0353
0353f
Henry Hudson
Henry Hudson
By
LLEWELYN POWYS
LONDON
JOHN LANE THE BODLET HEAD LTD
JF'zT^st ptiblished itt
Made and Printed in Great Biitain.
T. and A. C^nstabi-k L-rr?., Printeis, Kdm> urgli
THIS BOOK
IS DEDICATED IN FRIENDSHIP TO
THE HONOURABLE GALBRAITH COLE
PREFACE
IT has been my purpose in this book
to present as impartial and accurate a
picture as possible of Henry Hudson’s
adventures, as he voyaged over “ the
huge uncharted waves,” without being
beguiled into the familiar note of
exaggerated eulogy so natural a temp-
tation to every Englishman brought up by his father to
look with understanding eyes at the deep rolling swell
and free wind-driven surf of the English Channel. I
have tried, as far as it has been within my power, to set
the great achievements of this dead sea captain in their
true relation to that wider historical perspective that is
only indirectly concerned with any particular country
or race, a perspective which should include, were there
a mind profound enough to scan it, the far-extending
progressions of all life, as they hesitate, retreat, and
advance to the swift transforming measure of “ cor-
morant devoming time.”
I have been most generously helped in my researches
by many people, and I would like here to tender my
gratitude to Mr. Millard F. Hudson, who, with that
magnanimity that I cannot help associating with America
and Americans, put at my disposal, without reservation,
all the valuable material on the Hudson family, collected
vii
HENRY HUDSON
viii
by him through many years of patient, industrious, and
scholarly inquiry. Much of this material, though
beyond the scope of my book, is of historical interest,
and it is to be sincerely hoped that Mr. Hudson will,
in due course, see to it that the results of his long labours
are preserved through publication. How long these
labours have been will be appreciated by students of
the explorer when they learn that Mr. Hudson was at
one time in communication with General Read, whose
book on the navigator’s family history was published
so many years ago.
I am especially indebted to Mr. H. P. Bigger, of the
Public Record Office, to whose advice and encourage-
ment I owe the discovery of the lost verdict passed in
the High Giurt of Admiralty on the mutineers. This
valuable document was actually found for me by that
most diligent and skilled investigator. Miss Alice Mayes.
To the Reverend Canon C. H. Mayo I wish also to
acknowledge my gratitude for his generosity in bringing
to bear on the elucidation and translation of the dis-
covered parchment his rare scholarly knowledge of
ancient documents, and his familiarity with legal Latin.
I would wish also to express my thanks for the courtesy
shown me by the Office of Historical Research in London,
by the Hakluyt Society, by the Royal Historical Society,
by the Secretary of the Congressional Library in Washing-
ton, by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, by Dr.
W. A. F. Bannier, Secretary of the Historical Society of
Utrecht, Holland, by Dr. W. F. Geikie Cobb, Rector
of the church of Saint Ethelburga the Virgin, and by the
late Mr. R. G. Marsden, to whose exhaustive researches
PREFACE
ii
amongst ancient shipping documents myself and other
historians of Hudson have been so deeply indebted.
To my old friend Mr. Brooke for his assistance at the
British Museixm, to Mr. Kenneth Burke for his help at
the New York Public Library, to Miss Bremner for her
aid in translating the Dutch books formd necessary to
consult, and to Mr. Charles J. Bathurst for his com-
petent draughtsmanship of my maps, I tender likewise
my gratitude.
Lastly, I would wish to register my acknowledgement
to Mr. Louis N. Feipel, to my friend Louis Wilkinson,
to my brothers, John Cowper and Littleton Charles
Powys, and to my wife, Alyse Gregory, for the advice
and help they have given me.
The White Nose, Dorset,
May Day, 1927.
LLEWELYN POWYS.
#
CONTENTS
PREFACE
CHAP.
1. ST. ETHELBURGA THE VIRGIN
IL SEBASTIAN CABOT .
III. THE NORTH-EAST PASSAGE .
IV. WILLIAM BARENTS .
V. THE FIRST SAILING .
VI. SPITSBERGEN ....
VII. AN INDUSTRY INAUGURATED
VIIL THE SECOND SAILING .
IX. NOVAYA ZEMLYA .
X. THE DUTCH SCENE ,
XL TENTATIVE OVERTURES .
XIL THE DUTCH CONTRACT .
