Wind-bound at times, keeping close to land, warned off the reefs through fog by a great rutt or rustling of the tide, the pirate sailors now disregarding all commands, the Half Moon drifted lazily southward past Cape Cod. Somewhere near Nantucket, a lonely cry sounded from the wooded shore. It was a human voice. Fearing some Christian had been marooned by mutineers like his own crew, Hudson sent his small boat ashore. A camp of Indians was found dancing in a frenzy of joy at the apparition of the great “winged wigwam” gliding over the sea. A present of glass buttons filled their cup of happiness to the brim.
Grapevines festooned the dank forests. Flowers still bloomed in shady nooks—the wild sunflower and the white daisy and the nodding goldenrod; and the sailors drank clear water from a crystal spring at the roots of a great oak. Robert Juet’s ship log records that “the Indian country of great hills”—Massachusetts—was “a very sweet land.”
On August 7, Hudson was abreast New York harbor; but a mist part heat, part fog, part the gathering purples of coming autumn—hid the low-lying hills. Sliding idly along the summer sea, mystic, unreal, lotus dreams in the very August air, the world a world of gold in the yellow summer light—the Half Moon came to James River by August 18, where Smith of Virginia lived; but the mutineers had no mind to go up to Jamestown settlement. There, the English would outnumber them, and English law did not deal gently with mutineers. A heat hurricane sent the green waves smashing over decks off South Carolina, and in the frantic fright of the ship’s cat dashing from side to side, the turbaned pirates imagined portent of evil. Perhaps, too, they were coming too near the Spanish settlements of Florida. All their bravado of scuttled Spanish ships may have been pot-valor. Any way, they consented to head the boat back north in a search for the passage above the Chesapeake.
Past the swampy Chesapeake, a run up the Delaware burnished as a mirror in the morning light; through the heat haze over a glassy sea along that New Jersey shore where the world of pleasure now passes its summers from Cape May and Atlantic City to the highlands of New Jersey—slowly glided the Half Moon. Sand reefs gritted the keel, and the boat sheered out from shore where a line of white foam forewarned more reefs. Juet, the mate, did duty at the masthead, scanning the long coast line for that inlet of the old charts. The East India men lay sprawled over decks, beards unkempt, long hair tied back by gypsy handkerchiefs, bizarre jewels gleaming from huge brass earrings. Some were paying out the sounding line from the curved beak of the prow. Others fished for a shark at the stern, throwing out pork bait at the end of a rope. Many were squatted on the decks unsheltered from the sun, chattering like parrots over games of chance.
A sudden shout from Juet at the masthead—of shoals! A grit of the keel over pebbly bottom! On the far inland hills, the signal fires of watching Indians! Then the sea breaking from between islands turbid and muddy as if it came from some great river—September 2, they have found the inlet of the old charts. They are on the threshold of New York harbor. They have discovered the great river now known by Hudson’s name. Even the mutineers stop gambling to observe the scene. The ringleader that in all sea stories wears a hook on one arm points to the Atlantic Highlands smoky in the summer heat. On their left to the south is Sandy Hook; to the north, Staten Island. To the right with a lumpy hill line like green waves running into one another lie Coney Island and Long Island. The East India men laugh with glee. It’s a fine land. It’s a big land. This is better than risking the gallows for mutiny down in Virginia, or taking chances of having throats cut boarding some Spanish galleon of the South Seas. The ship’s log does not say anything about it. Neither does Van Meteren’s record, but I don’t think Hudson would have been human if his heart did not give a leap. At five in the afternoon of September 2, the Half Moon anchored at the entrance to New York harbor not far from where the Goddess of Liberty waves her great arm to-day.
Silent is the future, silent as the sphinx! How could those Dutch sailors guess, how could the Dutch company that sent them to the Pole know, that the commerce of the world for which they fought Spain—would one day beat up and down these harbor waters? Dreamed he never so wildly, Hudson’s wildest dream could not have forseen that the river he had discovered would one day throb to the multitudinous voices of a world traffic, a world empire, a world wealth.
In Hudson’s day, Spain was the leader of the world’s commerce against whom all nations vied. To-day her population does not exceed twenty million, but there flows through the harbor gates, which Hudson, the penniless pilot dreamer, discovered, the commerce of a hundred million people. It is no straining to say that individual fortunes have been made in the traffic of New York harbor which exceed the national incomes of Spain and Holland and Belgium combined. But if a city’s greatness consists in something more than volume of wealth and volume of traffic; if it consists in high endeavor and self-sacrifice and the pursuit of ideals to the death, Hudson, the dreamer, beset by rascal mutineers and pursuing his aim in spite of all difficulties, embodied in himself the qualities that go to make true greatness.
Mist and heat haze hid the harbor till ten next morning. The Half Moon then glided a pace inland. Three great rivers seemed to open before her—the Hudson, East River and one of the channels round Staten Island. On the 4th, while the small boat went ahead to sound, some sailors rowed ashore to fish. Tradition says that the first white men to set foot on New York harbor landed on Coney Island, though there is no proof it was not Staten Island, for the ship lay anchored beside both. The wind blew so hard this night that the anchor dragged over bottom and the Half Moon poked her prow into the sands of Staten Island, “but took no hurt, thanks be to God,” adds Juet.
Signal fires—burning driftwood and flames shot up through hollow trees—had rallied the Indian tribes to the marvel of the house afloat on the sea. Objects like beings from heaven seemed to live on the house—so the poor Indians thought, and they began burning sacrificial fires and sent runners beating up the wise men of all the tribes. A religious dance was begun typifying welcome. Spies watching through the foliage came back with word that one of the Manitous was chief of all the rest, for he was dressed in a bright scarlet cloak with something on it bright as the sun—they did not know a name for gold lace worn by Hudson as commander. When the Manitou with the gold lace went ashore at Richmond, Staten Island, Indian legend says that the chiefs gathered round in a circle under the oaks and chanted an ode of welcome to the rhythmic measures of a dance. The natives accompanied Hudson back to the Half Moon with gifts of maize and tobacco—“a friendly people,” Hudson’s manuscript describes them.