112 New Yobk at the World's Ooltjmbian Exposition. 



Europe were devoted to this quest during the fourteenth and fifteenth 

 centuries. 



It was reserved for our time to supply through the Suez canal the pas- 

 sage to the Indies which Hudson vainly tried to find. The event was 

 important to international trade, but not one of the inestimable blessings 

 of our race. It augmented the power of the British empire and opened 

 the interior of India to the enterprise of the West, but it added little to 

 the happiness and liberty of mankind. Hendrik Hudson failed to find a 

 northwest passage to India, but he did discover the passage from the 

 Atlantic ocean to the northwest. It was of infinitely greater importance 

 than the object of his search. 



It is the history of all great actors and thinkers upon the world's stage 

 that they builded better than they knew. When the glorious bay, with 

 its superb harbor and noble river, enchanted the navigator he little 

 dreamed of the significance of the Hudson, which should forever bear his 

 name and perpetuate his fame to the settlement and development of the 

 American continent. He had found the only depression in the mountains 

 through which the ocean could be wedded to the lakes. He had brought 

 the western wilderness within the reach of the emigrant, and found its 

 fertile fields for the seeds of empire. 



The opening of the Suez canal and bringing Europe and India in closer 

 relations was an event. The discovery of the Hudson river was an epoch. 

 A great and growing Commonwealth on the border of the lakes, filled 

 with millions of people, who in fleeing from other lands have found liberty, 

 happiness and home, is among the results of his discovery. It has incal- 

 culably increased the m^aterial, moral and intellectual welfare of the human 

 race. It has made possible the strength, the power and the perpetuity of 

 the republic. 



Hendrik Hudson discovered Chicago. This city is as much indebted to 

 him as New York. His deeds gave the opportunity and furnished the 

 incentives which have created this present and potential capital of the 

 West. The genius of commerce brought Hendrik Hudson to New York, 

 and when he sailed away she made the island of Manhattan her home. 

 In due time, through Fulton and Livingston, she applied steam to naviga- 

 tion upon the waters of the Hudson and revolutionized the relations of 

 the trading nations of the earth with each other. Through Morse she 

 brought electricity to the service of man and belted the globe with light- 

 ning to carry the messages of commerce and peace. It has been the 

 experience of all the ages that the highest results of expanding civiliza- 

 tion were always to be found along the public highways of the world. 

 Upon their borders and within the area of their influence great cities were 



