Marie, daughter and heiress of Charles the
Bold, Duke of Burgundy. On the death of his
grandfather, Ferdinand, in 1516, Charles took
possession of the throne of Spain by the title of
Charles I.

On the death of Maximilian in 1519 Charles
was elected German Emperor and crowned
October 22, 1519, at Aix-la-Chapelle and received
from the Pope the title of Roman Emperor,
making him the most powerful monarch in
Europe. A zealous Catholic, he aimed to nullify
the doctrine taught by the reformer Martin
Luther and to compel the Hollanders, the Nether-
landers, to express their faith and belief in
Ignatius Loyola, the reputed founder of the
Society of Jesus—the Jesuits. It was not

2
34 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

Loyola but Torquemada, whose name, as the
Chief Inquisitor, became a by-word and reproach.
Justin Winsor, a high authority, said that Carlyle
said, ‘‘ Those Dutch are a strong people. They
raised their land out of a marsh and went on for
a long time breeding cows and making cheese and
might have gone with their cows and cheese till
doomsday. But Spain comes over and says, ‘ We
want you to believe in Ignatius.’ The Dutch
replied, ‘We are very sorry, but we cannot.’
‘ God, but you must,’ said Spain, and went about
it with guns and swords to make the Dutch believe
in Ignatius.’’ Thus began a religious war (usu-
ally the fiercest and most unrelenting) which, with
some cessation of hostilities, lasted for nearly
seventy years, down to 1648, when the inde-
pendence of the Dutch Republic was acknowledged
and it had become one of the foremost, if not
really the foremost, power in Hurope.

War (which Erasmus called ‘‘ the malady of
princes ’’ and General Sherman called ‘‘ hell ’’),
begun by Charles I of Spain against the Nether-
lands, was continued by his son and grandson and
resulted in driving out of Europe many of North
America’s early and most desirable settlers.
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 35

Many of the Dutch Hast India Company’s ves-
sels were equipped for war as well as for com-
merce and her Hast India possessions were active
in building and fitting out ships which captured
many and rich prizes from the Spaniards. The
richest locality for capturing such prizes was in
the West Indies, and what the Netherlands greatly
needed was territory near there, where her ships
could be sheltered, repaired, and obtain the needed
supplies. Spain was in possession of nearly all
of what is now the south of the United Statés, and
France of Canada. The English held Virginia
and claimed what is now called New England, but
between the two was a territory that seemed free
for settlement and there is reason to believe that
the Dutch East India Company was aware of that
fact and aimed to take it.

In 1497 and 1498 the Cabots, in the employ of
Henry VII of England, sailed westward in search
of a shorter all-water route to India, coasting
along the Atlantic from a parallel of latitude
about the same as that of the Straits of Gibraltar
clear up to Hudson straits, where the icebergs
prevented further advance. Having landed and
planted the English flag, they claimed the country
36 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

for the British crown and under their discovery
the English claim in North America rested. On
a German map made in 1515 America is repre-
sented as a large island in the western Atlantic.
Magellen, in whose honor the straits near Cape
Horn, South America, were named, sailed around
the globe in 1519-21, proved that America was a
continent and the world a sphere. Sir Francis
Drake, in 1577-79, also circumnavigated the globe.
In 1728 Vitus Behring sailed through the straits
which bear his name and proved that America is
no part of Asia. From 1499 to 1504 Americus
Vespucius, a Florentine navigator and explorer,
made, in the employ of Spain, four voyages to
the east coast of South America and built a fort
on the coast of Brazil, and from him, or rather in
his honor, the western continent was named
“« America ’’ — the name first appearing in a little
pamphlet published in France in 1507 by Waldsee-
muler, a German geographer, who gave as his
reason for the name the following, viz.: ‘‘ The
fourth part of the world having been discovered
by Americus, it may be called the land of Americus
or America.’’

Between the years 1512 and 1542 Ponce de Leon,
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 37

Balboa, Cortez, Narvaez, Cabeza de Vaca, De
Soto, Pizarro, and Coronado, all for Spain, had
made extensive and very important discoveries
in what are now the southern of the United States,
the Mississippi river, Mexico, and Peru. Some of
these men became infamous by their horrible
crimes. They were arrogant and frank. Balboa,
in 1513, was the first European to discover the
‘‘ South sea ’’ (the Pacific ocean), and ‘‘ wading
into its waters drew his sword and declared that
the Kings of Spain should hold possession of the
‘ South sea ’ and of its coasts and islands ‘ while
the earth revolves, and until the universal judg-
ment of mankind.’’’ Cortez bluffly declared in
a few words when speaking to the Mexicans the
motives of the Spanish as follows: ‘‘ We
Spaniards are troubled with a disease of the heart
for which we find gold and gold only a specific
remedy.’’ These discoverers, explorers, free-
booters from Spain in her vast territory New
Spain, merited the just contempt not only of the
ancient civilizations of Mexico and Peru but also
of the whole enlightened world. It seems to have
been the firm belief of the Spaniard for centuries
38 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

that he is made of a finer material than any other
nation and destined to rule and others to obey.
The French disputed the Spanish claims to
North America and established a colony of Hugue-
nots in South Carolina, but France’s discoveries
and possessions in North America were princi-
pally in the north. Cartier discovered and
explored the St. Lawrence river in 1535, and that
was thought to be a part, if not all, of the water-
way through the continent of America to the
South sea or Pacific ocean en route to India. No
nation was more zealous and successful than
France in making discoveries and settlements in
Canada, and what ultimately became the north-
western of the United States along the upper lakes
and the upper Mississippi river, by those wonder-
ful religious orders, the Franciscans and Jesuits.
Highty-five years had elapsed after the dis-
covery in North America by the Cabots, under
which the English based their claim to the terri-
tory, before they made any attempt at coloniza-
tion or even to establish a permanent settlement.
In 1584 that unique, able, versatile, vain Queen
Elizabeth of England granted a most remarkable
charter to, at one time her especial favorite, the
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 39

highly gifted but eccentric Sir Walter Raleigh,
to lay claim to any land in the west ‘‘ not actually
possessed by any Christian prince.’’ Raleigh
‘sent out several expeditions to make a settlement
on Roanoke island, off the coast of North Caro-
lina. It was represented to the Queen as a
remarkably fine land, so that she named it in her
own honor as the Virgin Queen Virginia and
thereupon knighted Raleigh. Raleigh, though he
made determined and prolonged efforts and at
great personal expense to establish permanent
English settlements in America, failed. To Sir
Walter Raleigh is given the credit or curse of
having discovered in Virginia a weed which King
James called ‘‘ the vilest of weeds ’’ and Edmund
Spencer, the famous poet, ‘‘ divine tobacco.’’ To
Sir Walter also is generally given the credit of
having introduced the most valuable of all the
vegetables known to man — the potato.

Justin Winsor, a distinguished American his-
torian, said that the scheme to form a West India
Company was first broached in 1592 by William
Usselinx, an exiled Antwerp merchant. It was
many years before it could be accomplished. The
longing for a share in the riches of the New World
40 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

conduced in the meantime to the establishment of
the ‘‘ Greenland Company ’’ about 1596 and the
pretended search by its ships for a northwestern
passage led to a supposed first discovery of the
Hudson river, if we may rely upon an unsup-
ported statement by the officers of the West India
Company in an appeal for assistance to the
Assembly of the Nineteenth in 1644. According
to this statement ships of the ‘‘ Greenland Com-
pany ’’ had entered the North and Delaware
rivers in 1598; their crews had landed in both
places and had built small forts to protect them
against the inclemency of the weather and to
resist the attacks of the Indians.

A company of English merchants had organized
to trade to America in the first year of the seven-
teenth century. Their first adventure to Guiana
and Virginia were not successful yet gave a new
impetus to the scheme originally conceived by
Usselinx. A plan for the organization of a
West India Company was drawn up in 1606,
according to the excited Belgian ideas. This com-
pany was to have an existence of thirty-six years;
to receive during the first six years assistance
from all the United Provinces, and to be managed
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 41

in the same manner as the Hast India Company.
It was not consummated. Olden-Barneveldt, the
Advocate of Holland and one of the most
prominent and influential members of the peace
party, foresaw that the organization of a West
India Company with the avowed purpose of
obtaining most of its profits by preying on
Spanish commerce in American waters would
only prolong the war. Usselinx’s plan was to
compel Spain by these means to evacuate Belgium
and thus give her exiled sons a chance to return
to their old home. A wholesale departure of the
shrewd, industrious, and skilful Belgians would
have deprived Holland of her political pre-
eminence and have left her an obscure and isolated
province. The conflicting views and claims of the
provinces caused the scheme to fail until after
Olden-Barneveldt, accused of high treason, was
tried, condemned, and beheaded in 1619. Subse-
quently Maurice of Nassau took up the scheme of
forming the Dutch West India Company. Private
ships sailing from Dutch ports had not been idle
in the meantime; in 1607 we hear of them in
Canada trading for furs. Belgium and the
Netherlands, compelled to become maritime
42 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

nations, while other circumstances directed to
commercial pursuits, had become the common car-
riers of the sea and the Netherlands especially had
availed themselves of the discoveries made by the
Cabots, Verrazano, and other adventurous
explorers in the country succeeding Columbus’
discovery of America. They thought Spain most
assailable in the West Indies where they could
prey upon their commerce and capture their
treasures from Mexico and Peru. The first propo-
sition to make such an expedition was submitted
to the States General in 1581 by an English sea
captain named Beets. It was refused. Later it
gained favor and caused the formation of a West
India Company really to fight Spain and not
ignoring the search for a shorter route to India.