XIII. THE THIRD SAILING
XIV. THE NEW WORLD .
XV. NEW YORK HARBOUR .
XVI. THE HUDSON RIVER
XVII. THE DEPARTURE .
XVIII. IN ENGLAND AGAIN
XIX. THE FOURTH SAILING .
XX. HUDSON STRAIT
PAGE
vii
I
4
12
i8
24
31
39
45
50
6o
70
77
84
91
96
104
112
117
124
130
HENRY HUDSON
zii
CHAP. PAGE
XXI. HUDSON BAY 139
XXII. THE WINTERING 146
XXIII. THE MUTINY 157
XXIV. CAPTAIN GREENE 168
XXV. DIGGES ISLAND 176
XXVI. THE RETURN OF THE MUTINEERS . . .180
XXVII. THE ACQUITTAL 183
TRANSCRIPTION OF THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENT OF
THE VERDICT PASSED UPON THE MUTINEERS . 190
TRANSLATION OF THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENT OF THE
VERDICT PASSED UPON THE MUTINEERS . .194
BIBLIOGRAPHY igg
INDEX 207
ILLUSTRATIONS
Hudson’s Chart, from the one published in 1612 by
Hessel Gerrit2 ...... Vnnt endpaper
Marine. By Pieter Bruegel the Elder . . . Frontispiece
North Pour Regions Facing page 31
Spitsbergen or Svalbard (Newund) . . „ 39
Novaya Zemlya »j 51
The East Coast of North America . . ,, ,, 91
Hudson Strait and Bay u i57
Facsimile of Page Five of Original Document of
THE Verdict passed upon the Mutineers „ „ 198
The Hudson River and its Mouth . . Back endpaper
HENRY HUDSON
CHAPTER I
ST. ETHELBURGA THE VIRGIN
F the origin and early life of Henry
Hudson, the navigator, nothing is cer-
tain. We know that he had a house
somewhere near the Tower of London,
and was married to a woman named
Katherine, by whom he had three sons,
Oliver, John, and Richard. Beyond
these facts all is conjecture, so that our
history must perforce begin, as others have done, with
“ the experienced English pilot ” and his crew of ten
men and a boy taking Holy Communion in the church
of St. Ethelburga the Virgin within Bishopsgate, before
setting out on their great voyage.
It was a ceremony highly in keeping with the mood of
the great age that was, in the year 1607, drawing to a
close. The seamen of Queen Elizabeth’s time were
remarkable in many ways, and not least in the faculty they
displayed of combining religion with their more vigorous
activities. Hawkins, as he transported his cargoes of
“ black ivory ” westward, thought it in no way incon-
sistent to call upon that Saviour of mankind whose name
will always be associated with the tentative strivings of
the human race toward a more pitiful attitude in their
relations one with the other.
In spite of the fact that this service in the church
of St. Ethelburga has been dwelt upon with such
unction, it still possesses a romance and dignity of its
own. The church they had selected for the practice
A
2
HENRY HUDSON
of the solemn rite is still standing. Today it may be
seen very much as it was on that April morning three
hundred years ago, its door still guarded on both sides
by shops built into the porch, the one on the right hand
being first rented some forty odd years before Hudson’s
visit, and the other, on the left, some three years after
his death. It stands today dominated and overshadowed
by modern buildings, but, even so, continues as a sturdy
relic of a splendid epoch, the living memory of which
each year grows dimmer and dimmer.
The present church, which took the place of an even
older building, was constructed in the first half of the
fifteenth century, that is to say, some seventy years before
the celebrated voyages of discovery made by the Cabots.
It owes its dedication to a Saxon saint, the first Abbess of
Barking. Its incumbent in the year 1 607 was William
Bedwell, who was also the Vicar of Tottenham. He was
a distinguished Arabic scholar, and for this reason was,
perhaps, especially interested in explorations towards
the East, towards those countries from which incense
had been brought time out of mind. And yet, perhaps,
incense was not much to his liking either, because we
read in an account book still preserved at the church,
how “ olde Serymony things, . . . olde Copes, vest-
ments, latten waxe ” had been sold for a price, together
with “ a pixe clothe of open work.”
The ancient street of Bishopsgate was near the famous
city wall, was, indeed, the main city street leading to the
great north road. A fragment of the original wall is still
standing within the churchyard of All-Hallows-on-the-
Wall, within two hundred yards of St. Ethelburga, and
the solid masses of masonry, put into place by the Romans
and preserved by generations of anxious burghers through-
out the Middle Ages, may actually be seen and touched by
the curious today. The church of St. Ethelburga was
situated by the side of this much-frequented thorough-
ST. ETHELBURGA THE VIRGIN 3
fare, crowded with hostelries for travellers. In truth,
the small building in Elizabeth’s time was surrounded by
taverns, separated from each other by dark and crooked
alleys.
As one walks along the pavements of Bishopsgate
Street, with all the turmoil of London about one, it is
still possible to read the quaint names that must have
guided Hudson and his men as they assembled to partake
of the Sacrament. Wormwood Alley, Peahen Alley !
How homely and in every way admirable is the sound of
such appellations ! The Angel was next door to the
church on the north side. Across the way stood the
Four Swans, with its tap-room, the Queen’s Head ; while
further off could be seen the Green Dragon, the Black Bull,
and a score of others. Strangely enough, the present
offices of the Hudson’s Bay Company are to be found
within bowshot of the church door. But the church is
the same, with the small shop cooped up in its porch,
the shop for which Samuel Aylworde, a glover, paid
6s. 8d. as half-year rent in the time of Hudson, now
flourishing under the sign of Robinson, an oculist and
provider of spectacles.
