BY ELggRTvHVKKRRt THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES FROM THE LIBRARY OF ELI SOBEL JO^EPH-LV^LHRKE HEIW- HV&52M ELRER Copyright 1910 By Elbert Hubbard HgC- MANHATTAN MAN HATTAN BY JOSEPH I. C. CLARKE T JERE at thy broad sea-gate, AA On the ultimate ocean wave, Where millions in hope have entered in, Joyous, elate, A home and a hearth to win; For the promise you held and the bounty you gave, Thou, and none other, I call to thee, Spirit; I call to thee, Mother, A merica ! Spirit of world of the West Throned on thy lifted sierras, Rivers the path for thy feet, Forests of green for thy raiment, Wide-falling cascades the film of thy veil, Moon-glow and star-flash thy jewels, Sunrise the gold of thy hair, Sweet was thy lure and compelling. 9 M ANHATTAN Europe, pale, jaded, had palled us, Asia, o'ergilded, repelled us, Africa, desert-faced, haunted us, Thou, when in freshness of morning, hadst called us And Wanted us, Held us. Over the ocean We came then, Wondering, hoping, adoring, Called thee our mother, k* ssm g thy feet, Kindling our love into flame, then, Old loves and old worlds ignoring, Making new bondage sweet. Bless us today, O Mother! Hark, how the bells are chiming, How wind the horns, how cymbals clash, And a chorus, in mighty volume timing, To tramping beat that never lags! Heavily booming the cannons flash, And the air is filled with the snapping flags ! 10 MANHATTAN Where passed the grim Briton with ventur- ing prow In the cycles fled, The city that stands like a fortress now, Turreted high by the edge of the water, America's eldest, magnificent daughter, With garlands is twining her brow, For joy that her laughing heart remembers Three hundred red and gold Septembers. To catch the glint of her proudest glance, To hear the heartening music of her drum, To see her banners flutter and advance, Glad in the sunrise, let us come. Not as came Hudson thro* mists of the sea Dipping and rolling his Dutch-built ship Scanning the landfall with hungering eyes And close-clenched lip, By morning and noon, Creeping past headland and sand-billowed dune, 11 MANHATTAN Wing-weary ghost of a phantom quest, Steering athrill but where waters led West. Not as when taking the sweep of the bay, Sparkling agleam in the brave Autumn weather, Silent of man in the new dawn aquiver, Anchored his lone ship lay. Not as he sailed where the hills draw together, Holding his course up the broad-breasted river, Only the dream of Beyond in his brain, Only the seas of Cathay to attain, On till the narrowed stream told him 't was vain. Then back as one baffled, undone, Unknowing he'd won by the gate of the sea The throne of an empire of peoples to be. Peace to his dream that found ghastly close Mid the sheeted wraiths of the Arctic snows! 12 MANHATTAN Not as came Fulton; even he Came brooding at the level of the sea. Elect among the genius-brood of men, Grandson of Ireland, son of the land of Penn, Pale-browed, nursing a great work-day dream Harnessing the racers of the deep to steam. Here first his Clermont turned her paddle- blades, And so, our flag above his craft unfurled, He steamed beneath the Palisades, The Father of all steam-fleets of the world. Well may Manhattan glory in his fame, And on her highest roster carve his name, Yet, not as came he, let us come. No ; to the skies as on wings Let us rise, And come from the East with the faint red dawn, 13 M ANHATTAN Haven and harbor are carpets of trembling gold, And the silver mist to the green hills clings Till the mounting sun has the web with- drawn, And behold! The city lifts up to its height at last, With frontage of hull and funnel and mast In the day's full beam, And over the sky-topping roofs in the blue, Over the flags of many a hue Are waving white pennons of steam. We know thee, Manhattan, proud queen, And thy wonderful mural crown, With Liberty islanded there at thy knee, Uplifting her welcome to those who *d be free, And beckoning earth's trodden-down. We know how the waters divide And unite for thy pride, And the lofty bridges of steel stretch hands 14 MANHATTAN To the burg on the height that stands For thy "wealth's overflow : With the freighters creeping between, And the slow, slanted sails slipping to and fro, As the giants of ocean steam in and go forth. We trace thy slim island reach up to the North, Its streets in arrowy distance aloom, Its marts, its homes, its far-off tomb; The pleasure-greens dotting thy vesture of white, And tower and steeple like spears in the light. Lift thee, Manhattan, no peer to thy strength, Energy crystaled in turrets of stone, Force chained to form thro' thy breadth and thy length, The builders* Gibraltar, the fortress of trade. Might of the mart into monument fashioned, Mammon translated to mountain man-made. 15 MANHATTAN The clouds ever nigher and nigher; And