Before Henry Hudson’s attempts to find a
northwest passage to India six trials had been
made and subsequently more than twenty-five
more, and while it is claimed that Sir Robert
McClure in his expedition in 1650-54 succeeded,
it was only by abandoning his vessel and com-
pleting his way on ice. The discovery is of no
practical utility.

In 1606 James I, King of England, Scotland
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 43

and Ireland, granted two charters — one to the
London Company giving it power to establish
settlements anywhere between the thirty-fourth
and thirty-eighth degrees of north latitude (that
is between Cape Fear and the Potomac) ; and the
other to the Plymouth Company granting it the
territory in Northern Virginia between the forty-
first and the forty-fifth degrees of north latitude
(that is between the eastern end of Long Island
and the northern limit of Nova Scotia), with the
right to establish settlements therein. Hach of
these grants extended 100 miles inland. The ter-
ritory between these two companies (from thirty-
ninth to forty-first degrees), embracing what is
Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and a little of
New York, was open to settlement by either of
these companies, provided that neither should
make a settlement within 100 miles of the other.

It is not presumable that the alert, watchful,
shrewd Amsterdam directors of the Dutch East
India Company were ignorant of the discoveries,
explorations, and important events in the western
world nor of the charters of 1606 granted by King
James which seemed to leave an unoccupied and
an unknown territory extending from the thirty-
44 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

eight to the forty-eight degrees of North latitude
which would furnish the Netherlands a desirable
base for their operations in America against
Spain. Perhaps that territory might be secured
under the right of prior discovery if a small craft
was sent out nominally to sail northeast as a blind
but really westward for the double purpose either
of finding a shorter route to India or obtaining a
desirable foothold in the New World.

Let us see whether we may ascertain more
about Hudson’s views, preparation, and knowl-
edge before the contract was entered into with the
Amsterdam directors of the Dutch East India
Company. In his second voyage in the employ of
the Muscovy Company, under date of August 7,
1608, he made the following entry into his journal:
“*T used all diligence to arrive in London, for
being at Nova Zembla on the 8th day of July and
void of hope of a northeast route except by Vay-
gats, for which I was not fitted to try or prove, I
therefore resolved to use all means I could to sail
to the northwest (which would have been in direct
violation of his instructions) and to make trial at
Lumley’s Inlet and Captain Davis Straits, hoping
to run into it a hundred leagues and return.’’ He
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 45

did not carry out his resolve but indicated his
desire to seek a northwestern passage then.
Henry Hudson was not wild, erratic, nor a
rover. Perhaps no one whom Hudson met in
London so much determined his course as did
Captain John Smith, a very remarkable English
adventurer — a daring rover in early life, enter-
ing military service in several of the Huropean
governments, captured, imprisoned, and escaped
to play such a prominent part in establishing the
first permanent English settlement in Virginia in
the United States. Captain John Smith’s name
is almost always associated with that of Poca-
hontas (the daughter of the famous Chief Powha-
tan) who while yet a girl but twelve years is
said to have interposed her body and thereby
saved the life of Captain Smith from the uplifted
war clubs of the Indians about to descend upon
him. Captain Smith also corresponded with
Hudson, gave him maps of North America and
advised him as to the course to be pursued in
seeking a westward watercourse to India. Per-
haps the maps most serviceable to Hudson in his
voyage westward in 1609 were those of New
France, which plainly represented the Grande
46 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

river (subsequently called the Hudson river), and
were published in the sixteenth century. Hudson
was also a theorist. He believed in an ‘‘ Open
Polar Sea ’’ and so far as is known was the first
to promulgate that theory, entertained and fol-
lowed by searchers after the North Pole. Hudson
made the acquaintance and won the friendship of
learned geographers in Amsterdam, prominent
among them was the Reverend Peter Plancius,
who said it was reasonable that the sea should be
open near the Pole where the sun shines inces-
santly for months though with less heat than
where it shines only a few hours by day and the
hours of the night intervening, cooling. Hudson
said his experience convinced him, for after pass-
ing beyond a certain line (about 66° north lati-
tude) the sea became more open as he went further
north. This Doctor Peter Plancius was a member
of the Reformed Church and as such driven from
his Belgian home by the Spaniards, he heartily
co-operated with Usselinx in his plan to form a
West India Company. He was often in consulta-
tion with Hudson in Amsterdam and to his chap-
ter on ‘‘ Norumbega (said to be somewhere in
New England) et Virginia’’ he added a map
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 47.

which, imperfect in some respect — incorrect in
its latitudes —was serviceable to Hudson in his
westward voyage. The French map of about 1517
and the map of Thomas Hood, an Englishman,
published in 1594, which shows under latitude 40°
north (New York city is 40° 43’ north) the mouth
of a river called Rio de San Antonio, the name
given by the earliest Spanish discoverers to what
later on became known as the Hudson river. In
this connection it may not be amiss to call atten-
tion to the historical fact that Giovanni da Ver-
razano, a Florentine navigator in the employ of
Francis I, King of France, entered the New York
bay and saw at least the mouth of the river which
the French called the ‘‘ Grande river ’’ in 1524,
eighty-five years before Henry Hudson saw it.
It is further claimed that soon after the French
built a fort on Castle Island near Albany and
there carried on a trade in furs with the Indians.
Some historians discredit this French claim,
which, however, seems sustained though it never
resulted in advantage to the French. A map
made by Vaz Dornado at Lisbon in 1571 gives the
Hudson river in almost its entire course from the
mountains to the bay. A copy of this map made
48 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

in 1580, which went to Munich, was probably seen
by Dr. Plancius, Hudson’s friend and adviser.
Johannes de Laet, a director of the West India
company and a copatroon of Rensselaerwick with
Kilian Van Rensselaer, admits in his book that
the object of the West India Company was war on
Spain, and he congratulates the country upon its
SUCCESS.

Jean Wagenaar, a Dutch historian, a histriog-
rapher, the secretary of the city of Amsterdam,
held in the highest esteem, who had free access
to the archives and whose statements are not to
be discredited, says the company ‘“‘ sent out a
skipper to discover a passage to China by the
Northwest not by the Northeast.’’ A resolution
of the States of Holland, quoted by this same
authority, proves that previous to Hudson’s voy-
age, the Dutch knew that they would find terra
firma north of the Spanish possessions and con-
tiguous to them.

Resolved, ‘‘ That by carrying the war over to
America, the Spaniards be attacked there where
their weakest point is, but whence they draw the
most of their resources.’’

As much has appeared in this article concerning
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 49

the sincerity of the motives actuating the parties
to the contract of January 8, 1609, and as doubts
and adverse criticisms had been expressed and
no authority given therefor — they seemed con-
jectures— perhaps not unreasonable, plausible
but requiring confirmation — proof to be entitled
to credit.

Not, however, until the latter half of the nine-
teenth century was any documentary evidence on
that subject obtainable and published, though
efforts had been made before.

The Hon. Henry Cruse Murphy, born in Brook-
lyn in 1810, prepared in the High School for
Columbia College, where he graduated with honor
in 1830, studied law, was admitted to practice in
1833, married in 1834, mayor of Brooklyn, mem-
ber of two State constitutional conventions, five
times elected to the Senate of the State of New
York, a gentleman of culture and refinement,
author and founder of the Brooklyn Eagle, whom,
in 1857, President Buchanan appointed Minister
to The Hague, exceptionally well qualified to rep-
resent the United States. His pleasing manners
enabled him to obtain most valuable information
about the war between Spain and the Netherlands,
50 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

and also about the early settlement of North
America. He first gives to the public an exact
copy of that contract of January, 1609, where
there could be no doubt that the navigator’s name
was Henry, not Hendrick.

