ANCHORS NEAR ALBANY. 



345 



ever rested on its bosom. He passed the Palisades, Nature's 

 dark basaltic Malakoff ; forced the iron gateway of the High- 

 lands; anchored on the 14th near West Point; swept around and 

 upwards the following day, by grassy meadows and tangled slopes, 

 hereafter to be covered with smiling villages, by elevated banks 

 and woody heights, the destined sites of towns and cities, — of 

 Newburgh, Poughkeepsie, Catskill ; on the evening of the 15th 

 arrived 'opposite the mountains which rise from the river's side,' 

 where he found 'a very loving people and very old men;' and, 

 the day following, sailed by the spot hereafter to be honored by 

 his own illustrious name. One more day wafts him up between 

 Schodac and Castleton ; and here he landed and passed a day 

 with the natives, greeted with all sorts of barbarous hospitality, 

 —the land 'the finest for cultivation he ever set foot on.' On 

 the following morning, with the early flood-tide, the Half-Moon 

 ran higher up, and came to anchor in deep water, near the site 

 of the present city of Albany. Happy if he could have closed 

 his gallant career on the banks of the stream which so justly 

 bears his name, and thus have escaped the sorrowful and mys- 

 terious catastrophe which awaited him the next year." 



He soon after returned to England ; and, not being discouraged, 

 nor finding it difficult to obtain the means of continuing his 

 maritime adventures, he set sail, in 1610, in a vessel of fifty-five 

 tons' burden, manned by twenty-three men and victualled for 

 six months. He touched at the Orkneys and anchored at Ice- 

 land. Mount Hecla revealed to him the magnificence of a volcano 

 in travail, and the Hot Springs obligingly cooked his food. He 

 passed Greenland, where the sun set in the north. In the course 

 of June and July, he passed to the northward of Labrador, and 

 followed the strait which now bears his name. In spite of ice and 

 disturbances among his crew, which at times assumed the cha- 

 racter of a mutiny, he pushed on into the great inland sea known 

 as Hudson's Bay. For a long time he did not know that it was 

 a bay, and naturally was led to hope that he was on the point 