the clang of the anvil, the steam-shriek impassioned Seem calling from girder and frontlet of steel Upward thrown, With the square-chiseled blocks, As they build ever higher and higher, And then, for firm planting thy heel, They delve ever deeper to heart of the rocks. Deep in thy vitals the dynamos whirring Are feeding thy nerves that are wires, Thy tunnels, thy veins, Stretch out as the human tide swerves, And thy hidden fires With the breath of thy bosom stirring, Make life in the dark for thy lightning trains. And out of it all a new beauty arising, The beauty of force, Winning a triumph beyond thy devising, Height-mad and power-glad, 16 MANHATTAN Pinnacled, domed, crenelated, Masonry clambering course upon course To a glory of skyline serrated, Lofty and meet For the worship of all the waves laving thy feet. Mighty, ay, mighty Manhattan, Grown, while Time counted but three arrow-flights, From bare strand and woodland and slow- rising knoll A handful of redmen encamped on thy heights To the city of millions; Of millions, too, ever the goal, City whose riches are billions, Whose might never fails, Whom the nations from far off salute, And the voice of a continent hails On thy festival day! 17 MANHATTAN While the cries of the multitude roll In praise of thy marble-hewn body majestic, Sing to me, Queen, of thy soul! Sing of thy spirit, thy mind, Remembering then, The kernel and not the rind, The heat, not the fires. We shall not judge thee by thy tallest spires, But by the stature of thy men ; Not thy great wealth of bales and casks and gold, Nor mounting scales of what thou *st bought or sold Shall here suffice, But riches thine in virtues beyond price : Not all thy beauteous daughters costly- gowned, But of thy women chastely wived and crowned ; Not all thy gold in public service spent, But test of equal, honest government ; 18 MANHATTAN Not creeds or churches, tabernacles, shrines, But faith that lives and love that shines ; Not courts and Judges multiplied, But Justice throned and glorified; Thy reasons clear before the world avowed, Not voice of easy conscience of the crowd ; Not by thy thousand colleges and schools, But culture greater than their sums and rules ; Not by thy topmost reach of speech and song, But by their lift to light and art that 's long ; And from the mingling races in thy blood, The wane of evil and the growth of good ; Not the high-seated but the undertrod ; The brother-love of man for man, Ideals, not ambitions, in the van; Not thy lip-worship but the immanence of God. But we who'd mete thy steps upon the heights, And thy soul-message ask 19 M A N H A T Know well the battles that thy day's work brought. No Greek Atlantis art thou, Plato's thought Made sudden real; No fair Utopia thou of mounts ideal, Eased of thy burden and thy task With long surmountings in the darkness fraught. Swift thy foundations grew, but nights of tears And days of dark foreboding marked thy years. Here freedom battled with the tyrant's might, Here Washington Immortal one made fight, Here swung the prison ships, and here the jail Whose gallows freed the soul of Nathan Hale. 20 MANHATTAN The orange flag of Holland flew Above thee for a space, Then England's red for decades few Flushed crimson in thy face, Until our arms set over thee The flag none may displace ; That waving free shall cover thee While lasts the human race The flag that to the breeze we threw When skies of hope were bare, Its red our blood, the sky its blue, Its stars our watchlights there. Full oft the ocean harvests at thy doors Shed sodden grain upon thy threshing- floors, The sound, sweet ears with wild tares reached thee mixed, Long-fixed beliefs came hitherward unfixed. Long-crushed desires that freedom bids to bloom, 21 MANHATTAN The yoke thrown off, for lawlessness made room. How could it other? Shorn of lords and guides They pressed atow'rd thee over westering tides. From lands of Czars and Princes still they come, Some young and lusty, open-browed, and some Oppression-stunted, famine-driven, sad. All praying thee for welcome fair and glad A niche, a shelter, honest toil and home, And these thou givest, Queen beside the foam. And stout their grateful millions stand on guard, Their brain and muscle working thee reward The solid Dutch, the level English strain, The gifted French, our allies tried and true, 22 MANHATTAN The German staunch, the Kelt of Ireland bold, Italian fire and Spanish pride ; the Jew Keen-witted, dragging here no Ghetto chain; Each giving thee their lore, their art of old ; Each fired by thee with hopes and raptures new. And Queen, thy women exquisite, Thy clear-eyed maids, thy mothers pure Pledge of thy greatness sweetly to endure ! By these I bless thee in thy day of joy, Thy wide-thrown halls, thy hospitable board, Thy heart of anxious service, and the