The Minister says: ‘‘ The following memoir is
the result of an investigation made for the pur-
pose of ascertaining more precisely than has
hitherto been explained, the circumstances which
originated the voyage made on behalf of the Dutch
East India Company by Henry Hudson; the
motives, purposes and character of its projectors
and the designs of the navigator himself at the
time he sailed upon that expedition. We have
examined the records of the Hast India Company,
comprising the registers or book of resolutions of
the general of the company, styled the Council of
Seventeen, and the Chambers of Amsterdam,
Zealand, etc., with some other documents among
the archives of the Kingdom at The Hague, where
all the books and papers of the company have been
brought from the several chambers, have been
arranged and kept. <A copy of the contract be-
tween Hudson and two members of the Chamber
of Amsterdam (as given on previous pages), was
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 51

found appended to a history of the company never
published, but prepared at its request by Mr.
P. Van Dam, who held the position of counsel of
the company for the extraordinary period of fifty-
four years, that is, from 1652 until his death in
1706.”’

The Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch East
India Company had, among its members, enter-
prising merchants who had a particular motive in
seeking to secure Hudson’s services. They wished
to forestall others, and especially their own
country, in the discovery, and thus prevent any
interference with their chartered monopoly of the
East India trade. The evidence of this policy dis-
tinctly appears in the resolutions and proceedings
of the general council of all the chambers of the
company, called the ‘‘ Council of Seventeen.’’

The company itself, shortly after its organiza-
tion, took into consideration the expediency of
making an attempt to explore the northern passage
and of soliciting the necessary privileges from
the government. It is quite apparent, therefore,
that the fears and the hopes of opening that route
still existed in the minds of some of the directors.

The Council of Seventeen determined finally
52 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

that it was inexpedient to make the trial. Their
determination was, however, accompanied by a
remarkable resolution. The final action of the
Council of Seventeen took place on the 7th of
August, 1603, and is thus entered in the minutes:
‘‘Tt is likewise for deliberation and resolution
whether the voyage by the North shall also be
undertaken and negotiations be had with the Noble
Lord States in regards to terms and privileges for
that purpose seeing that some private persons
have already been in communication with said
Lords; the more so as this matter at the meeting
of the 17 on the 27th of Feby last past was post-
poned as appears by the 17th section of the pro-
ceedings of that meeting.’’

In the margin is the following disposition of
that subject: ‘‘ The contents hereof are rejected
as it is deemed not serviceable to the Co, and
therefore if this navigation should be undertaken
by any private person it ought by all means to be
prevented.’’ The company was realizing by the
southern route enormous profits, dividing among
its stockholders 37 per cent. for its first two years.

The States General, by a decree on the 1st of
July, 1606, expressly prohibited from navigating
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 53

by the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of
Magellan, and in the following September, by
another decree, the subjects of the Netherlands
were prohibited from carrying on the trade.

The entire period is so short, concerning which
we know anything about Henry Hudson, do we
really know enough of him to form a true and
fair estimate of his character?

‘We do know that Hudson had made two (and
we don’t know how many more) voyages north of
Siberia, in the employ of the Muscovy Company,
intending to go east and then south, down to
Cathay, but did not succeed. He had, however,
been exposed, inured to the arctic colds, privations
and dangers, and had won the rank of captain,
What did he know about the recently explored
seas and lands or what more did he need to know
about them, if he was in the employ of the Dutch
East India Company through its Amsterdam
Chambers, two directors to pursue the same course
he had on the two voyages he had for the Muscovy
Company?

Before Henry Hudson had signed the famous
contract on the 8th of January, 1609, he had been
54 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

a careful geographical student, as far as he had
opportunity.

About the beginning of the seventeenth century,
after the Belgians, on account of their religious
views, had been expelled from Belgium, and many
of them gone to Holland — mostly to Amsterdam,
then that city and London, England, became the
great rendezvous for navigators, discoverers,
would-be discoverers, or explorers, to discuss mat-
ters, compare notes, and get all information possi-
ble on such subjects.

The Muscovy Company had headquarters in
London, where Hudson would go, and there he
met, it is known, Captain John Smith, and it is
probable that there he met and formed a favorable
opinion of Jodocus Hondius, who was his inter-
preter, adviser, and witness to the contract of
January 8th. He was an educated gentleman, a
minister of the Reformed Church, a Belgian,
driven out of his country, went to London, a
geographer, map-maker and portrait painter. He
painted Queen Elizabeth’s portrait. The center
around which the Belgians then gathered as their
brightest man in discovery was Peter Plancius,
another Belgian, a Calvinistic minister driven
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 55

from Belgium, and who had settled in Amsterdam,
and was a devoted friend and adviser of Hudson.
Hudson before he had engaged with the Amster-
dam directors had seen and examined the most
important maps of the French, English, Spanish
and Portuguese, and especially of the Arctic
regions, New York and Canada, and had borrowed
some of them from Plancius and Smith, and those
‘that he wanted most were about the northwest and
above 35° north latitude.

Hudson’s friends were warm, zealous to help
him, that they might lessen the power and vin-
dictiveness of the Spaniards.

Captain John Smith sent Captain Henry Hud-
son important maps and instructions from Vir-
ginia, before Hudson set sail in the ‘‘ Half Moon.’’
Smith’s advice to Hudson seems to have been to
seek a passage to the Pacific ocean at about 40°
north latitude or about 50° north latitude, or still
farther north, and seek a passage through Lumly
inlet or some other entrance into the Hudson bay.
Hudson made extraordinary preparations if he
did not expect to pursue that course for the
Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch East India

Company.
56 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

That Henry Hudson first discovered, at least
first reported, the ‘‘Open Sea’’ north of 66° north
is conceded, and that has been confirmed by. sev-
eral Arctic explorers since— prominent among
them Dr. Kane. That Sebastian Cabot discovered
Hudson straits in about 1517 is admitted.

Jodocus Hondius, a warm friend of Hudson,
tried to dissuade him from entering Hudson bay
in hopes to find a passage to the Pacific, for he
told him that a relative of his had explored the
bay, and that there was no communication with
the Pacific ocean.

Read, Jr., says our sense of the loss of Hudson’s
own journal in conclusion with his discovery of
Delaware bay is indeed irreparable. Our sense of
the loss is increased. by the remembrance that the
Hudson river, Hudson strait and Hudson bay had
been visited long before Hudson explored them.
George Weymouth had visted the mouth of Hud-
son straits.

Gerard Mercator’s celebrated map of the world,
made at Duisburg, Germany, in 1569, shows the
French fort on the east side of the Grande (or
Hudson) river. He outlined the Hudson to the
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 57

height of its navigation with’the Mohawk as far
as the French had explored it.

Winsor, 1520, vol. 4, p. 434. The Pompey Stone
and Spaniards in New York State, found in
Oneida county with its Spanish inscriptions and
date of 1520, and the names of places given in
their corruption by the Dutch in a grant conveying
part of Albany county. We can no longer hesi-
tate to believe that the heathen reported by
Danskon and other writers mentioned before had
some foundation, and that the Spaniards knew and
had explored the country on the Hudson long
before the Dutch came, but had thought, as Peter
Martys expresses it, after the failure of Hstibon
Comez and the Leconcrado d’Aillen ‘‘ To the
South, to the South for the great and exceeding
riches of the Equator. They that seek gold must
not go to the cold North.’’ The Spaniards never
considered New Netherlands of any value itself.

The Pompey Stone was located near where the
Cardiff Giant was found and I do not build on it.

That Giovanni de Verazzano, in the French ship
‘‘ La Dauphin,’’ with a crew of fifty men, com-
missioned by Francis I, King of France, to make
discoveries of new lands entered the lower and
58 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

upper bays of what now is New York, and the
mouth of the North, or now called the Hudson
river, is conceded. He tried to ascend the river,
thinking it the water route to the South sea or
the Pacific ocean on the way to Cathay and the
East Indies. <A violent gale sprang up and com-
pelled him to go to sea, and his discoveries along
the coast of North America, from Florida to the
Gulf of St. Lawrence, resulted in the French
claiming that territory as La Nouvelle France
(New France), an extent of more than 1,100 miles.

The valuable furs and peltries of New France
induced French merchants, ship owners and capi-
talists to send many vessels with merchandise to
trade with the Indians. Some of these vessels
sailed up the river (North or Hudson) to the
height of its navigation, where the Mohawk enters
into it. For protection and for a trading-house,
the French built a fortified trading-house or castle
in 1540, lying in the little bay on the west: side of
the river, called by the French the ‘‘ Grande
river,’’ near the site of Albany. Before the castle
was completed the island was inundated by a great
freshet. The earliest Europeans, coming to what
is now New York, did not come intending to settle,
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 59

but to gain in dealing in furs and peltry, and in
that pursuit they became well acquainted with the
topography of the country. On many of the maps
of New France the Grande river is plainly repre-
sented from Sandy Hook to its navigable limits,
about 175 miles.

