By Permission of J. B. Lippincott Co.
HE author will now refer to the discovery of the Hudson River and the town of New York via Fort Lee and the 125th Street Ferry.
New York was afterwards sold for twenty-four dollars,—the whole island. When I think of this I go into my family gallery, which I also use as a swear room, and tell those ancestors of mine what I think of them. Where were they when New York was sold for twenty-four dollars? Were they having their portraits painted by Landseer, or their disposition taken by Jeffreys, or having their Little Lord Fauntleroy clothes made?
Do not encourage them to believe that they will escape me in future years. Some of them died unregenerate, and are now, I am told, in a country where they may possibly be damned; and I will attend to the others personally.
Twenty-four dollars for New York! Why, my Croton-water tax on one house and lot with fifty feet four and one-fourth inches front is fifty-nine dollars and no questions asked. Why, you can’t get a voter for that now.
Henry—or Hendrik—Hudson was an English navigator, of whose birth and early history nothing is known definitely, hence his name is never mentioned in many of the best homes of New York.
In 1607 he made a voyage in search of the North West Passage. In one of his voyages he discovered Cape Cod, and later on the Hudson River.
This was one hundred and seventeen years after Columbus discovered America; which shows that the discovering business was not pushed as it should have been by those who had it in charge.
Hudson went up the river as far as Albany, but, finding no one there whom he knew, he hastened back as far as 209th Street West, and anchored.