rays Of kindliness within thy bosom stored. No evil shall thy graciousness destroy, And so I bid thee with increasing days No whit thy fair ambitions to abate ; Fulfil thy destiny of good and great. Hark, the message of Manhattan's soul! 23 MANHATTAN Constant my soul on the hard path of duty, Striving to win to the levels above. Longing my soul in the gardens of beauty, Eager my soul in the service of love, Tender my soul to the angels of pity, Humble my soul to the bearers of light, Fearless my soul at the gates of the city, . Stalwart my soul for the ultimate right. Mighty my dreams of a city imperial, Radiant, free with an ordered law, Rich, but with mind -gold beyond the material, Powerful, merciful, just without flaw, Thrift-strong and gentle- voiced, rippling with laughter, Song-filled, and thrilled with the triumphs of art, Poverty banished, and now and hereafter, Peace in my bosom, joy in my heart. 24 HENRY HUDSON HENRY HUDSON BY ELBE H U B B R D ISTORY tells us that we belong to the Aryan Race, and the Aryan Race had its beginnings on the uplands of India. There men multi- plied. The conditions were right soil, sunshine, water. But the food-supply did not keep pace with the growth of population. And besides, there grew up the leisure class, which showed its power by a conspicuous waste and a conspicuous leisure. This class is made up of two elements the soldier and the priest. Both are para- sites, and when they have their undisputed way, are tyrants. To find freedom and bread, men swarmed. There were six principal migrations from India, as follows: the Egyptian, the Assyrio- Semitic, the Greco-Roman, the Teutonic, the Celtic, the Norse. 29 HENRY HUDSON Civilization had its rise in Egypt, where the city of Memphis once ruled the world & Memphis was the educational, the financial, the artistic hub of the universe. When Moses led the Children of Israel out of captivity, fifteen centuries before Christ, Memphis was already falling into decay. Civilization had moved on, and younger blood, that carried a redder hue, was in the saddle. Babylon and Nineveh had siphoned the best of Egyptian youth and genius. Note how Egypt grown old, senile, and sat- isfied with her own achievements could not afford Moses room to exercise his powers. He had to go out into the desert in order to find space in which to breathe, and in which to formulate a moral code having enough of the saving formaldehyde of commonsense to make it last thirty-five centuries and more. fl Memphis lies buried beneath a hundred feet of drifting sands. The broken fragments of Babylon and Nineveh strew the plains. 30 HENRY HUDSON Civilization pushed on and we get the glory that was Greece. The armless and headless marbles in the British Museum symbol the splendor of her dreams. Greece for a time ruled the world, and Athens was the center of art, philosophy and finance. Alexander, captain-general of the Greek forces, conquered the world and then died sighing for more worlds to conquer. Greece lived her little day; and then the Romans overran her borders and tumbled her priceless marbles from their pedestals, thinking they were gods. Rome subjugated the world or at least all she could find of it. And having succeeded she sat back and got lime in her bones, and worshiped the god Terminus, telling of the things she had done in the days agone. This gave the barbarian his chance, and the Goths and Vandals played pitch and toss with the things that had brought her fame. flln the year Five Hundred after Christ, we 31 HENRY HUDSON find Constantinople supreme, with Justinian and Theodora dividing the power of the world between them. Then were cast those four bronze horses, which now ornament the portals of Saint Mark's in Venice. The marauding Norse, those wolves of the sea, coveted the horses, so they took them by divine right. They also annexed about everything else that was portable j* And behold! Venice, throned on her hundred isles, becomes mistress of the seas, the center of art and light and education. Hers was the badge of power, hers the pomp and circum- stance of war. But not forever. Spain is forging to the front, and the Moor and the Jew are combining to construct the Alhambra j* Read your Washington Irving! flWhen Venice built her Ghetto she planted the germs of decay. Power moved on, and Granada was the capital of the world. 