42 HUDSON. 



taken to the ministers of foreign states, at the Hague, 

 to relate their perils and give an account of the frigid 

 land, which none of the southern natives had visited 

 before. Their treatment on their arrival home must, in 

 those days, have been an ample compensation to the 

 survivors for their past sufferings. 



One of the boldest of early navigators, and one of the 

 most successful, was Henry Hudson, the discoverer of 

 the immense bay which will carry his name and unfor- 

 tunate end to the latest times. This intrepid mariner 

 first distinguished himself in 1607, being sent out by the 

 Muscovy Company on a voyage, with instructions to 

 penetrate directly to the pole. He succeeded in push- 

 ing north as far as latitude 81J, and returned home, 

 after coasting Spitzbergen, with the conviction, which 

 modern experience has not impugned, that a passage 

 to the pole was completely barred out by tho ice in that 

 direction. In 1608, he again set sail, to decide the 

 practicability of a north-east passage, then a favorite 

 subject of debate in the maritime countries of Europe. 

 He saw North Cape on the 3d of June, and reached 

 latitude 75, when he got among the ice. He now 

 pushed on in the parallels of 74 and 75 to the east- 

 ward, and made the coast of Nova Zembla, in latitude 

 72 25'; but, finding a further course impracticable, he 

 returned, with the conviction that there was no hope 

 of a north-east passage ; and here again time has proved 

 his judgment to have been correct. 



The Dutch sent him, in 1609, to try this passage 

 again ; but he gave it up, after passing Wardhuys, and, 

 returning past North Cape, crossed to the coast of 

 America, where he searched for a passage, and discov- 

 ered the bay on which New York now stands, and the 

 magnificent river named after him, the Hudson. On 

 the 17th of April, 1610, Hudson set sail in a vesseJ 



