Hudson had, as we have said, offered his services in the right quarter. A vessel of discovery, called the Crescent, was soon equipped for him, and on the 4th of April, 1609, he set sail in search of the north-western passage, accompanied again by his son.
Masses of ice prevented his sailing toward Nova Zembla; turning to the south-west, therefore, and passing Greenland and Newfoundland, he ran along the coast of Acadia, and entered Penobscot Bay, on the southern coast of Maine, and so on southward to Cape Cod, which, supposing himself to have first discovered, he called New Holland, and still sailing southward, reached the entrance of Chesapeake Bay, where he remembered that his countrymen had a settlement. From this point he again turned northward, having discovered Delaware Bay; on the 3rd of September, about five months from the time of his setting sail, he anchored within Sandy Hook; the natives being attracted to the ship from the neighbouring shores, which he described as crowned with “goodly oaks.” After tarrying here a week, Hudson advanced up the Narrows, and anchored in a safe harbour at the mouth of the river. Every object around was worthy of admiration—the luxuriant grass, the trees, the flowers, and the fragrance which was diffused over all. For ten days the Crescent, the wonder of the Indians who congregated on the shore to witness the marvellous apparition and to welcome the strangers, ascended the river above the highlands, and some little distance beyond where the city of Hudson now stands, and whence he took a boat forward as far as the present city of Albany. He descended the stream rapidly, and on the 4th of October, set sail for Europe, “leaving,” says the eloquent historian, “once more to its solitude the land that his imagination, anticipating the future, described as the most beautiful in the world.”
A prosperous voyage returned Hudson to Europe. He landed at Dartmouth, and sent a splendid report of his discoveries to his Dutch employers; but he never revisited the country which he so much praised, nor the river to which time has now given his name. The Dutch East India Company declined, as he had failed to discover the north-western passage, to employ him further.
The following spring, however, an English company was formed, and Hudson was again abroad in search of a passage to the Pacific. He sailed directly north, passing Iceland, and Greenland, and Frobisher Straits, and advancing through the straits that now bear his name, and through which Cabot had entered a century before, emerged into an immense gulf, which he joyfully believed for some time to be the object of his search. He was naturally very unwilling to believe it a bay. Backwards and forwards he sailed; still hoping for success, and determining at all hazards to winter there, that he might be ready in the spring to pursue the important discovery. A horrible winter succeeded; the spring was late; famine stared him in the face; Hudson divided the last bread with his men, and wept as he gave it them, having consented to return. He believed that he was now on the point of success—of success, where all other nations had failed. With a heavy heart he commenced his homeward voyage, on June the 18th, yet still amid fields of ice. Two days afterwards the crew broke forth into mutiny; Hudson was seized, and, with his son, and seven others, four of whom were sick, was put in an open boat and turned adrift. Hudson, it is said by some, was a severe commander, and that his stern and pitiless temper provoked his crew to mutiny; one little circumstance, however, which is related of this tragical event, seems to contradict the assertions, and we are willing to believe its inference. The ship’s carpenter, Philip Staffe—his name deserves to be remembered—seeing his commander thus exposed, insisted upon sharing his fate. It was on Midsummer-day, and in a latitude where the sun at that season scarcely sets, and morning and night meet in the heavens, that this infamous deed was perpetrated. The fate of Hudson and his companions never was known. But his name and his memory are preserved in those dreary polar waters, which, seeming to have had a wonderful fascination for him in life, became in death his tomb.
“Such,” says Bancroft, “were the men and the voyages which led the way to the colonisation of the United States. The daring and skill of these earliest adventurers on the ocean deserve the highest admiration. The difficulties of crossing the Atlantic were new; the characters of the prevalent winds and currents were unknown. The possibility of making a direct passage was but gradually discovered. The ships at first employed for discovery were generally of less than one hundred tons burden. Frobisher sailed in a vessel of but twenty-five tons; two of those of Columbus were without decks; and so perilous were voyages considered, that the sailors were accustomed, before embarking, to perform acts of solemn devotion.”
CHAPTER IV.
COLONISATION OF VIRGINIA.
At the commencement of the seventeenth century a considerable revolution had taken place in the objects of American enterprise and discovery. As the greatness and the immense resources of the new world opened before the European mind, the grasp of mind itself and of human interests widened in proportion. The vain hope of the new passage to the East Indies, which prompted Columbus and others to sail first westward, was now becoming a secondary motive. To this had succeeded the desire for the acquisition of gold, a rabid appetite, whether a more bitter curse to the aborigines or the European it is hard to say; the islands and equatorial regions had also ministered to the luxury and indulgence of the conqueror by all their affluence of tropical productions. Selfishness and aggrandisement had prevailed; but gradually, as morning will succeed to night, a nobler and better purpose had begun to operate, and these new-found realms were regarded as a wide field on which to found states and establish Christian colonies; they had already become the refuge of the oppressed, they might be still more so: they had already given an impulse to commercial enterprise, they would do so still more.
England, of all European nations, was perhaps most fitted to profit by this enlarged sphere of operation. She had even then, apparently, an excess of population, and “the timid character of king James having thrown out of employment the gallant men who had served under Elizabeth, both by sea and land, no other choice was left to them but either to engage in the quarrels of other nations, or incur the hazards of seeking a new world.” The expeditions sent out by the intelligence of Sir Walter Raleigh, had turned the public mind to Virginia. Gosnold, a bold seaman, whose ship first sailed directly across the Atlantic, and who entertained the highest opinion of the capabilities of the New World for colonisation, had long endeavoured to persuade his friends to make trial of it for that purpose. Schemes of this kind were revolving in the minds of various people at the same time. Sir Ferdinand Gorges, who had learned much regarding America from George Weymouth, entertained the most favourable ideas on the subject; Sir John Popham, the lord chief justice of England; the assignees of Sir Walter Raleigh, and Richard Hakluyt, the historian of maritime adventure, all favoured the establishment of a colony in the New World.
Gosnold at length induced three persons to engage with him in the enterprise, Edward Maria Wingfield, a merchant of the west of England, Robert Hunt, a clergyman, and the brave and energetic John Smith, a man of singular perseverance, indomitable courage, and possessed of every quality necessary for the successful adventurer. These, assisted by the influence of Popham and Gorges, succeeded, in 1606, in obtaining from James I. a patent for the establishment of a colony in Virginia.
The English monarch claimed the whole of that portion of North America lying between the 34th and 45th degrees of north latitude, from Cape Fear on the coast of North Carolina to Halifax in Nova Scotia. This territory was now divided into two portions, North Virginia, extending from the 41st to the 45th degree, and South Virginia, from the 34th to the 38th degree.