32 HENRY HUDSON In that unforgetable year, Fourteen Hundred Ninety-two, we find Columbus, the Genoese, writing to Queen Isabella this letter which is now in our possession: "Now that you have succeeded in driving the Jews from Spain, I make bold to call your attention to my own petty affairs,** etc. Alas, the pretty compliment of Columbus, designed for the shell-like ear of Isabella, was true! She had succeeded in driving the Jews from Spain, and already Spain was where Memphis stood when the air got so full of patchouli that Moses had to go. Imagine, if you please, some satrap writing a letter to Pharaoh congratulating him thus: "Now that you have succeeded in driving the Jews from Egypt,** etc. 33 HENRY HUDSON THE RISE OF HOLLAND TORQUEMADA made the gutters of Granada run ankle-deep with the blood of the Jews, and Holland welcomed the refugees. And as Spain declined in power and prestige, Holland grew great. The center of the world's stage shifts now to Amsterdam. From Sixteen Hundred for nearly a hundred years Holland was the Schoolmaster of the world. Holland taught England how to read and write, how to print and bind books and how to paint pictures. In Sixteen Hundred Nine, England was a pioneer country, forging to the front in a rude and crude way. She had the ambition and the restless desire of youth. But Holland had the art, the education, the philosophy and the money. In portraiture Holland struck thirteen. The 34 HENRY HUDSON work done by Rembrandt, Rubens and Frans Hals stands supreme today, even after these three hundred years. Art is born of the surplus that business men accumulate. The business men of Holland were favorable to the portrait-painter. He immortalized many of them on canvas, and they live for us only because some great artist painted their pictures. The Plantins of Antwerp and Amsterdam, the great bookmakers, were then getting under way. In those days a printer was somebody. Printers went into business in order to express their ideas. The very word "com- positor" carries the thought < The man composed his mind and set up his thoughts in type at the same time. Peter Plantin was a printer. He was also a great geographer. He made a close and complete map of the world, and wrote a book on the formation of the earth. 35 HENRY HUDSON The Plantin printshop is now the Plantin Musee at Antwerp, the property of the State. In this most rare and curious old printery you will get the books and maps of Peter Plantin. And in one of these maps you will see the coast-line of America. The country was very narrow according to this map, which was made in Sixteen Hundred Seven. Piercing the land were inlets leading out into great lakes or bays; and just on the other side was the Pacific Ocean. The whole country was supposed then to be about like the Isthmus of Panama, where Balboa stood and looked over to the Pacific. And across the Pacific, at a distance of less than half the way across the Atlantic, was India India, the land of silks and teas India, the land of gold and spices, of gems and 'broid- eries <* j* To reach this land of wealth without going around the Southern point of Africa was the problem. 36 HENRY HUDSON Columbus had discovered land, but had failed in his attempt to find the passage to India, and had died in chains. Amerigo Vespucci had discovered the continent, but had been unable to pierce it with his ships. The Cabots said that if they had had a few days they could have traversed the woods and stood upon what we call the Alleghany Mountains and looked down on the peaceful Pacific beyond & The Indians had told them they could do this. But three difficul- ties lay in the way of getting valuable infor- mation from the Indians one was that the Indians did not know, the second was that they did not care, and the third was that the white man could not understand them, any- way & & But that the Pacific was just "over there," as the Indians affirmed, was the belief of the Plantins, and of the thinking men of the world & *s* England, young and lusty, was reaching out 37 HENRY HUDSON for this get-rich-quick route to China and India < * Holland knew that if England found the route she would claim it by right of discov- ery, and might block it against the world. England had just wrecked the Spanish Armada, and her nose was in the air. Holland had the art and she had the books, but she had traded brawn for brain, so she lacked the blood that makes an explorer. What then? Why, hire some steeple-jack of the sea to find this quick route. 38 HENRY HUDSON THE ENGLISH ADVENTURER hANGING on the walls of the Plantin Musee, close by the portrait of Peter Plantin, is a picture of "Hendrik Hudson, the Dutch Explorer." Let the fact be noted that Hendrik Hudson was not a Dutchman J& He was born in England, of English parents, and his remote ancestry was Danish. He had made two trips to Greenland on a commission to sail around the North end of America and go through to India. He had reached as high a latitude as eighty degrees, but had then been turned back by the ice. The man who can sail through the North Pole will reach the Pacific and India, all right & & Hudson's feat was a disappointment, but the wily Dutch said we work by elimination. There is a middle passage. When the Indians had told of the sea "just 