To those of us who have a fondness for odd coinci-
dences and sentimental, far-fetched associations, it is
interesting to learn that the outer walls of St. Ethelburga
have, ever since they were built, been given to sweating
in damp weather, because, so runs a tradition amongst
its painful churchwardens, the sand out of which the
mortar was made came from the sea.
CHAPTER II
SEBASTIAN CABOT
OR the purpose of understanding clearly
the sequence of historical contingencies
that led to Henry Hudson’s setting out
on his first voyage of discovery, it is
necessary to be reminded of the aims
and exploits of the Cabots.
It is to John Cabot, a merchant of
Bristol, by birth a Genoese and by adop-
tion a Venetian, that the honour must be given of having
first suggested the idea that a short passage to the East
might be found by way of the North. As a young man,
he had visited Mecca and had spoken to certain Arab
traders, newly arrived from across the desert, who, as
they unloaded from off the galled backs of their tired
camels bales of oriental merchandise, had told him stories
of the fabulous wealth of the places from which they had
come, stories that had inflamed his imagination and had
set him meditating upon the possible existence of a more
expedient way of bringing to Europe those treasured
commodities.
The prevailing geographical theory of the fifteenth
century regarded the world as consisting of one vast
continent, made up of Europe, Asia, and Africa, sur-
rounded by one vast ocean, and it was to this conception
that the new scientific doctrine as to the roundness of the
earth had to be reconciled. If the world was really round,
as men said, then, so reasoned the astute Italian, as he
looked westward down the Bristol Channel, a stout-
SEBASTIAN CABOT
5
hearted sailor by steering across the Atlantic could reach
Cathay by sea. How could it be otherwise, if between
the palm-grown fantastical coast of Marco Polo’s relation
and the homely limpet-encrusted rocks of Lundy Island
there existed nothing but water ?
The merchant community of the old West Country
port had been for a long time occupied with the notion
of exploring the great sea whose ebb and flow each day
lapped against the stanchions of their wharfs planted
firmly in good Severn mud. To them, and to many
men of that age, it seemed that the prophecy of Seneca
was about to be fulfilled, when he said, “ A time will
come in later years when the ocean will unloose the
bands of things, when the immeasurable earth will lie
open, when seafarers will discover new countries, and
Thule will no longer be the extreme part among the
lands.”
The news that Columbus had actually sailed to the
West Indies or (as he himself believed) to Japan, must
have served as an even greater incentive to Cabot to find
his northern route. To us, living in an age of free inter-
national intercourse, it seems difficult to believe that the
superior geographical knowledge possessed by the Scan-
dinavians at that time had not become common to Europe.
In Iceland, where Norsemen had been settled for many
centuries, there existed throughout the Middle Ages
sagas that told of the colonization of Greenland, of the
discovery of America ! Yet in England and in southern
Europe even the more intelligent investigators, retarded
from intercourse with the Norsemen by the jealous
Hanseatic confederacy, still based their ideas concerning
the North upon the veriest hearsay, upon the writings of
Strabo, of Ptolemy, and of Pliny, or upon wild gargoyle
fancies of mediaeval legend. Truly a peculiar charm
belongs to the innocent notions that bewildered the minds
of the early navigators. On his third voyage Columbus
6
HENRY HUDSON
seems to have believed that he was actually approaching
Paradise ! How else could he account for the cool green
pastures that bordered the River Orinoco, for the gentle
balmy nature of the air ? “ The earth,” he affirmed,
“ is probably not spherical, but elongated like a pear, and
on the siunmit of the protuberance is situated the earthly
paradise whither no one can go but by God’s permission.”
The Spaniards, however, soon became masters of a better
science. “ Two elements,” wrote Antonio de Herrera,
chief chronicler of the Indies, “ make the globe ; whose
upper face in part is Earth, and in part is Sea. The
ancients divided the Earth in three parts, and gave to
every one his name. The first they called Europe, more
celebrated than any other. The second Asia, which is
greater than the rest and contayneth the great Kingdome
of China. The third Africa . . . Christopher Colon,
first Admirall of the Indies . . . gave a beginning to
the Discovery of that which at this day is counted the
fourth part of the World . . . which goeth so high to
the North that it hides itselfe under the Pole Articke
without knowing any end.”
So boldly did the Cabots venture in 1497, and again
in the following year, that, if we can trust Sebastian’s
celebrated planisphere printed nearly fifty years later, the
son, in the second voyage, became cognizant of both
Hudson and Davis Straits, the two openings through
which man must pass if he seeks to know where the earth
“ hides itself.”
After his first voyage, John Cabot returned to Bristol,
to “ amuse himself.” A Venetian, who was in London
at the time, wrote to his brother that Cabot had returned
from the country of the great “ Chan,” and adds, “ Vast
honour is paid him, and he dresses in silk ; and these
English run after him like mad people.”
If we attribute to the elder Cabot the distinction of
having originated the idea of a northern passage to the
SEBASTIAN CABOT
7
East, we must reserve for the gifted son the honour of
having been among the first cartographers who grasped
the true significance of what had been discovered, the
first who understood that a new continent had been found,
and who drew upon his charts an unbroken coast-line
between Labrador and Florida.