Sincerely believing that the honors awarded
Henry Hudson, the famous navigator, are not on
the true basis, and that at the tercentenary they
are likely to be perpetuated against historical
facts, I have cited evidence and will add but two
more from his own countrymen, viz.: John Knox
Laughton, Professor of History in Kings College,
London, since 1885, and C. M. Asher, LL. D.,
‘Henry Hudson, the Navigator. The original
documents in which his career is recorded printed
in London, 1860, for the highly distinguished his-
torical body, the Hakluyt Society.’’

Professor Laughton, in the Dictionary of Na-
tional Biography, vol. 28, pp. 148 and 149, says:
“* Hudson’s personality is shady in the extreme,
and his achievements have been the subject of
much exaggeration and misrepresentation. ‘The
River, the Strait, the Bay and the vast tract of
land which bears his name have kept his memory
60 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

alive; but in point of fact not one of these was
discovered by Hudson. All that can be seriously
claimed for him is that he pushed his explorations
further than his predecessors and left them a more
distinct but still imperfect record. It has been
conclusively shown by Dr. Asher that the River,
Strait and the Bay were all marked in maps many
years before the time of Hudson.

‘* In April, 1614, Hudson’s widow applied to the
East India Company for some employment for
another son, she being left very poor. The com-
pany considered that the boy had a just claim
on them, as his father had perished in the service
of the commonwealth; they accordingly placed
him for nautical instruction in the Samaritan and
gave five pounds toward his outfit.’?> Henry Hud-
gon, born about 1560.

Dr. Asher, in his publication, says: ‘‘ Hudson
river, Hudson strait and Hudson bay remind
every educated man of the illustrious navigator
by whom they were explored. But though the
name of Henry Hudson possesses the preservative
against oblivion, little more has been done in its
behalf, and few persons have any accurate notion
of the real extent of its merits. By considering
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 61

Hudson as the discoverer of the three mighty
waters that bear his name, we indeed both over-
rate and underrate his deserts. For it is certain
that these localities had repeatedly been visited,
and even drawn on maps and charts long before
he set out on his voyages.

Special attention is called to Justin Winsor’s
‘« America,’’ and to Henry Cruse Murphy’s ‘‘ Hud-
son in Holland.’’ The naming of the territorial
empire of Prince Rupert’s land upon which Hud-
son, perhaps, never set his foot, seems more than
strange.

The retrospect has been long, and though only
by glances, far from complete, doubtless it has
been tedious, but to differ from public opinion it
seemed necessary to give strong reasons.

Does it not, then, seem that the contract made
by the Amsterdam directors and Henry Hudson
was rather a blind, and for political reasons, than
genuine?

Some historians say that Henry Hudson, when
in the employ of the Dutch East India Company,
set sail from Amsterdam March 25, 1609, and
others April 4, 1609 — there is no discrepancy, for
the former is what is called Old Style, and the
62 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

latter New Style, of reckoning time. Some authori-
ties state Hudson had two vessels, namely, the
‘¢ Good Hope ”’ and the ‘‘ Half Moon.’’ The con-
tract between the Amsterdam directors of the
Dutch East India Company and Henry Hudson
names the ‘‘ Half Moon ’’ and no other. More-
over, the Hon. Henry C. Murphy, when United
States Minister to Holland, ascertained from the
archives that the Amsterdam directors of the
Dutch East India Company did have, in 1608, a
vessel named ‘‘ Good Hope,’’ which sailed April
15, 1608, for the East Indies, and was captured by
the Spaniards.

The crew of the ‘‘ Half Moon,’’ under Henry
Hudson as master, consisted of about twenty, part
Dutch and part English, many of them had served
under him while he was in the employ of the Mus-
covy Company — his son being one of that num-
ber. The ‘‘ Half Moon ’’ was a yacht of about
eighty tons burden. Hudson followed the route
he had taken when in the employ of the Muscovy
Company until he met with the same obstacles as
in his previous expedition, namely, impenetrable
ice, fogs and adverse winds which drove him back-
ward. Then he submitted the choice to his crew
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 63

to decide whether they should sail to the coast of
America, latitude 40° north (New Jersey coast)
or in search of Davis strait latitude, about 62°
north. Many of his crew had been sailors in
southern warmer waters and chose the lower lati-
tude, while then, it is said, Hudson preferred the
other, but must submit to the wishes of the crew.
On the 14th of May Hudson sailed the ‘‘ Half
Moon ’’ westward, and a fortnight later reached
the Faroe islands, replenished his water casks, and
set sail again, making slow progress for a month
against fierce gales, but on the 2d of July was at
the grand banks of Newfoundland, with foremast
gone and the sails badly torn. There they found
a large fleet of Frenchmen fishing, but had no
intercourse with them. Becalmed, the ‘‘ Half
Moon ”’ men caught cod. Having made the needed
repairs they set sail again, and on the 12th of July
Hudson was gladdened by the sight of America’s
shores. ‘The ‘‘ Half Moon ”’ entered and anchored
in a safe and large harbor (probably Penobscot
bay) on the coast of Maine. Here an unfortunate
and wanton attack was made by the crew upon the
natives, and Hudson at once set sail, and did not
approach land again until August 3d, when he
64 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

sent five men ashore who returned loaded with
rose trees and grapes. He supposed that the place
was ‘* Cape Cod,’’ which Gonold had so named in
1602. Then for two weeks the ‘‘ Half Moon ”’
sailed south and came to the mouth of King James
river in Virginia. Then Hudson coasted northerly
and Friday, August 28th, entered the great Dela-
ware bay. After exploring, he became satisfied
that there was no passage-way there to China, and
emerging from the bay went north, and September
3, 1609, entered and anchored under the shelter
of what is called Sandy Hook. On the 12th of
September Henry Hudson entered the Hudson
river.

Drifting with the tide, he anchored over night
(the 13th) just above Yonkers; on the 14th passed
Tappan and Haverstraw bays, entered the High-
lands and anchored for the night near West Point.
On the morning of the 15th he entered Newburgh
bay and reached Catskill on the 16th, Athens on
the 17th and Castleton and Albany on the 18th,
and then sent out an exploring boat as far as
Waterford.

Some historians say that Hudson anchored at
Hudson and sent a boat containing his mate and
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 65

four men further up the river to explore and
report whether it seemed to be a water-way to the
South sea (Pacific ocean) on the way to India.
Becoming convinced that it did not, on the 23d of
September he leisurely sailed down the river to its
mouth. Hudson and his crew were greatly pleased
with the grandeur and beauty of the river, the
like of which they had never seen, passing through
a fruitful, attractive country, which in their
descriptions, they painted in glowing colors, justly
deserved. It was the season of the year when
nature, in that latitude, dons her variegated and
most beautiful colors. Hudson had, along the
river in many places where he stopped, many
interesting and pleasant interviews with the In-
dians, gaining much information, and exchanging
his trinkets for their valuable furs. The Indians,
as a rule, were hospitable, entertaining the
strangers with game and fruits, etc. There were
a few regrettable incidents on Hudson’s voyage
up the river between the Indians and the crew, and
it seems probable the latter were most blame-
worthy.

October 4, 1609, Henry Hudson and his crew in
the ‘‘ Half Moon ”’ set sail from Sandy Hook for

3
66 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

Europe. On the homeward voyage some of the
crew wanted to winter in Newfoundland and then
in the spring search for a northwestern passage
through Davis strait. Many were sick, but none
of them were willing to go back to Holland as
Hudson wished and was under obligations to do.
Bear in mind that the master of a vessel then was
not the autocrat that he now is. The crew had
to be consulted and their decision controlled. A
compromise was finally made that they should sail
to Ireland. However, they reached Dartmouth,
England, November 7, 1609, from which place
Hudson made his report to the Dutch Hast India
Company directors, and proposed to them to go
out again for a search in the northwest, and that
besides the pay, 1,500 florins should be laid out
for an additional supply of provisions. Hudson
also wanted six or seven of his men exchanged and
his crew to number twenty.

It was a long time before the Dutch East India
Company directors learned of the arrival of the
‘‘ Half Moon ’’ and heard from Hudson. Then
they ordered the ship and crew to return as soon
as possible. But when they were going to do so,
Hudson and other Englishmen were commanded
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 67

by the government not to leave England, but to
serve their own country. These things took place
in January, 1610. After a detention of eight.
months in England the ‘‘ Half Moon’’ reached
Amsterdam in the summer of 1610.

April 17, 1610, Henry Hudson, in the vessel
‘* Discovery,’’ with many of his crew of former
voyages, sailed from England in the service of
three Englishmen, Sir Thomas Smythe, Sir Dud-
ley Digges, and John Wolstenholme, in quest of
an all-water route to India through the Davis
strait. After entering the bay named Hudson, in
his honor, he spent much time in trying to find an
outlet from it to the Pacific ocean on the way to
China, but unsuccessfully.