39 HENRY HUDSON over there," they had in mind the Great Lakes & & What more natural than to suppose that these lakes had an outlet on the Western side into the Pacific! Indians did not travel far, and they were not interested in India. The name "Indian" was given them by a worthy explorer who thought that he had discovered India. Several of the rich merchants of Amsterdam made up a purse, and sent a man over to London to hire this man Henry Hudson, who had no fear of the unknown. They found him living in a boathouse on the Thames. He was poor in purse, and without a talent for getting on, but he was full of the enthusiasm of discovery. Out in the Rocky Mountains one can find the typical prospector, who prospects all his life and dies at last alone in the mountains. He is brave, hopeful, restless, but failure is his fate. It becomes the habit of his life. 40 HENRY HUDSON Hudson was living with his wife and three children in what would have been absolute want were it not for the kind hearts of the ship-captains whose boats were anchored near. These men who skirted the coast were sen- sible and sane. They sailed only the seas that were mapped, and always were in sight of land. Hudson craved the unknown. The others respected him yes, but they touched their foreheads with the tip of a forefinger as he passed. Hudson had lost money for everybody who had trusted him. Only a year before this, those merry knights who founded James- town had asked him to join them, but Hudson had scorned their invitation. His wife believed in him, because she par- took of his delusions, as loving women are prone to do. Hudson was no longer young. His red beard 41 HENRY HUDSON was streaked with white, his ruddy face was seamed with lines of care, his blue eyes had lost a little of their luster looking out on the snow and ice of the North. He was the typical stubborn, freckled, sandy Englishman who never knows when he is whipped. The English blood carries a mighty persist- ent corpuscle. The modern British breed is made up of a cross between the Saxon and the Norse, with a dash of the Celt to give it a flavor. |A11 the English names beginning with the letter "H" have come down from the Norse, or the Danish, which for us is the same thing. The name of William the Conqueror was Hubba, and among his followers were men who bore the following names: Hume, Howells, Howard, Harkness, Hildebrand, Hood, Holman, Hughson, Harding, Holmes, Hudson, Herbert, Henderson, Henry, Hub- bard. The ending "-bert" is a Saxon ending; 42 HENRY HUDSON but the initial " H " is Norse. It was the intro- duction of this letter "H" that threw the English tongue in the air, and the sons of 'aughty Halbion 'ave n't yet got it straight- ened out, you know. Names beginning with "E," like Ellison, Eldridge, Ellsworth, Elbert, Elberta,Ethelred, Ethelbert, Ethelstan, Ensign, Ernest, are Saxon < & Hudson seemed to be the surviving spirit of those " wolves of the sea," who discovered America about the year One Thousand, and built a monument or two along the coast of Rhode Island and then sailed away on adven- tures new. They knew that if they remained they would have to pay taxes to the Irish, and so they moved on. The Hollanders liked Hudson, and as he was out of a job, waiting for something to turn up, he hired out to the Dutch. This agent was acting for the Dutch East India 43 HENRY HUDSON Company, a trust made up of six separate companies, one in each city, as follows: Amsterdam, Zeeland, Delft, Rotterdam, Hoorn and Enkhuizen. An agreement was drawn up and signed. Hudson's wife was to be given eight hun- dred guilders at once, and if her husband did not return in a year she was to get two hundred more. Beyond this, Hudson got nothing but his expenses. A guilder was what to us would be forty cents; so we see that the price Hudson set upon his own life was eighty dollars. This was the sum of his life-insurance. tjlf he found the passage, however ah, now we are getting at it if he found the passage, it was to be named for him, and he was to be the first governor of the territory. ISo Hudson bade his little family a stolid, sailor good-by, and went over to Holland at once to receive his instructions, the syndic taking close care that his man did not escape. HENRY HUDSON fl At Amsterdam he met Peter Plantin, the geographer, and a committee of merchants. C[ Hudson knew all they knew, and his hope was high that there was a passage through to the Pacific somewhere between latitude thirty-eight and fifty degrees. Captain John Smith had been told of this passage by the Indians, and the assurance that the sea was " just over there " was strong in all hearts. He was also very sure that there was a way to go clear around America to the North, but he agreed with the Plantins that the voyage would always be dangerous on account of the cold and ice. 45 HENRY HUDSON THE HALF-MOON'S VOYAGE j^"T[ LITTLE ship, the Half -Moon, was I set aside for Hudson. The craft I suited him. It was staunch and strong, and could ride the waves like a cockleshell. She drew only a few feet of water, and this was well, for sandbars were to be counted on in making " that passage.'