This renowned authority on all matters concerning the
sea was an even more remarkable man than was his father.
Sly as a bundle of foxes, we see him with his forked beard
and dignified presence as the gifted pilot, not only of
Henry VIII and Charles V, but also of his own career,
directing it with the utmost resource through the shoals
and chances of a long and hazardous life. To have
preserved his reputation as a nautical expert through so
many difficult decades, surrounded as he was by enemies,
a reputation based principally on those two early expedi-
tions to the North-West, was no mean feat, especially
since it procured for him a succession of salaries and
pensions extracted from the iron-boxmd coffers of sove-
reigns by no means noted for their liberality. Again
and again his enemies conspired against him, but even
to the year of his death the Princes of the Earth put their
trust in him. If Henry would not satisfy him, then he
left for Spain ; and when discontented with his treat-
ment there as “Pilot-Major,” he entered into secret
correspondence with his native city of Venice, offering
his special services to the Doge.
In the year 1 526 he undertook, on behalf of the Spanish
crown, an expedition to the Moluccas, which proved a
complete failure, since it never got further than the La
Plata River, where some of his crew were eaten by savages,
not so much out of vindictiveness, but to “ ascertain
whether their flesh was as salt, and had the same unpalat-
able savour noticed in the other Spaniards th^ had
previously tasted.” Undaunted as ever, Sebastian wrote
back that “ His Imperial Majesty will no longer want
8
HENRY HUDSON
either cinnamon or pepper, for he will have more gold
and silver than he requires.” Most shamelessly did he
intrigue with every principality, “ professing himself to
be experte in knowledge of the circute of the worlde and
Ilandes of the same.” Even in his old age he still re-
tained sufficient vitality to better his fortunes. In the
year 1548 he took his departure secretly and suddenly
to England, where he received from Edward VI a fixed
salary of ;^i66 a year.
It is during this autumn of his long life that his
activities become once more of direct importance to us.
Perhaps it was at his suggestion that the power of the
Steelyard was broken, and that the especial privileges
which the Hansa merchants had for so long enjoyed were
withdrawn. Never again were these German traffickers
from Liibeck, Cologne, Brunswick, and Danzig to sit
at ease behind the fortified walls of their warehouse
sanctuary, above London Bridge, above the only city
gate that commanded the waterway of the Thames,
drinking Rhenish wine, while they grew rich at the
expense of England. They lingered on for many years,
for centuries, but rather like wasps that have had their
stings extracted than like honey bees.
In the old days individual members of these “ Burghers
of the Free Towns ” had been murdered in popular riots
because they were unable to pronounce the words “ bread
and cheese”; but now these kings’ favourites, by an act
revoking their privileges, were, as a corporate body,
mortally wounded. Yet these people who now fell
before the machinations of Sebastian Cabot, and of Sir
Thpmas Gresham, the founder of the London Exchange,
were the same who had been “ the beloved burghers ”
of Richard Cceur de Lion, and who had financed the
campaigns of Crecy and Poitiers. Decrepit Easter-
lings, winged and maimed, they were to retain a foothold
in London till the year 1853, when the last Steelyard
SEBASTIAN CABOT
9
property was sold to an English company by the cities
of Liibeck and Bremen.
No sooner had their privileges been rescinded than
there arose what Sir Thomas Gresham was pleased to
call “ the new Hansa,” a purely English company
entitled “ The Merchant Adventurers,” of which
Sebastian Cabot was made the first Governor. The trade
conditions of England in the reign of Edward VI were
in a poor way, and it was thought to better them by
“ resolving upon a new and strange navigation.” The
wealth of the land had always rested upon wool, upon
the wool-sack, but it had become imperative to find a
wider market for the roughly-woven home-made cloth.
The first intimation we have of this new eagerness for
commercial expansion beyond the seas occurs in a letter
written by the Imperial Ambassador to the Queen of
Hungary, in May 1^41. “About two months ago,
there was a deliberation in the Privy Council as to the
expediency of sending two ships to the Northern Seas
for the purpose of discovering a passage between Islandt
and Engronland for the northern regions where it was
thought that, owing to the extreme cold, English woolen
clothe would be very acceptable and sell for a good price.”
It was certainly ingenious, this idea that even the climatic
conditions prevailing in the Arctic regions might have
a business value for England ; but, alas, the plan was
hardly feasible seeing that the Esldmos, even to this
day, prefer to go about in sealskin jackets and bird-skin
breeches.
It required the acumen of the “ ancient pilot of Seville ”
to propound the plan, apparently so much more practical,
of discovering a north-east passage to the Indies, a passage
which, so he believed, had been navigated by the ancients.