His crew became quarrelsome, and some of them
mutinous. Among the worst were two he had
favored most — one his mate, Juet, and another,
a Mr. Green, a worthless, degenerate fellow. Juet
was tried for insubordination — for attempting to
incite to mutiny — found guilty and deposed. The
winter of 1610-1611 was a hard one — their pro-
visions were short, owing to a treatment of a
native by some of the crew — they could obtain no
game from the Indians, nor could they catch fish.
68 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

It was said, perhaps falsely, that Hudson became
very tyrannical, and said something that his ene-
mies thought he meant to prolong his scanty sup-
plies by getting rid of several of the crew. June,
1611, a few days after leaving one of the most
southern harbors of James bay (a southern por-
tion of Hudson bay) where they had wintered, a
mutiny broke out among the crew. Hudson was
seized and bound, and he, his son and seven
others, principally sick and infirm, were put in a
small boat and set adrift upon the waves, destined
soon to perish.

Thus ended, in tragedy, the career of a remark-
able man, whose appearance upon the theater had
not extended a half dozen years.

To commemorate the tercentenary of Hendrick
Hudson’s discovery of the Hudson river would
be on a false basis — at war with historical facts.
Hudson’s name was Henry (as has been clearly
established) and not Hendrick, as doubtless the
Dutch wanted him to become a Hollander on his
entering the service of the Dutch East India
Company.

There is no evidence that Henry Hudson was
ever in Holland except late in the year 1608 and
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 69

early in the year 1609. It is certain that he did
not see Holland after his expedition on behalf of
the Dutch East India Company, and that born
in England, he remained an Englishman, for that
government forbid him, as an Englishman, to
leave and enter any other service.

It seems most remarkable that in Hudson’s
honor, as a discoverer, should have been named a
strait (Hudson strait discovered by Sebastion
Cabot in 1517), Hudson bay, the Hudson Bay Com-
pany territory, which originally included all the
land which was drained into Hudson bay — terri-
tory ample for an empire — which Hudson did not
discover and probably never put his foot on its
soil, and the Hudson river, which has been clearly
shown he did not discover. Unless the word dis-
coverer has a different meaning from what the
public understand by it and lexicographers pri-
marily ascribe to it, Hudson, in none of these
cases, was a discoverer. He was an explorer, and
as such was a benefactor, and deserved credit. We
would ‘‘ render unto Cesar the things which are
Cesar’s.’’

Henry Hudson was a bold, skillful navigator, a
careful explorer, and had the ability and spirit
70 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

to have made important discoveries had the time
and circumstances favored. It often happens that
the discoverer, the inventor, merits less honor than
the party coming after, who makes that discovery
or invention serviceable — useful, as it had not
been before. Robert Fulton was not the discov-
erer of the application of steam as a motive power
in navigation, but he built the ‘‘ Clermont ’’—
propelled it by steam from New York to Albany,
took the wind out of sails, revolutionized naviga-
tion, and received the honors. Samuel Finley
Breese Morse was not the discoverer, the inventor
of the electrical telegraph, but he made it service-
able — of practical utility — almost ignoring dis-
tance in the transmission of news, and he won the
honors.

Henry Hudson did not discover a new and
shorter water route to India, nor did he discover
the Hudson river. He, however, did explore the
Hudson river, and his glowing accounts of it, and
the country through which it flows, attracted immi-
gration, settlements, and was an important ele-
ment in the founding of the new nation in the
western world. The name, it is to be hoped, the
true name of Hudson, Henry, and not Hendrick,
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 71

will be cherished, for whom living, so little was
done. His widow, in extreme poverty, applied to
the British government for another of her sons,
and he was received and sent to the Government
Naval School, and an allowance was made for his
outfit. Henry Hudson appears to have had a large
family.

The river which Hudson sailed up and down in
1609 has borne many names, given by different
peoples at different times. The red men bestow
names descriptive or characteristic — while there
are no known laws or rules which the white men
observe in naming. At the advent of the Euro-
peans to North America many tribes of Indians
inhabited the territory from Florida to the St.
Lawrence, and back to the Mississippi river, and
prominent among them were the Lenapes, to which
the Mohicans belonged. These Indians called the
river Mah-i-can-i-tuk, meaning ‘‘ the flowing
waters.’’? ‘The Iroquois called it Co-hat-a-tea, or
‘‘ river that flows from the mountains.’’ It was
called the Mauritius, in honor of Prince Maurice
of Nassau. Rio de Montagne was a name given
to it. The French usually called it ‘‘ Le Grande.’’
The Spanish called it ‘‘ The River of the Moun-
72 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

tains.’”’ It was often called the ‘‘ North river ’’
in contradistinction to the ‘‘ South river ’’— the
Delaware.

That Henry Hudson was greatly pleased in
exploring this river is not surprising. ‘‘ There is
no river in the western world comparable with
it in picturesqueness and beauty, nor has it a
superior, if an equal, in these respects, in Europe.
In some stretches of the Clyde and the Rhine are
features resembling the Hudson, and the Elbe has
in sections, such delicately penciled effects, but
no European river is so lordly in its bearing, none
flows in such state to the sea.’’ It has been said
that no other river in the world presents so great
a variety of views as the Hudson.

‘* Throughout its whole length, from the wilder-
ness to the sea, from the Adirondacks to Staten
Island, a distance of 325 miles, there is a combina-
tion of the finest pictures, illustrating some of the
best scenery of the old world,’’ which some quaint
writer (to me unknown) describes as follows:
‘‘The tourist with only a slight stretch of the
fancy may find Loch Katrine nestled among the
mountains of our own Highlands; in the Catskills
may be seen from Sunset Mountain of Arran; and
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 73

in the Palisades, the Giant’s Causeway of Ire-

land.’’ He divides the Hudson river into five

stretches, reaches or divisions, representing five
distinct characteristics, namely: Grandeur, Re-
pose, Sublimity, The Picturesque, and Beauty.

1, The Palisades, an unbroken wall of rock for fifteen
miles — Grandeur.

2. The Tappanzee, surrounded by the sloping hills of Nyack,
Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow — Repose.

3. The Highlands, where the Hudson for twenty miles plays
“hide and seek” with hills “ rock-ribbed and ancient as
the sun ”’— Sublimity.

4, The Hillsides, for miles above and below Poughkeepsie —
The Picturesque.

on

. The Catskills, on the west, throned in queenly dignity —

Beauty.

George William Curtis, the great traveler, the
close observer, the perfect gentleman, pronounced
the Hudson grander than the Rhine, and Thack-
eray, in his ‘‘ Virginians,’’ has given the Hudson
the verdict of beauty.

To New Yorkers it is a river dear, for there is
scarcely a single settlement along its banks, from
its origin to the sea, which has not some interest-
ing tradition, some notable historic event, to
relate.
74 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

The beauty and glory of such a river were not,
unaided, sufficient to induce the pioneer to leave
his home in civilization and go into a wilderness
thousands of miles away. Such a river as the
Hudson could not have its origin in a low, marshy
country, and its flow seaward, in any but a healthy
region, but the inducement to seek that country
must be more than the mere sentiment of beauty.
There must seem to be a prospect of bettering
one’s condition, so far as physical comforts, or
civil and religious rights are concerned. Hudson,
after his exploration of the Hudson river, on his
return to Europe, took back there many very valu-
able furs which he obtained from the Indians in
exchange for trinkets of little cost and of still less
real value. This fur and peltry trade was eagerly
sought by the Europeans, especially the French,
English and Dutch, and the latter were greatly
favored for a time, for the Indians from the far
north and northwest came to or near Albany to
market their goods and buy their supplies. In
the years 1610, 1611, 1612, 1613 and 1614 enter-
prising Amsterdam merchants sent out vessels to
and up the Hudson river to obtain furs and peltry
and made large profits. In 1614 the territory
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 75

extending from Cape Cod to the Delaware river,
places which Hudson in his third voyage had
touched, was claimed by the Netherlands and
called New Netherlands, and in that year the Hol-
land government granted a special charter to a
company of Amsterdam merchants and others of
the United New Netherlands Company giving them
the monopoly until January 1, 1618, of all travel
and trade in the New Netherlands, during which
time they were at liberty to make four voyages.
For a period of five years, from 1618 to 1623, there
seems to have been a free trade in the New Nether-
lands — presumably the fur trade proving less
profitable.

June 3, 1621, the government of Holland, called
the ‘‘ Lords States General,’’ incorporated the
Dutch West India Company, clothing it with
almost kingly powers, to carry on trade and plant-
ing settlements from Cape Horn to Newfoundland
for a term of twenty-four years.