* There were eighteen men in the crew nine Dutchmen and nine Englishmen. Hudson stood out for all Englishmen, claiming he must have men who could speak his tongue. A two-day argument followed, and a com- promise was effected. On April Fourth, Sixteen Hundred Nine, the Half-Moon hoisted sail and slipped slowly down the Zuyder Zee. The news had gone out and half of the population of Amsterdam congregated along the wharves. 46 HENRY HUDSON The Weepers* Tower was filled with rela- tives of the sailors. No one wept for Hudson. His heart did not beat one throb beyond the normal. The land faded from view and the Half- Moon was alone on the waste of waters. The log of the voyage still exists. It is written in Dutch, evidently on dictation of Captain Henry Hudson, who now was " Hendrik Hudson, a citizen of the Netherlands/' All of which was evidently a legal expedient designed to make good all Dutch claims, " by right of discovery." Hudson did not obey orders to steer straight West for America. He steered for the Land of the Midnight Sun. He still hoped it was possible to strike here a current that would carry him straight across to the Pacific. On May Nineteenth, after a sail of forty-four days, the crew came to Hudson in a body and demanded that he turn back. One man had died and the sight of the sun 47 HENRY HUDSON that had forgotten how to set was on their nerves j* <* The Captain parleyed with them, and set an hour the following day to talk it over. The next day the weather changed for the better, and the spirits of the men rose. Hudson ordered a double ration of grog for all hands, got out his maps and at great length told them of Captain John Smith's idea concern- ing the short inland passage that lay at about forty degrees. They consented to sail South, but they must get away from the icebergs and the terrible land where the sun never went down, but remained a blood-red ball in the heavens. Hudson started a song and all joined in as the prow of the Half-Moon was headed South & & Sixty-four days they sailed and sailed, when the wooded shores of America came in sight. They entered " a fine harbor," which is now believed to be Casco Bay on the coast of 48 HENRY HUDSON Maine. Here they replaced their mainmast, which had snapped off short in a gale. So far as we know, this was the first attempt to utilize the spruce pine of New England for the uses of civilized man. This beautiful bay was tempting. They put out two small boats and skirted it carefully for signs of an inlet. They killed a deer, which was the first fresh meat they had had except fish. After a week's rest, they again put out to sea and skirted the coast slowly down to Cape Cod. A map was made, which reveals the coast-line fairly well; but in some way Boston Harbor was missed, perhaps because the gilded dome of the State House was not there to welcome them. They sailed past Sandy Hook, giving only a casual look at the inlet. The Half-Moon reached Delaware Bay and entered, but the signs of an inlet were now propitious, and Hudson decided he would 49 HENRY HUDSON go North and examine the coast with greater care. On the morning of September Second, Sixteen Hundred Nine, he dropped anchor in what we now call the Horseshoe of Sandy Hook. From here he put out with a small boat and three sailors. The log reports : " Found a good entrance between two headlands." A drawing is then given, which beyond a doubt is "The Narrows.*' Hudson was at home on the open sea, but here he moved with great caution. He feared running his ship upon the sands or rocks, and so we find him going ahead in a small boat with the Half-Moon trailing along slowly as he swings his hat and signals her. He passed Staten Island. Next he reached Manhattan <* Here he put ashore on the shelving beach. He drew the boat up, and planted the flag of the Netherlands on about what is now Twenty-six Broadway. Then he moved on up the river to a point 50 HENRY HUDSON where "hills are straight and the waters deep." J* This was, beyond doubt, the Palisades & & Beyond, the river widened and ahead were the clear, open, placid waters. They came to the Catskills, and two men were sent ashore "to climb the highest hill and the highest tree they could find, and look for the Pacific Ocean/* The men were gone overnight, but came back reporting only mountains and woods beyond. The Pacific Ocean discovered by Balboa twenty years before was not in sight. fl Bill Nye once told us that Hendrik Hudson had nearly reached Albany before he