Two days passed in the Narrows with interchange of gifts between whites and Indians. On the morning of the 6th, Hudson sent Colman and four men to sound what is now known as Hell Gate. The sailors went on to the Battery—the southernmost point of New York City as it is to-day—finding lands pleasant with grass and flowers and goodly oaks, the air crisp with the odor of autumn woods. With the yellow sun aslant the painted autumn forests, it was easy to forget time. The day passed in idle wanderings. At dusk rain began to fall. This extinguished “the match-lighters” of the men’s muskets. Launching their boat again, they were rowing back to the Half Moon through a rain fine as mist when two canoes with a score of warriors suddenly emerged from the dusk. Both parties paused in mutual amazement. Then the warriors uttered a shout and had discharged a shower of arrows before the astonished sailors could defend themselves. Was the attack a chance encounter with hostiles, or had “the moccasin telegram” brought news of the murderous raid on the Penobscot? One sailor fell dead shot through the throat. Two of the other four men were injured. The dead man was the Englishman, Colman. This weakened Hudson against the Dutch mutineers. Muskets were wet and useless. In the dark, the men had lost the ship. The tide began to run with a high wind. They threw out a grapnel. It did not hold. All night in the rain and dark, the two uninjured men toiled at the oars to keep from drifting out to sea. Daylight brought relief. The enemy had retreated, and the Half Moon lay not far away. By ten of the morning, they reached the ship. The dead man was rowed ashore and buried at a place named after him—Colman’s Point. As the old Dutch maps have a Colman’s Punt marked at the upper end of Sandy Hook, that is supposed to have been the burial place. A wall of boards was now erected round the decks of the Half Moon and men-at-arms kept posted. Indians, who came to trade that day, affected ignorance of the attack but wanted knives for their furs. Hudson was not to be tricked. He refused, and permitted only two savages on board at a time. Two he clothed in scarlet coats like his own, and kept on board to guide him up the channel of the main river.
The Duke of Marlborough, One of the First Governors of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
The farther he advanced, the higher grew the shores. First were the ramparts, walls of rock, topped by a fringe of blasted trees. Then the coves where cities like Tarrytown nestle to-day. Then the forested peaks of the Highlands and West Point and Poughkeepsie, with the oaks to the river’s edge. Mist hung in wreaths across the domed green of the mountain called Old Anthony’s Nose. Mountain streams tore down to the river through a tangle of evergreens, and in the crisp, nutty autumn air was the all pervasive resinous odor of the pines. Mountains along the Hudson, which to-day scarcely feel the footfall of man except for the occasional hunter, were in Hudson’s time peopled by native mountaineers. From their eerie nests they could keep eagle eye on all the surrounding country and swoop down like birds of prey on all intruders. As the white sails of the Half Moon rattled and shifted and flapped to the wind tacking up the river, thin columns of smoke rose from the heights around, lights flashed from peak to peak like watch fires—the signals of the mountaineers. From the beginning of time they had dwelt secure on these airy peaks. What invader was this, gliding up the river-silences, sails spread like wings?
By the 13th of September, the Half Moon had passed Yonkers. On the morning of the 15th, it anchored within the shadow of the Catskills. On the night of the 19th, it lay at poise on the amber swamps, where the river widens near modern Albany. Either their professions of friendship had been a farce from the first, or they were afraid to be carried into the land of the Mohawks, but the two savages, who had come as guides, sprang through the porthole near Catskill and swam ashore, running along the banks shouting defiance.
Below Albany, Hudson went ashore with an old chief of the country. “He was chief of forty men,” Hudson’s manuscript records, “whom I saw in a house of oak bark, circular in shape with arched roof. It contained a great quantity of corn and beans, enough to load three ships, besides what was growing in the fields. On our coming into the house, two mats were spread to sit upon and food was served in red wooden bowls. Two men were dispatched in quest of game, who brought in a pair of pigeons. They likewise killed a fat dog and skinned it with great haste with shells. The land is the finest for cultivation that ever I in my life set foot upon.” Hudson had not found a passage to China, but his soul was satisfied of his life labor.
Above Albany, the river became shoaly. Hudson sent his men forward twice to sound, but thirty miles beyond Albany the water was too shallow for the Half Moon.
How far up the river had Hudson sailed? Juet’s ship log does not give the latitude, but Van Meteren’s record says 42° 40’. Beyond this, on September 22, the small boat advanced thirty miles. Tradition says Hudson ascended as far as Waterford.
While the boats were sounding, the conspirators were at their usual mischief. Indian chiefs had come on board. They were taken down to the cabin and made gloriously drunk. All went merrily till one Indian fell insensible. The rest scampered in panic and came back with offerings of wampum—their most precious possession—for the chief’s ransom. When they secured him alive, they brought more presents—wampum and venison—in gratitude. To this escapade of the mischief-making crew, moccasin rumor added a thousand exaggerations which came down in Indian tradition to the beginning of the last century. After the drunken frenzy—legend says—the white men made a great oration promising to come again. When they returned the next year, they asked for as much land as the hide of a bullock would cover. The Indians granted it, but the white men cut the buffalo hide to strips narrow as a child’s finger and so encompassed all the land of Manahat (Manhattan). The whites then built a fort for trade. The name of the fort was New Amsterdam. It grew to be a mighty city. Such are Indian legends of New York’s beginnings. They probably have as much truth as the story of Rome and the wolf.
On September 23, the Half Moon turned her prow south. The Hudson lay in all its autumn glory—a glassy sheet walled by the painted woods, now gorgeous with the frost tints of gold and scarlet and carmine. The ship anchored each night and the crew wandered ashore hatching pirate plots. Finally they presented their ultimatum to Hudson—they would slay him if he dared to steer for Holland. Weakened by the death of Colman, the English were helpless against the Dutch mutineers. Perhaps they, too, were not averse to seizing the Company’s ship and becoming sea rovers along the shores of such a land. At least one of them turned pirate the next voyage. Twice, the Half Moon was run aground—at Catskill and at Esopus—probably intentionally, or because Hudson dared not send his faithful Englishmen ahead to sound.