Three ships, therefore, were sent out for the intended
voyage to Cathay, under the command of Sir Hugh
Willoughby, in May 1553. They left with most careml
10
HENRY HUDSON
sailing instructions, “ compiled, made, and delivered by
the right worshipful Sebastian Cabota Esquier Gouver-
nour of the Mysterie and Companie of the Marchant
Adventurers.” Some of these instructions were ex-
tremely well devised ; as, for example, his inaugxiration
of the system of keeping log-books. “ Item . . . that
the merchants and other skilful persons in writing shall
daily write, describe, and put in memorie the navigation
of every day and night, with the points of and observa-
tions of the lands, tides, elements, altitude of the sunne,
course of the moon and starres.” It was, in fact, just
this practical turn of the old man’s mind that rendered
his advice of such high value amid all the vagueness and
bewildered reasoning of the sixteenth century. “ And
if the person taken ” — ^he refers here to the inhabitants
of foreign lands — “ may be made drunk with your beer
or wine you shall know the secrets of his heart.” We
shall see presently how Hudson himself made use of this
crafty suggestion.
Under Philip and Mary, Sebastian Cabot appears not
to have been in quite such high favour. He was com-
pelled to share his pension with another. Perhaps King
Philip nursed a grudge against his father’s celebrated
truant.
We are given two more characteristic glimpses of
Sebastian before he disappears into the kind of oblivion
that often overtook old and failing men, however eminent,
in those vigorous days. “ On April 27th, 1556 , being
Monday, the right worshipful Sebastian Cabot came
aboard our pinnace (the ‘ Searchthrift,’ under the com-
mand of Stephen Burroughs) at Gravesend accompanied
by divers gentlemen and gentlewomen . . . and when
they were on shore again (at the sign of the Christopher)
the good old gentleman, Master Cabota, gave to the
poor most liberal alms . . . and for very joy that he had
to see the towardness of our intended discovery, he entered
SEBASTIAN CABOT
II
into the dance himself with the rest of the young and
lusty company.” Doubtless the eyes of this slippered
pantaloon, who made so merry, were already growing
dim, those same eyes that had sixty years before looked
out upon the wide pine-grown stretches of the Labrador
coast. Yet even on his very deathbed the Major-Pilot
could not rid his mind of the foibles of navigation. For
years the difficulty of finding the longitude at sea had
puzzled the wisest heads. Richard Eden was inclined
to believe that Sebastian Cabot knew the solution of this
problem, a supposition remarkably supported by some
of Cabot’s surveys. In the year 1557 he went to visit
him and found him sick unto deatih, yet even then the
old man was reluctant to forgo any prestige that might
accrue to him through such rumours, Richard Eden’s
account of his visit is the last we hear of the super-vital
Venetian, who in all matters that concerned the sea
appears to have been touched with something of the
genius of a Leonardo. “ He told me that he had the
knowledge thereof by Divine revelation, yet so that he
might not teach any man. But I think the good old
man in that extreme age somewhat doted, and had not
yet, even in the article of death, utterly shaken off worldly
vain glory.”
CHAPTER III
THE NORTH-EAST PASSAGE
S far as Sebastian Cabot’s plans were
concerned, the expedition under Sir
Hugh Willoughby was a failure. It
never reached “ the famous Region of
Cathaye and the infynyte Ilonds near
thereunto. All wiche are replenished
with infyn}^ Treasures as golde,
sylver, precious stones, bawmes, spices,
drogges and guines.” However, accident and the
energy of Chancellor turned an apparent miscarriage into
a channel pregnant with commercial advantages.
The ships separated at Vardb, and after an adven-
turous voyage, Richard Chancellor, piloted by Stephen
Burroughs, found himself in the White Sea, at the mouth
of the River Dwina. As the territories where the great
Kubla Khan had once reigned supreme, disporting him-
self with hunting wild white asses with cheetah and
tigers, seemed still far off, and Chancellor, to his no small
astonishment, discovered himself to be in Russia, there
was nothing for it but to open negotiations with Ivan
Vasilivitch, Duke of Muscovy, as the Elizabethan writers
used to call Ivan the Terrible. “ If the lion skin be not
sufficient you must e’en make it up with a scantling of
foxes.”
With commendable enterprise, remembering perhaps
the motto of the company he served, “ God be our good
guide,” Chancellor left his ship, the “ Edward Bona-
venture,” at the mouth of the Dwina, and made his way
12
THE NORTH-EAST PASSAGE
13
by river and land, till he reached Moscow, where he
offered his duty to the half-fabulous monarch whose
wealth and autocratic manner of living so deeply im-
pressed him and his companions. Here was just what
the Merchant Adventurers had been looking for, a vast
country and a cold country, inhabited by a people who
must of necessity be in sore need of the thick woollen
garments of England. Year after year the trade increased
until, under Elizabeth, before the intrusion of the Dutch,
it brought the greatest prosperity to all connected with
the Muscovy Company, as the Merchant Adventurers
soon came to be called.
The relations between Ivan and Elizabeth make up
an entertaining chapter of history. Surrounded by the
garish splendour of his court, the monstrous tyrant, in
a fit of good humour, would seize the stately English
emissaries by their long beards. At one time he would
grant them his benevolent protection, detailing a certain
number of his own ferocious bodyguard, the Opritchniki,
to stand by their warehouses, and a few weeks later,
because of some difference between him and the virgin
Queen, suddenly turn the light of his countenance from
them.