Its special object was the jurisdiction and
exclusive control in New Netherlands. Its gov-
ernment was to be composed of nineteen directors
from the five different cities of Holland. The
Amsterdam Chamber was to have control of New
76 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

Netherlands. The company was not fully organ-
ized until the spring of 1623. The English never
recognized the Dutch claim for the territory
called New Netherlands, and as early as 1613
demanded the surrender of the ‘‘ Dutch trading
house’’ on Manhattan Island, and ten years later
the English Ambassador at The Hague protested
against the encroachment of the Dutch fur traders
— the English claiming the territory under the
discoveries of the Cabots in 1497 and 1498. In
April, 1623, thirty families, mostly Walloons, or
French Protestants, came over and landed at New
Amsterdam (New York) and eight of the families
came up to Albany and there built Fort Orange
near Steamboat Square, about two miles above
Fort Nassau, built several years before.

Prior to the coming of the company of the Wal-
loons to the New Netherlands the famous Pilgrim
colony had received a patent granted by the Vir-
ginia Company giving them the right to settle
“‘ about the Hudson river,’’ and when the ‘‘ May-
flower ’’ left Southampton, England, that was her
destination, but mistaking the route and contrary
winds drove her to the Massachusetts coast and
there that colony was settled in 1620 at Plymouth
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 77

Rock. Had the Pilgrims settled in the New
Netherlands in 1620 the result doubtless would
have been different, but it is doubtful if it would
have been better or even so good. It is well to.
bear in mind that the early settlements in New
England were made by persons seeking to avoid
persecution on account of their religious creeds,
at variance with Roman Catholicism and the
established Episcopal Church, and that they
might found and establish a home where they
could enjoy religious and civil rights. ‘‘ The
Pilgrims ’’ settled at Plymouth in 1620 and ‘‘ the
Puritans ’’ in Salem in 1629. Miles Standish was
a prominent figure and character among the Pil-
grims, though himself not a Pilgrim. Bradford,
Brewster, Winslow, and Carver were the trusted
leaders among the Pilgrims. Among the Puri-
tans John Endicott and John Winthrop were
easily the chiefs. The ‘‘ Puritans’’ were mem-
bers of the established (Episcopal) church. ‘They
sought to have that church purified. They wanted
the clergy to give up wearing the surplice, making
the sign of the cross in. baptism and using the
ring in the marriage service — Roman Catholic
observances. The Separatists (afterward known
78 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

in America as the Pilgrims) were a branch of the
Puritans — ultra Puritans who utterly repudiated
Roman Catholic ceremonials and everything in
imitation of or like and therefore separated from
the established (Episcopal) church.

The Dutch did not come to the New Netherlands
on religious considerations, for Holland tolerated
religious freedom, but they came for gain —
immediate gain from the fur and peltry trade.
They did not early come to settle and for nearly
twenty years after Hudson’s exploration and
glowing account of it very, very few indeed who
came over to engage in, or employed in the fur
trade, became settlers. It is said that Sarah
Rapelje, a daughter of one of the Walloon set-
tlers, born June 7, 1625, was the first white child
born in the New Netherlands. The first reference
to the population at Fort Orange (Albany) pub-
lished seems to have been in a work published in
Amsterdam in 1628, which says: ‘‘ There are no
families at Fort Orange. They keep twenty-five
or twenty-six traders there.’’

The report made by the Nineteen in 1629 to the
Lords States General said: ‘‘ All who are inclined
to do any sort of work here procure enough to eat
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 79

without any trouble and therefore are not willing
to go far from home on an uncertainty.’’ It was
apparent that if the Dutch West India Company
was to prove a success in the New Netherlands a
different course must be pursued, for Virginia and
New England were being settled and their terri-
tory, in many respects better, was not.

The Dutch West India Company, modeled after
the Dutch East India Company, having powerful
fleets, sailing along the coasts of South America
and the West Indies, preying on the Spanish com-
merce, capturing their vessels and cargoes and
amassing wealth thereby, sought to induce men of
wealth, daring, and ambition to relieve them of
the undertaking of settling and developing the
New Netherlands, which, instead of a source of
revenue, had become a burden. They hit upon
what was called the Patroon scheme — based upon
the Feudal System — a system of land tenure and
service prevalent in Europe during the Middle
Ages-—a system inevitably tending to exalt the
Patroon into a lordly baron and to degrade his
subject into a serf.

One who sought the distinction of the title of a
Patroon (or Patron) of New Netherlands was
80 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

entitled to hold as a perpetual inheritance, hand-
ing it down in the line of the oldest son, an estate
having sixteen miles frontage on one side of a
navigable river or eight miles on each side, extend-
ing as far into the country as the occupiers would
permit. The Patroon must obtain Indian title,
which usually cost but a trifle. He was empowered
to hold civil and criminal couris on his estate and
his decisions were practically final. He appointed
the officers and magistrates in all the cities and
towns in his territory. In order to be invested
with this honor, these privileges and powers, he
bound himself to take or send over at least. fifty
emigrants over fifteen years of age to settle on
his patent within the next four years.

The emigrants taken or sent by the Patroons
to New Netherlands were bound for a specified
number of years as apprentices to serve their
masters, agreeing not to hunt or fish without the
master’s permission, agreeing to grind their grain
in-his mill and pay his price for grinding. They
were pledged not to weave any cloth for them-
selves or others, but to buy it from the company
under the penalty of banishment. They were
bound to pay rent in everything they produced.
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 81

The Patroon and his emigrants were to support a
schoolmaster, a minister, and a comforter for the
sick.

Such in brief was the Patroon system.

The most desirable locations for selections in
the New Netherlands were along the Hudson and
Delaware rivers, known, of course, by the
directors of the Dutch West India Company;
prominent among them was Kiliaen Van Rens-
selaer, a wealthy dealer in diamonds and pearls
in Amsterdam.

Van Rensselaer, doubtless, informed of the
great advantages of Albany, as the great rendez-
vous of the Indians to market their furs and near
the confluence of the two most important rivers
of New York, instructed his agents to obtain title
from the Indians and he succeeded in procuring
a princely estate along the Hudson river above
and below Albany, a distance of twenty-four miles
and extending east and west forty-eight miles —
a territory ample for a kingdom — greater than
the area of North Holland and very little less than
that of South Holland.

Other directors of the Dutch West India Com-
pany promptly made what they thought the most
82 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

desirable locations along the Hudson river.
Manhattan Island (New York) being reserved
by the company, and along the Delaware —
immense tracts, though none so extensive as Van
Rensselaer’s, and became Patroons. Such grants
and under such circumstances soon excited
jealousy and sharp criticism in Holland and the
Patroons felt compelled to make concessions and
yield some of their privileges.

Kiliaen Van Rensselaer was a man of energy
and executive ability, and strove to increase the
growth, importance, and prosperity of Rens-
selaerwyck in accordance with the Patroon
system. It has been said that he visited his
estate in the New Netherlands in 1637, but no
proof has been found and the report is discredited.
A distant landlord frequently is in ignorance, and
sometimes designedly kept so, of the actual state
of affairs in his estate, which would be remedied
if he were present. The Patroon was represented
in New Netherlands, when absent, by agents, part-
ners, or directors. Kiliaen admitted into a lim-
ited partnership in his estate three prominent
members of the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch
West India Company, namely, Samuel Godyn,
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 83.

Johannes de Laet, and Samuel Blommaert, in
order the sooner and more effectively to present
to the public the attractions of Rensselaerwyck,
and, presumably, also to abate the ill feeling
against him in the Netherlands for his having
taken advantage of his position to secure such an
immense estate. Van Rensselaer dominated that
partnership and again became sole proprietor.
Kiliaen died in 1646 and his son, Johannes, then
a minor, under the right of primogeniture, became
Patroon and continued to be until 1658, when he
died. His interests in Rensselaerwyck were cared
for at first by Van Slechtenhorst, or until 1652,
and then by the Patroon’s half brother, Jan
Baptiste.

In 1658 Jeremias, the second son of Kiliaen,
became director and subsequently proprietor of
Rensselaerwyck and was the first of the Patroons
to reside in, or even visit, the estate in New
Netherlands.

There were eight of the Van Rensselaers called
Patroons, namely and in the order of primogeni-
ture except in the case of Jeremias:

First.— Kiliaen, from 1629 to 1646.
Second.— Johannes, from 1646 to 1658.
84 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

Third.— Jeremias, from 1658 to 1674.
Fourth.— Kiliaen 2d, from 1674 to 1720.
Fifth.— Stephen, from 1720 to 1747.
Sixth.— Stephen 2d, from 1747 to 1769.
Seventh.— Stephen 3d, from 1769 to 1839.
EHighth.— Stephen 4th, from 1839 to 1868.

Under the Constitution and laws of the United
States in 1787 the Rensselaerwyck could no longer
be entailed and it was divided by Stephen 3d (the
seventh Patroon) between his sons Stephen 4th
(called Patroon merely by courtesy) and William
Patterson — the former getting the mansion, title,
and the estate in Albany, and the latter the estate
east of the Hudson.