made the startling discovery that the river upon which he was sailing bore the same name as himself. This was a lapse on the part of Bill. The fact is, Hudson knew the name of the river very soon after passing the toe of Manhat- tan's Isle, for he had written in plain letters 51 HENRY HUDSON on the map as he sailed, "Hudson's River." CJ He felt sure he had found the long-looked- for passage to the Pacific, and remembering the promise given by his employers that the passage should bear his name, he wrote it down. He reached the present site of Albany and remained a week in the vicinity, carefully exploring the banks of the river for an inlet. Then he sorrowfully turned the prow of the Half-Moon to the South. John Smith was wrong; the Indians were wrong; Henry Hudson was wrong the voyage was a failure. Already signs of Autumn were in the air, and the leaves were turning to gold. It would not do to try to winter here the Half-Moon must sail back to Amsterdam and frankly report failure. On the way down the river there were many Indians to be seen along the banks. The news of the strange ship had evidently gone out, 52 HENRY HUDSON and the copper-colored natives were more than curious. Here was the first ship to stretch her sails on this mighty river that had existed here for ten thousand years or more. Hudson drew in to the shore near the present site of Poughkeepsie, and after much sig- naling and beckoning the Indians came near enough to be spoken to. But alas ! they spoke neither "Anglaise," Dutch nor French. Hud- son made the universal sign of hunger, and this was responded to at once, which gives the lie to that popular saying that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian.'* The squaws brought parched corn, dried venison, beans, pumpkins and wild grapes. They also brought oysters, and "speckled fish, not of a salt-sea kind." These were doubtless brook-trout. Next, they cooked a dog in honor of the great White Chief. In return, Hudson and his men gave the 53 HENRY HUDSON Indians knives, beads and strips of colored cloth j* j* There was much attempt at talk and both sides made long orations, but to small pur- pose, since the interpreter was not yet. What Hudson was working for was to get the confidence of the Indians so they would give a clue to the passage to the Pacific. Hudson reports that the Indians had no "aqua vitae, nor spiritus frumenti." When he gave them rum they drank it like water, and "soon were very merrie and next mad." ^[Evidently Hudson's men had imbibed, too, for two of his sailors lured a squaw into a small boat and were about to fetch her aboard the Half-Moon. Hudson saw the commotion among the Indians and headed off his reckless sailors. He broke an oar over the head of one John Coleman before he could get the woman safely back to land. As reparation for her injured feelings, Hud- son presented her his official red coat with 54 HENRY HUDSON brass buttons and gilt braid, which he had intended to wear on the day the complete passage to the Pacific was made. The Indians had now lost their fear of the white men, and also they had lost their respect for them, since several of the sailors had stolen all the furs and skins they could lay their hands on. Hudson saw nothing to do but sail for home. The Indians followed down the river, and along the route arrows occasionally skimmed the air too close to the sailors for comfort. tJNear Manhattan the Mohicans "put out in a multitudinary swarm in hollow logs, and surrounded the good ship, the Half- Moon, and the sailors had to fight for their lives. Then for the first time they had to use firearms. It is feared some Indians were killed. Straightway, the Half-Moon put for open sea, having been in landlocked waters for the space of a full month." The Half-Moon had strong breezes from the 55 HENRY HUDSON West and made fast time homeward. She dropped anchor in the harbor of Dartmouth, England, on November Seventh. Hudson made haste to go to London to see his fam- ily, before he went to Holland to report to his employers. 56 HENRY HUDSON THE LAST VOYAGE ""HE following December, we find Hudson again full of hope and sure I that "at a point about sixty degrees North of the coast of the New World the passage to India will be found perad venture of a doubt/* It was a gamble the Dutch vs. Fate. The odds were big. If the passage were found untold fortunes awaited. Another ship was fitted out at greater cost. She was called the " Disco verie" and "her double plankings were made so to withstand the strongest crush of ice." She carried a crew of twenty-nine men. On April Seventeenth, Sixteen Hundred Ten, she sailed away. She reached that marvelous body of water known to us as Hudson's Bay j* Inland they sailed for a thousand miles. Here was salt water all the time; while the puny 57 HENRY