If the barbaric Tsar had actually succeeded in marry-
ing the amazing Queen, what an association would have
ensued ! What a singular nuptial chamber ! As
though a grizzly bear were to be put to bed with the
proudest, hardest plumaged toucan of all the wide
forest.
As it was, he could not even win the hand of Mary
Hastings, Countess of Hrmtingdon, Elizabeth’s niece.
But in spite of the chagrin that resulted from his dis-
appointments, his unexpected connexion with this distant
island pleased him well. Might it not afford a fortunate
asylum for him one day, in case of a revolt amongst
his outraged subjects ? “ Should either sovereign be
14
HENRY HUDSON
obliged to leave his or her kingdom, the other would
offer protection and hospitality.” It was an important
clause to a. ruler who was accustomed at the smallest
offence to have his noblemen “ worried with beares,” or,
after the familiar custom, not wholly fallen into abeyance
even in our own time, put into “ a great hole in the ice
over some great river.” Yet in spite of the morose
eccentricities of this monarch, more terrific than Kubla
Khan himself to whom the very lions did obeisance,
the Moscow warehouse of the Muscovy Company,
which stood near the church of St. Maxim, next
door to the home of Nikita Romanof (grandfather of
Mikhail Feodorovitch, first Romanof Tsar) remained
secure.
The fate of the gallant Sir Hugh Willoughby in his
ship, “ Bona Esperanza,” was very different from
Chancellor’s. He, with the “ Bona Confidentia,” sailed
eastward, apparently touching Goose Land in Novaya
Zemlya, thereby starting a legend that somewhere in
the great northern sea was “ Willoughby’s Land,” an
island that became a stumbling-block to many navigators
and cartographers, and which must take its place in that
world of legendary geography, which includes the
mysterious mirage seen by the crew of the Bridgwater
ship, “ Emanuel,” as she was returning from Frobisher’s
third expedition. The “ Emanuel ” was of the particu-
lar build known to the shipwrights of Somerset as a
busse, and it was this fact that won for the imaginary
land — “ a champion country and wooddy ” — the arrest-
ing name of Busse Island.
Eventually Sir Hugh Willoughby decided to winter
in a cove on the coast of Lapland. He sent out his sailors
to explore the desolate winter landscape in every direction,
but it availed them little. At that time of year the region
was abandoned even by the Lapps. His ship was now
frozen in, and he and his crew were compelled to face an
THE NORTH-EAST PASSAGE
15
Arctic winter in a land void of inhabitants and tormented
by frost.
When Chancellor returned, no news of Sir Hugh
Willoughby had reached England. The Muscovy
Company immediately fitted out the “ Searchthrift ”
under the command of Stephen Burroughs, to look for
the lost ships, which many people supposed must have
successfully reached Cathay. What actually happened
is meticulously reported by Giovanni Michiel, the
Venetian Ambassador, in a letter dated November 4th,
1555 : “The vessels which departed hence some
months ago bound for Cathay, either from inability or
lack of daring, not having got beyond Moscovia in
Russia, whither the others went, in like manner last year,
have returned safe, bringing with them the two vessels
of the first voyage, having found them on the Muscovite
coast with the men on board all frozen ; and the mariners
now returned from the second voyage narrate strange
things about the mode in which they were frozen, having
found some of them seated in the act of writing, pen
still in hand, and the paper before them, others at tables,
platter in hand and spoon in mouth ; others opening a
locker, and others in various postures, like statues, as
if they had been adjusted and placed in those
attitudes.”
This sensational sequence to the lively hopes of a
north-east passage seems, after Stephen Burroughs’
expedition into the ice-packed Kara Sea in 1556, to have
discouraged the Muscovy Company for a period, their
newly opened trade with Russia being quite sufficient
to occupy their attention. Their lack of enterprise in
this direction was noticed and deplored by the celebrated
Belgian geographer, Gerardus Mercator. “ The voyage
to Cathaio hj the East,” he writes, “ is doubtlesse very
easy and short, and I have oftentimes marvelled that being
so happily begun it hath been left off, and the course
i6
HENRY HUDSON
changed to the West, after more than half of the voyage
was discovered. For,” — so adds the learned scientist —
“ beyond the Island of Vaigats and Nova Zembla there
followeth presently a great Bale which on the left side is
enclosed with the mightie promontorie Tabin.” How-
ever, in the year 1580 another expedition was sent out,
under the command of the two resolute seamen. Pet and
Jackman, who also advanced some considerable distance
into the Kara Sea, before, in their turn, being checked
by ice. It is, indeed, abundantly clear that the minds
of the honest London merchants continued to be
vexed by the question of a possible North-East Passage
for many years. With infinite care they sifted all evi-
dence for and against such an assumption. A peculiar
horn, perfectly straight, some five or six feet long, made
of ivory, hollow and heavy and marvellously decorated
with natural spiral twists, was picked up on the barren
seashore of Vaigach. Ignorant as people were in those
days of the existence of the narwhal, or corpse-whale,
that strange fish which carries in its upper jaw so singular
a weapon, they concluded out of hand that their treasure
trove was nothing else than the horn of a imicom. It
was given to the Tsar and was held “ in no small pryce
and estymacion with the said Prince.” The unique
object immediately provoked disputes and arguments.
