VIII
From Juet's log I make the following extracts, telling of the "Half Moon's" approach to Sandy Hook and of her passage into the Lower Bay:
"The first of September, faire weather, the wind variable betweene east and sooth; we steered away north north west. At noone we found our height "The third, the morning mystie, untill ten of the clocke. Then it cleered, and the wind came to the south south east, so wee weighed and stood to the northward. The land is very pleasant and high, and bold to fall withal. At three of the clocke in the after noone, we came to three great rivers [the Raritan, the Arthur Kill and the Narrows]. So we stood along to the northermost [the Narrows], thinking to have gone into it, but we found it to have a very shoald barre before it, for we had but ten foot water. Then we cast about to the southward, and found two fathoms, three fathoms, and three and a quarter, till we came to the souther side of them; then we had five and sixe fathoms, and anchored. So wee sent in our boate to sound, and they found no lesse water than foure, five, sixe, and seven fathoms, and returned in an houre and a halfe. So we weighed and went in, and rode in five fathoms, oze ground, and saw many salmons, and mullets, and rayes, very great. The height is 40 degrees 30 minutes." That is the authoritative account of Hudson's great finding. I have quoted it in full partly because of the thrilling interest that it has for us; but more to show that the record of his explorations—the "Half Moon's" log being written throughout with the same definiteness and accuracy—gave what neither Gomez nor Verrazano gave: clear directions for finding with certainty the haven that he, and those earlier navigators, had found by chance. On that fact, and on the other fact that his directions promptly were utilized, rests his claim to be the practical discoverer of the harbor of New York. For more than a week the "Half Moon" lay in the Lower Bay and in the Narrows. Then, on the eleventh of September, she passed fairly beyond Staten Island and came out into the Upper Bay: and Hudson saw the great river—which on that day became his river—stretching broadly to the north. I can imagine that when he found that wide waterway, leading from the ocean into the heart of the continent—and found it precisely where his friend Captain John Smith had told him he would find it, "under 40 degrees"—his hopes were very high. The first part of the story being confirmed, it was a fair inference that the second part would be confirmed; that presently, sailing through the "strait" that he had entered, he would come out, as Magellan had come out from the other strait, upon the Pacific—with clear water before him to the coasts of Cathay. That glad hope must have filled his heart during the ensuing fortnight; and even then it must have died out slowly through another week—while the "Half Moon" worked her way northward as far as where Albany now stands. Twice in the course of his voyage inland—on September 14th, when his run was from Yonkers to Peekskill—he reasonably may have believed that he was on the very edge of his great discovery. As the river widened hugely into the Tappan Sea, and again widened hugely into Haverstraw Bay, it well may have seemed to him that he was come to the ocean outlet—and that in a few hours more he would have the waters of the Pacific beneath his keel. Then, as he passed through the Southern Gate of the Highlands, and thence onward, his hope must have waned—until on September 22d it vanished utterly away. Under that date Juet wrote in his log: "This night, at ten of the clocke, our boat returned in a showre of raine from sounding the river; and found it to bee at an end for shipping to goe in." That was the end of the adventure inland. Juet wrote on the 23d: "At twelve of the clocke we weighed, and went downe two leagues"; and thereafter his log records their movements and their doings—sometimes meeting with "loving people" with whom they had friendly dealings; sometimes meeting and having fights with people who were anything but loving—as the "Half Moon" dawdled slowly down the stream. By the 2d of October they were come abreast of about where Fort Lee now stands. There they had their last brush with the savages, killing ten or twelve of them without loss on their own side. After telling about the fight, Juet adds: "Within a while after wee got downe two leagues beyond that place and anchored in a bay [north of Hoboken], cleere from all danger of them on the other side of the river, where we saw a very good piece of ground [for anchorage]. And hard by it there was a cliffe [Wiehawken] that looked of the colour of a white greene, as though it were either copper or silver myne. And I thinke it to be one of them, by the trees that grow upon it. For they be all burned, and the other places are greene as grasse. It is on that side of the river that is called Manna-hata. There we saw no people to trouble us, and rode quietly all night, but had much wind and raine." In that entry the name Manna-hata was written for the first time, and was applied, not to our island but to the opposite Jersey shore. The explanation of Juet's record seems to be that the Indians known as the Mannahattes dwelt—or that Juet thought that they dwelt—on both sides of the river. That they did dwell on, and that they did give their name to, our island of Manhattan are facts absolutely established by the records of the ensuing three or four years. During October 3d the "Half Moon" was storm-bound. On the 4th, Juet records "Faire weather, and the wind at north north west, wee weighed and came out of the river into which we had runne so farre." Thence, through the Upper Bay and the Narrows, and across the Lower Bay—with a boat out ahead to sound—they went onward into the Sandy Hook channel. "And by twelve of the clocke we were cleere of all the inlet. Then we took in our boat, and set our mayne sayle and sprit sayle and our top sayles, and steered away east south east, and south east by east, off into the mayne sea." Juet's log continues and concludes—passing over unmentioned the mutiny that occurred before the ship's course definitely was set eastward—in these words: "We continued our course toward England, without seeing any land by the way, all the rest of this moneth of October. And on the seventh day of November (stilo novo), being Saturday, by the grace of God we safely arrived in the range of Dartmouth, in Devonshire, in the yeere 1609."[4] From the standpoint of the East India Company, Hudson's quest upon our coast and into our river—the most fruitful of all his adventurings, since the planting of our city was the outcome of it—was a failure. Hessel Gerritz (1613) wrote: "All that he did in the west in 1609 was to exchange his merchandise for furs in New France." And Hudson himself, no doubt, rated his great accomplishment—on which so large a part of his fame rests enduringly—as a mere waste of energy and of time. I hope that he knows about, and takes a comforting pride in—over there in the Shades—the great city which owes its founding to that seemingly bootless voyage! [4] From Mr. Brodhead's "History of the State of New York" I reproduce the following note, that tells of the little "Half Moon's" dismal ending: "The subsequent career of the 'Half Moon' may, perhaps, interest the curious. The small 'ship book,' before referred to, which I found, in 1841, in the Company's archives at Amsterdam, besides recording the return of the yacht on the 15th of July, 1610, states that on the 2d of May, 1611, she sailed, in company with other vessels, to the East Indies, under the command of Laurens Reael; and that on the 6th of March, 1615, she was 'wrecked and lost' on the island of Mauritius."