HUDSON little Hudson River ran fresh water a day's journey from the sea. Hendrik Hudson was now so sure he had found the prized passage to India that he refused to sail for home when the first nip- ping frosts arrived. The crew went into Winter quarters, and the ship by December was fast frozen in the ice. J Game was plentiful, but the sailors were afraid to venture far inland, " for fear of sirens whose songs could be plainly heard, and goblins that flitted everywhere over the . ice. The dark, cold Winter dragged its long, slow length past. The ice at last began to melt and move J* By May the ship was free. Several of the crew were sick with scurvy. Four were dead. Hudson had been sick, but with Spring his spirits rose and he grew better. Nothing is so hygienic as hope. He determined to press on Westward and explore every inlet until 58 HENRY HUDSON he found the one opening out upon the Pacific Ocean. His crew demurred one more Winter and all would be dead. They must return at once, for it was doubtful if they could now even find the passage out to the Atlantic, much less to the Pacific. Hudson attempted to use his authority. He was disarmed and declared insane. He was given the privilege of being put afloat in a boat, or of sailing for home. He chose the open boat. And he and his son John, aged sixteen, and seven companions were sent adrift with guns, ammunition and provisions to last a month. The Discoverie sailed, and left the invincible master on that trackless inland sea, skirted by a country seemingly desolate and unin- habited. The Discoverie arrived at Amsterdam in October, and the mutineers told their tale. fl They were arrested, tried, convicted and 59 HENRY HUDSON pardoned, fl They made it appear that they desired only to save the ship and report to the owners. Their frankness saved their lives. fl The Disco verie could have been sent back after Hudson, but there was no one to serve as captain, and Hendrik Hudson was left to his fate. The mutineers brought back a map of "Hudson's Bay/' Traced across the map in bold letters was the name of the daunt- less discoverer. What was the fate of Hudson, his son, and the loyal seven who stood by him ? No one knows not a sign ever came from them in any way. His little craft may have foundered and all been drowned before making land, on the same day the Discoverie sailed. It may be they survived for another Winter, and then died of cold, starvation and disease. They may have been murdered by Indians; or fallen in with a tribe, been kindly wel- comed, settled down to make the best of a 60 HENRY HUDSON bad situation, and grown old, babbling to their neighbors of strange sights and scenes known years and years before across a trackless waste of waters to the East. No vessels sailed by white men came that way for thirty years. Holland gave up the quest, and the lives of nine men are matters too small to disturb a nation, especially if the men be foreigners. tj And as for England, she had never missed her Henry Hudson only his wife and chil- dren mourned. And their grief did not really count in a world where woe is common and women's tears are nothing strange. Women are born to weep. But the keen Dutch traders remembered Hudson's River and Manhattan Isle, and so where Hudson had planted the Netherlands* flag they founded a city. And they called it New Amsterdam. Henry Hudson sought for one thing. He found another. It is ever so. And the tide of 61 HENRY HUDSON wealth and power ebbed from Amsterdam to London. CJThen from London to New Amsterdam, which we now call New York. And behold New York as the financial center of the world, with her storied Wall Street on the very site of the shelving beach where trod the feet of Henry Hudson! tJAnd the tide of Empire still surges toward the setting sun, with New York as the great central gateway to America, the land of Promise Did Henry Hudson live and die in vain? History says, No! And the morning sun smiting the Palisades, and gilding them with his glory, says, No! tJAnd a great and wondrous city of nearly four million people, a powerful, restless and unfolding city, immense in her possibilities, where nothing is, but all things are becoming, pays her loyal, loving tribute to Henry Hudson, and declares that out of his failure sprang success and his memory shall not be as that of one whose name is writ in water. 62 SO THEN HERE ENDETH THE BOOK, "MANHATTAN" AND "HENRY HUDSON," THE FIRST PART BEING AN ODE BY JOSEPH I. C. CLARKE, TO WHICH IS APPENDED AN APPRECIATION OF HUDSON, THE DISCOVERER, BY ELBERT HUBBARD; THE WHOLE DONE INTO PRINT BY THE ROYCROFTERS AT THEIR SHOP, WHICH IS IN EAST AURORA, ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK, JUNE, MCMX UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Lo, Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 315