“ Knowing that Unycorns are bredde in the landes of
Cathaye, Chynayne and other Oriental Regions, (they)
fell into consideration that the same Hedd was brought
thither by the course of the sea, and that there must of
necessytie be a passage owt of the sayde Orientall Ocean
into our Septentrionall seas.”' But then against this
necessity there presently arose several disturbing sus-
picions : “ First it is doubtful whether these barbarous
Tartarians do know an Unicornes home, when they see
it, yea or no ; and if it were one, yet it is not credible
that the sea could have driven it so farre, being of such
THE NORTH-EAST PASSAGE 17
nature that it will not swimme.” There was nothing
for it but to wait, relying meanwhile on the standing
order given to all the factors of the company serving in
Russia, “ to learn by all wayes and means possible how
men may passe from Russia either by land or sea to
Cathaia.”
B
CHAPTER IV
WILLIAM BARENTS
HIS intense interest in the discovery of
a practical route to Cathay, either over-
land or by sea, was not confined to the
factors of the Muscovy Company. The
Russians themselves began to be in-
fected with this cunning curiosity, as did
the Dutch also, whose agents, under
the direction of the great merchant,
Balthasar de Moucheron, soon threatened the English
trade monopoly in the White Sea.
A mysterious figure, Oliver Brunei, who had originally
come from Brussels, had been captured by Ivan the
Terrible, and had later been employed by certain Russians
to explore the northern coast-line, which he succeeded in
doing, even as far as the River Ob. This far-famed river,
and the country round about it, supplied most of the
rumours concerning the golden road to the East. “ It
is,” one trader reported, “ a common received speech of
the Russes that are great travellers, that beyond Ob to
the South-east there is a warme sea. Which they ex-
presse in these words in the Russe tongue : Za Oby reca
moria Templa, that is to say. Beyond the River Ob is a
warme sea.” The River Ob and “ the mightie pro-
montory of Tabin ” remained for generations the two
most important stages of the journey : the former seem-
ing to offer communication overland, and the latter, if
once passed by a ship, an easy passage southward into
the mild and halcyon waters of the sea of Chin, whose
WILLIAM BARENTS
19
very breezes were made grateful with incense-bearing
trees.
Scraps of evidence concerning the half-legendary
river were constantly being circulated. Master Francis
Cherry, one of the chief merchants of the Muscovy
Company, stoutly asserted that he had himself “ eaten a
Sturgeon that came out of the river Ob.” Others
declared “ that they had seene great vessels, laden with
rich and precious merchandize, brought downe that great
river by black or swart people ” ; a communication
that immediately set the London merchants thinking
that it would be a good place “ to vent their com-
modities upon,” unmindful in their enthusiasm of the
lines of William Warner, a contemporary poet, “ It is
no common labour, the river Ob to sail.” Each year
some fresh report came to them suggesting that the
tantalizing problem required only a little further effort
for its final solution. The strange people who lived
thereabout affirmed, so it was said, “ that they had heard
their forefathers say that they have heard most sweete
harmonic of bels in the lake Kithay and that they have
seene them in stately and large buildings : and when
they make mention of the people named Carrah Colmak
(this country is Cathay) they fetch deepe sighes, and
holding up their hands, they looke up to heaven, signi-
fying as it were, and declaring the notable glory and
magnificence of that nation.”
The explorations of Oliver Brunei had the effect of
thoroughly rousing the Dutch. Though Brunei him-
self was no great scientist, he was able to interest learned
men in the accounts of his travels. One such an indi-
vidual gave him a letter to Gerardus Mercator, which was
afterwards incorporated in Hakluyt’s collection. On his
return to the Netherlands he became connected with
the town of Enckhuysen in West Friesland, and under-
took a voyage to the River Pechora in a vessel from that
20
HENRY HUDSON
city. His presence in Enckhuysen seems to have
prompted its citizens to take an interest in the North-
East Passage.
In the year 1594, with the help and patronage of
Balthasar de Moucheron, the citizens of Enckhuysen,
together with those of Amsterdam, sent out the first of
the three expeditions associated with the name of that
most noble Arctic explorer, William Barents.
These were the last voyages made for the discovery
of the North-East Passage before those of Henry Hudson.
Barents was a pupil of that distinguished geographer
and Calvinistic divine, Peter Plancius, who later proved
himself so valuable a friend to Hudson.
On the first voyage, Barents, following the teaching
of his master, who perhaps believed that the north-east
point of Novaya Zemlya joined up with Russia, sailed
along its west coast till he rounded Ice Cape, its most
northern promontory, and discovered the Orange Islands.
He then returned to Vaigach, and near Matfloy and
Dolgoy fell in with the' Enckhuysen ships, which had
sailed through Pet Strait to a position they imagined to
be north of the River Ob, but which was in reality
somewhere above Kara Bay. These boats, on their
return, thanks to the privilege of having a man of letters
on board, made so large a discourse upon their exploit,
that it was forthwith assumed that the long-sought-for
passage had been now at last discovered. The next
year, therefore, a grand fleet of no less than seven ships
was fitted out, but owing to ice it achieved little or nothing.
