HUDSON HONORED IN NEW YORK 315 



not come back — which God prevent — the directors shall further pay to his wife 

 200 florins ($80) in cash." 



Thus it was that in the early spring of 1609 Hudson put to sea for Nova 

 Zembla. A second ship, the Good Hope, went along with the Half Moon as 

 consort, but soon turned back. 



The icepack kept Hudson from reaching Nova Zembla. His crew, in coun- 

 cil, advised him to try the impossible passage of Davis straits into India. Some 

 historians say he refused ; others that a great storm blew the Half Moon fai 

 westward from her course. Whether from design or accident, Hudson found 

 himself off the North Atlantic coast of America. Then he made known to his 

 men a wonderful plan he had evolved, namely, to discover an inland strait or 

 sea crossing the whole American continent from the Atlantic ocean to the 

 Pacific. To this insane plan we owe the discovery of the Hudson river. 



Capt. John Smith — a most marvelous liar as well as a splendid soldier of 

 fortune — had once told Hudson that a strait or inland sea cut the North Amer- 

 ican continent in half, from east to west, and that its Atlantic inlet was just 

 north of Virginia. Failing to find a passage across the North Pole to India, it 

 occurred to Hudson that the discovery of this inland sea between Atlantic and 

 Pacific might help atone for his other failure. For, by coming to America at 

 all, he was disobeying his employers' orders. 



So down the Atlantic coast from the north sailed the little Half Moon 

 She touched at Cape Cod (that had already been discovered by Goswold in 

 1602), found no "inland sea," then put further offshore and next sighted land 

 at Chesapeake bay. Hudson cruised in the Chesapeake only long enough to 

 find it was not the "strait" he sought. Then he ran north, along the coast, to 

 Delaware bay, where he made another hopeless search for the "strait," and 

 again skirted the coast to the northward. Every opening in the New Jersey 

 shore line must be carefully explored, for each might prove to be the mouth of 

 the "strait." 



Thus, on Sept. 3, 1609, Hendrik Hudson sailed inside Sandy Hook and 

 cast anchor in lower New York bay. From the size of the bay it seemed to 

 him that he had at last found the mythical "strait." There is no' reason to 

 think Hudson was the first man to enter New York bay. Mariners from sev- 

 eral countries claimed to have been there before him. Andrea da Verazzano, 

 a corsair in the French service, explored the North Atlantic coast from Flori- 

 da to New York in 1524, and so on to Block island and Newport. He was 

 either killed by Spaniards or roasted at the stake by savages. 



For ten days the Half Moon rode at anchor in the lower bay, while Hud- 