During the Patroonship of the Van Rensselaers
—a period of about 150 years — many important
events occurred, changing the relations of nations,
the forms of government, and affecting Patroon
interests. The Patroons were reputable men of
affairs and some of them of superior abilities and
generally discharged their duties creditably. To
trace their acts through their rule would now be
not only tedious but useless. There arose a con-
troversy between the Dutch West India Company
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 85

and. the Patroon concerning the territory sur-
rounding Fort Orange (in Albany) built by the
company, which was finally decided in favor of the
Patroon, as the territory surrounding the fort and
the fort itself was within his patent. The fur
trade early was very important and as the Eng-
lish, claiming the territory under the right of
prior discovery, sought this trade, their vessels
sailed up the Hudson and set_up trading posts.
The Patroon attempted to prevent traders from
coming to his colony to deal with the colonists and
Indians and with that object in view ordered one
Nicolaas Coorn to fortify Beeren Island (about
eleven miles below Albany), a commanding posi-
tion, and there demand of each skipper of a vessel
passing, except those of the Dutch West India
Company, a toll of five guilders ($2) as a tax and
also to lower his colors in honor of the Patroon.
Govert Loockermans, sailing the vessel ‘‘ Good
Hope ’’ up the river in 1644, was ordered, as he
was passing the fort, to lower her colors, which he
refused to do and Coorn gave him three cannon
shots. In pursuing this course the Patroon virtu-
ally said, I own not only the territory on both sides.
of the river but the river itself for that distance.
86 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

The Patroon was compelled to back down and pay
damages.

The Netherlands, an ancient kingdom, formerly
included Belgium (now a separate kingdom, Brus-
sels, its capital) and ten provinces besides North
and South Holland, its largest and most important
ones, with Amsterdam and The Hague as the
capitals. Frequently the name of Holland is used
when Netherlands should have been.

The Lords States General (in many respects
like our Congress, composed of the Senate and
House of Representatives) was the legislative
body of the Netherlands, and in June, 1621,
granted a charter to the Dutch West India Com-
pany, giving it the exclusive privileges, for a
period of twenty-four years, as follows: ‘To traf-
fic on the coast and in the interior of Africa from
the Tropic of Cancer to the Cape of Good Hope;
in America and the West Indies with the power
to make engagements, contracts, and alliances
with the rulers and people designated in the
charter; to build forts, to appoint and discharge
officers, to advance the settlement of unoccupied
territory, to enlarge the channels of commerce,
and to multiply the sources of revenue.
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 87

The company was required to report, from time
to time, its doings, and in the appointment of civil
and military officers and instructions given to
them the Lords States General were to be con-
sulted and the commissions must bear their seal.
If troops were needed the Lords States General
would furnish them but the company must pay
all the expenses. The charter intrusted the gov-
ernment of the company to five chambers of man-
agers consisting of nineteen members, eight from
the Amsterdam Chamber, four from the Zealand,
two from the Maas, two from North Holland, two
from the Frieland, and the government one.

This company, under its charter, introduced the
Patroon system granting certain rights and privi-
leges (very liberal ones and in some respects
extraordinary) and reserving the traffic in furs
and peltry and in manufactured goods and in the
carrying trade, except along the Atlantic coast, in
which the Patroons might engage, paying a fixed
tribute.

The colonists might, with the permission of the
Patroon and of the director of the Dutch West
India Company, take up what unoccupied land
they could work, paying an annual rent to the
88 HUDSON TERCENTENARY

Patroon. That rent was based upon the value of
land primarily and was to be paid in so many
bushels of wheat, rye, etc., so many pounds of
butter, so many eggs and so many chickens, etc.
Everything the colonists had to sell must first be
offered to the Patroon. The Dutch West India
Company was to furnish the Patroons troops if
needed as against the colonies, the expense to be
met by the landlords. The colonists couldn’t
leave the Patroon’s service during the term fixed.
The value of the land before cultivation and build-
ings ranged usually from ten cents to two dollars
per acre. The tenant improved the land, built
house and barn to live comfortably, and what was
called ‘‘ the Quarter Sale’’ seemed the most
unreasonable, intolerable. To illustrate: Sup-
pose the tenant occupied a farm originally valued
at $2 an acre for 200 acres, say $400. He had
improved it by cultivation, buildings, etc., until it
became worth and he sold it for $4,000. Then the
Patroon demanded $1,000. Four sales would give
the Patroon the whole. The rent, of course, was
paid annually, or should have been, and if there
were arrears the Patroon claimed that that must
come out of the remaining $3,000.
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 89

The Netherlands primarily based their claim
for the territory called New Netherlands on Henry
Hudson’s discovery (so called) of five degrees of
north latitude, viz.: from 40° to 45° or from Dela-
ware bay and river to Cape Cod, where he touched
or explored in 1609. Great Britain claimed under
the Cabots’ discoveries, in 1497 and 1498, the
whole stretch of the North Atlantic coast from
Florida to Newfoundland. The French claimed
a portion of northern Florida, which subsequently
became a part (the sea coast) of Georgia, and the
Spanish the rest of Florida. Virginia, under the
English, late in the sixteenth and early in the
seventeenth centuries, extended from Cape Fear
up to what later became the southern boundary
of Pennsylvania, and New England extended from
Virginia to Nova Scotia. From 1609 until 1664
the Dutch held the New Netherlands and then
were compelled to surrender the territory to the
English under the grant of Charles IT to James,
his brother, the Duke of York and Albany, who, in
1685, became King of England under the title of
James III. Great Britain never recognized the
Dutch claim — always protested against it — but
being engaged in wars almost constantly did not
90 HUDSON TERCENTARY

use force to obtain possession before. ‘‘ It had
become important to dislodge the Dutch to pre-
vent the smuggling of Virginia tobacco into Eng-
land at a loss to that government of some $50,000
in customs, and also to have an unbroken line of
English colonies from Florida to Nova Scotia.
The Dutch did not rely solely on Hudson’s voyage
on the Hudson, but none of their claims had
validity and the colony of New Netherlands
passed under British rule and the Patroon took
the oath of allegiance to the English King, and
English laws instead of Dutch henceforth pre-
vailed in the colony.

As soon as the Patroons began to plant colonies
in New Netherlands the directors of the Amster-
dam Chamber of the Dutch West India Company
became jealous and opposed the Patroon system.
In 1634 they bought off the two Patroons, Samuel
Godyn and Samuel Blommaert (partners of
Kiliaen Van Rensselaer), who had secured a tract
on the shore of the Delaware bay making a terri-
tory of sixty-four miles in circumference, and
also Michael Pauw, who had obtained Staten
Island, Jersey City, and Harsimus, with the lands
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 91

adjacent. An effort was made to buy off Patroon
‘Van Rensselaer, but he refused to sell.

While the New England colonies were rapidly
increasing in population and prosperity, the
New Netherlands was not. In 1647 the popula-
tion of the New Netherlands was only about 1,000
or 2,000 Jess than in 1643. A new policy was
ordered by the Lords States General so liberal
that settlers could buy as few acres as they wished
to and enjoy civil and religious freedom as did
the English colonies north and south of them.
Under the Patroon régime the Dutch colonists
had less freedom, the enjoyment of fewer rights,
and greater hardships to endure than in Holland.
They were, as they saw things, imposed upon and
serving masters who regarded them as slaves.

The gulf between the classes and the masses
seemed to widen and deepen — on one side, lords
and masters, and on the other side, subjects and
serfs. The Patroon family of the Van Rens-
selaers by marriage and intermarriage were
related to the Van Cortlands, Schuylers, Living-
stons, and other wealthy families, not only in New
Netherlands but also in Virginia, and although
they had not castles, as the barons along the Rhine,
92 HUDSON TERCENTARY

they had spacious mansions on their country
estates where they spent their summers and in
the winters went to Manhattan Island and in their
places there gave royal entertainments to the élite.
They had a retinue of black servants (slaves) in
livery to attend them. The transplanting of the
feudal system, even though somewhat modified, to
the western world, where the very spirit of free-
dom, liberty, and equality prevailed, was doomed
to failure and disaster. The principal cause was
in the system itself, though the Van Rensselaer
Patroons’ course hastened its abrogation, termi-
nating in blood. The most of the Van Rensselaer
Patroons were liberal, lenient, and indulgent, per-
mitting the rents to remain unpaid until they
amounted to a sum equal to, or in some cases
exceeding, the value of the leased land. It needed
not the wisdom of a prophet to predict trouble
from this course. When primogeniture was
abolished the eldest son was no longer the
inheritor of the estate, but all the children shared
in it. Stephen (3d) Van Rensselaer, the seventh
Patroon, born in 1764 and died in 1839, was in
fact the last. of the Van Rensselaer Patroons. He
was graduated in Harvard in 1782, a doctor of
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 93

