Many claims regarding the discovery of various parts of the United States had been previously made. The Cabots had discovered Labrador; the Spaniards the southern part of the United States; the Norsemen had discovered Minneapolis; and Columbus had discovered San Salvador and had gone home to meet a ninety-day note due in Palos for the use of the Pinta, which he had hired by the hour.
But we are speaking of the discovery of New York.
About this time a solitary horseman might have been seen at West 209th Street, clothed in a little brief authority, and looking out to the west as he petulantly spoke in the Tammany dialect, then in the language of the blank-verse Indian. He began: “Another day of anxiety has passed, and yet we have not been discovered! The Great Spirit tells me in the thunder of the surf and the roaring cataract of the Harlem that within a week we will be discovered for the first time.”
As he stands there aboard of his horse one sees that he is a chief in every respect, and in life’s great drama would naturally occupy the middle of the stage. It was at this moment that Hudson slipped down the river from Albany past Fort Lee, and, dropping a nickle in the slot at 125th Street, weighed his anchor at that place. As soon as he had landed and discovered the city, he was approached by the chief, who said: “We gates. I am on the committee to show you our little town. I suppose you have a power of attorney, of course, for discovering us?”
“Yes,” said Hudson. “As Columbus used to say when he discovered San Salvador, ‘I do it by the right vested in me by my sovereigns.’ ‘That oversizes my pile by a sovereign and a half,’ says one of the natives; and so, if you have not heard it, there is a good thing for one of your dinner-speeches here.”
“Very good,” said the chief, as they jogged downtown on a swift Sixth Avenue elevated train towards the wigwams on 14th Street, and going at the rate of four miles an hour. “We do not care especially who discovers us so long as we hold control of the city organization. How about that, Hank?”
“That will be satisfactory,” said Mr. Hudson, taking a package of imported cheese and eating it, so that they could have the car to themselves.
“We will take the departments, such as Police, Street-cleaning, etc., etc., etc., while you and Columbus get your pictures on the currency and have your graves mussed up on anniversaries. We get the two-moment horses and the country châteaux on the Bronx. Sabe?”
“That is, you do not care whose portrait is on the currency,” said Hudson, “so you get the currency.”
Said the man, “That is the sense of the meeting.”