laws, the recipient of many and distinguished
civil and military honors, and a devoted patriot,
called ‘‘ the good old Patroon,’’ as soon as the law
of primogeniture was abolished sought to dispose
of the most of the Rensselaerwyck estate (which
had been somewhat lessened by grants and sales)
under a peculiar form of deed or conveyance to
actual tillers of the soil. This title deed was
called by some ‘‘ a lease in fee ’’ and by others ‘‘ a
sale in fee,’’ reserving to himself in the convey-
ances and to his heirs and assigns all mines and
minerals and all streams of water for mill pur-
poses; and then certain old-time feudal returns,
denominated rents payable annually at the manor
house in Watervliet, such as a specified number
of bushels of good clean wheat, four fat fowls,
one day’s service with carriages and horses, and
finally the one-quarter part of the purchase price
on every sale of land. The aim and intent was to
perpetuate, if possible, and as far as possible, the
interest of the Van Rensselaers in the estate.
The estate remaining was divided by the two
eldest sons, Stephen 4th getting that on the west
side and William Patterson Van Rensselaer that
on the east side of the Hudson river, and each all
94 HUDSON TERCENTARY

the reservations of rents in their respective terri-
tories. ‘‘ In 1839, when the said Stephen and.
William Patterson began to push their claim
against the landholders and demand immediate
payment of back rents, etc., the landholders, called
‘ anti-renters,’ held a convention and appointed
a committee to wait on Stephen Van Rensselaer
and ascertain if an amicable settlement of the
manor claims for rents in arrears could not be
made and to learn on what terms a clear and abso-
lute title to the land could be had. The com-
mittee, men of character, went to the manor office
in 1839 to see and converse with Mr. Van Rens-
selaer, but the latter refused to recognize or even
see the committee. He did, some time subse-
quently, send a letter to the chairman of that com-
mittee declining to sell on any terms. Great
excitement was created in Albany county. The
rent collectors were roughly treated and they were
told that no rents would be paid. Sheriffs were
called upon to discharge their duties and they
were resisted and driven back by men masked and
dressed in Indian costumes. The sheriff called to
aid him the ‘ posse comitatus,’ or power of the
county, and marched 600 strong into the anti-rent
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 95

district, where they were turned back by 1,500
anti-renters. The sheriff reported the state of
affairs to Governor William H. Seward, who
immediately ordered out eight companies of
militia under the command of Major Bloodgood.
They met no resistance.

‘“The Patroon interest hoped the military
ordered out by the Governor of the State would
bring the anti-renters to their senses and induce
them to pay up. The landholders or anti-renters
hoped that their display of strength and resistance
would induce the Van Rensselaers to offer terms
of compromise which they could accept. Neither
hope was realized. Then some lawyer who had
dug into old English law books said the Patroon
patent was invalid and the matter must go to the
court for settlement. It became a political ques-
tion at once. The anti-renters elected representa-
tives in the Legislature from eleven counties and
the new Governor favored them. The decisions
of the courts seemed to alternate in favor of the
Van Rensselaers and then in favor of the anti,
renters. In 1852 the counsel of the Van Rens-
selaers advised them to sell their claims, for they
believed they could not ‘be sustained and that
96 HUDSON TERCENTARY

advice was accepted. Some of the landholders or
anti-renters accepted the terms offered.

‘¢ Then appeared Walter’S. Church, who bought
the rest of the claims on speculation. He spared
no labor, no expense in any direction which he
thought might aid him. He magnificently enter-
tained legislators, lawyers, and judges. He was
indefatigable, exacting, demanding the utmost
farthing. Ejectment suits were brought and sev-
eral lives were sacrificed. The final decision was
against the Van Rensselaers, and thus ended a
long and bitter controversy growing out of the
Patroon system.’’

Who can estimate and properly accredit to the
different nations of Europe their just due in the
immigrants they sent to this country in its found-
ing and subsequently in building up the United
States as the greatest free republic on earth and
the hope of the liberty-loving world? Thhe Dutch
must be among the early named with excellent
traits of character, and the Patroons deserve
credit for first colonizing them here.

We do not want to try to conjecture what the
results would have been if Hudson’s exploration
of the North river had been in the interest of
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 97

France or if the Pilgrims had settled in 1620 in
the New Netherlands instead of New England.

Nearly 300 years have passed away since Henry
Hudson, in the yacht ‘‘ Half Moon,’’ sailed over
the waters of the river bearing his name and
whose beauties he so greatly admired. That
majestic, noble river continues to flow on from the
mountains to the sea with a great unabated pure
stream in its primeval beauty and _ loveliness.
This statement must, however, be qualified, for
man’s greed, cupidity, has caused him in some
localities to contaminate its waters and to mar
and to an extent destroy its matchless palisades.
Now that the governments have taken matters in
hand it is to be hoped that these abuses will be
summarily ended.

Art and architecture have embellished its banks
by lovely gardens, parterres and magnificent resi-
dences and stately buildings. Attractive villages,
great and prosperous cities crown the Hudson
from the north and terminating in that unique,
wonderful, greatest, truly cosmopolitan city of
the world, New York. Nothing else did so much
to produce these results as Fulton’s application

of steam to navigation and the opening up of a
4
98 HUDSON TEROENTARY

through water transportation route from the
Atlantic to the Great lakes. ‘Then the applica-
tion of steam as the motive power for railroads.
‘When the Hudson river is ice-bound the Hudson
River Railroad along its east bank and the West
Shore Railroad along its west bank transport
passengers and freight as they do the year around.
The Dutch possession of the New Netherlands was
short and when the English supplanted them
the Dutch names of places, very generally, were
changed to English ones. Manhattan island,
called by the Dutch ‘‘ New Amsterdam ’’ during
their rule, except from July, 1673, to October,
1674, when the Dutch recaptured and held the
‘“‘New Netherlands’’ and called it ‘‘ New
Orange,’’ was changed to New York in honor of
the Duke of York and Albany, and has borne that
name ever since—a city of many millions of
inhabitants and billions of wealth, the site of
which was bought by and for the Dutch of the
Indians in 1626 for the sum of about twenty-four
dollars paid for in trinkets. Among many other
good things placed to the credit of the Dutch in
New Netherlands is the fact that the Dutch West
India Company established a good school in New
AN HISTORICAL RHTROSPEOT 99

Amsterdam in 1633 which still flourishes under
the name of the ‘‘ School of the Collegiate
Reformed Church,’’ which is the oldest institu-
tion of learning in the United States, ‘‘ The Bos-
ton Latin School,’’ established in 1635, being the
second, and Harvard College, established in 1636,
the third.

The names of the site of Albany which, during
Dutch rule, were Rensselaerwyck and Beverwyck
(the latter including Fort Orange, built and main-
tained by the Dutch West India Company, and the
land surrounding it, and the former the territory
outside of the fort and belonging to the Patroon)
were substituted by the name of Albany in honor
_of the Duke of York and Albany, a name it has
borne ever since.

In 1783 the English colonies in North America
were recognized as free and independent and
formed the United States of America — the
colonies organizing State governments — but 100
years before this the colony of New York
demanded heaven-born rights and participation in
making the laws governing them as the colonists
of Virginia and Massachusetts had, and in the
General Assembly of the colony of New York, held
100 HUDSON TERCENTARY

in Fort James in the city of New York October,
1683, put on record what they called the ‘‘ Charter
of Liberties and Privileges.’’

The ten original counties of the colony of New
York were Albany, Ulster, Dutchess, Orange,
Westchester, Richmond, Kings, Queens, Suffolk,
and New York, formed under Lieutenant-
Governor Thomas Dongan’s administration, and
sent representatives to the General Assembly.
The boundaries of several of these counties have
not been materially changed, Albany county
embraced the whole territory lying north of Ulster
and west of the Hudson river, taking in nearly
the whole State. From its territory fifty of the
counties of the State have been erected and it has
appropriately been called ‘‘ the mother of the
counties of New York.”’

Albanians love their old Dutch city and will
cordially join in commemorating Henry Hudson’s
advent to it nearly 300 years ago. Much has been
said in this article about the Patroon systemn and
the anti-renters, hoping to have these matters
better understood by a statement of facts. Con-
cerning affairs relating to Albany and vicinity, I
have frequently referred to, quoted and used
AN HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 101

‘‘Mr. Wiese’s History of the City of Albany,”’
1884, and the ‘‘ Bi-centennial History of Albany
and Schenectady Counties from 1609 to 1886, pub-
lished by W. W. Munsell & Co., 1886.”’

The article on ‘‘Anti-Rentism ’’ was written by
the Hon. Andrew J. Colvin.

FRANK CHAMBERLAIN.

All rights reserved.

Ausany, September, 1907.