In the year 1596 the third and last expedition was
organized by private merchants of Amsterdam. It
consisted of two vessels, the one under Jacob van
Heemskerk, with William Barents as pilot, and the other
under John Cornelius Ryp. Ryp refused to sail towards
the north of Novaya Zemlya, but kept a more westerly
course, perhaps with the idea of anticipating Hudson’s
WILLIAM BARENTS
21
plan of sailing across the Pole. On June 9th they
discovered Bear Island, and a little later Spitsbergen,
the western shore of which they explored up to its most
northern point. At a cape they named Vogel Hook
the sea birds were so numerous that they flew against
their sails. It was not far from here that they displaced
a number of barnacle geese, which, when driven from
their nests, rose into the air over those unharvested acres
of ice crying “ red, red, red ! ”
They now returned to Bear Island, where they parted,
Barents insisting upon his plan of rounding the most
northern point of Novaya Zemlya. Probably for cen-
turies no single seaman knew as much about those frozen
seas as did this sturdy mariner from the island of Ter-
schelling, whose surveys up till quite recent times formed
the basis of every chart and map made of these regions.
There is something about his nature, so simple and yet
so undaunted, that constrains us to do him honour.
Under the leadership of two men like Jacob van Heems-
kerk and William Barents, we may well be prepared
for heroic exploits. De Veer’s narrative forms an un-
equalled passage in the literature of exploration.
Over the sea they sailed, “ the water being sometimes
as green as grasse,” and a little after “ of a perfect azure
colour like the skies,” and then a man walking on the
fore-deck “ on a sudden began to cry out with a loud
voice and said that he saw white swannes ; which wee
that were under Hatches hearing, presently came up and
perceived that it was ice that came driving from a great
heape, shewing like swannes.” At last they rounded
Ice Cape and explored some way down the eastern coast
of Novaya Zemlya till the ship became embayed, and
there was nothing for it but to winter there. “ We
determined to build a house upon the land to keep us
therein as well as we could, and so to commit ourselves
unto the tuition of God.”
22
HENRY HUDSON
Presently the sun disappeared for the last time, and
this handful of “ swag-bellied Hollanders,” in their
turn, were compelled to face the long darkness of the
Arctic winter, with nothing to solace them in the drift-
wood habitation but the Rules of Navigation, by Pedro
Medina, a Dutch manuscript translation of the story of
Pet and Jackman, and a beech-wood flute. “ It being a
weary time for us to bee without the sunne and to want
the greatest comfort that God sendeth vmto man, heare
upon earth, and that rejoyceth every living thing.” They
subsisted upon the meat of foxes, which seemed to them
to be as dainty as venison, trapping the animals when-
ever the snow allowed them to emerge from the shelter
of their hut. But sometimes for days together they
would sit over their fire, while blizzard after blizzard
swept across that unknown and unawakened land.
“ Within the house it was so extreme cold, that as we sate
before a great Fire, and seemed to burne on the foreside,
we froze behind at our backes, and were all white as the
Country-men use to bee, when they came in at the gates
of the Towne in Holland with their sleds, and have
gone all night.” The very beer which they drew
“ froze as hard upon the side of the barrell as if it had
bene glued thereon.” And then, instead of decreasing,
the cold would increase, “ an extreme cold, almost not
to be endured, where upon wee lookt pittifully one upon
the other being in great feare.”
At last, in that lorn boreal zone, where it has been said
that the sun’s rising can be heard, there was once more
light. A diving fowl was noticed in the open water,
the snow began to melt, and there were signs of the
approach of spring. As they could never hope to put
to sea again in their “ embayed ” ship, Heemskerk gave
orders to get ready two open boats or herring scutes for
their return journey. His enfeebled and scurvy-ridden
men were almost too weak to move, but he cheered them
WILLIAM BARENTS
23
on, telling them if they coxild not get the herring boats
in order then they must be prepared to dwell there “ as
burghers of Nova Zembla.” On June 13th, when all
was ready, they carried William Barents, who was sick,
across the dissolving snow to one of the scutes. Before
leaving the house, however, he wrote a letter which he“put
in a musket charge and hanged it up in the chimney.”
In such a place where the atmosphere paralyses the
forces of decay, where ice and snow enfold all in a still and
magical wrapping, the waste of material objects is com-
pletely arrested. Two hundred and seventy-five years later,
on September 13th, 1871, a Norwegian captain, Elling
Carlsen, of Hammerfest, discovered the house intact,
encinctured with ice. The fireplace was there, the tankards
with lids of zinc, the cooking pans of copper, the books,
the six-holed German flute, just as they had been left by the
men who had gone back for the last time to fetch Barents.
Now rowing, now making use of rough sails, the two frail
crafts began their voyage of more than a thousand miles
across the open sea. “ Sometimes the ice came so fast upon
us that it made our haires stare upright upon our heads, it
was so fearful to behold.” As they were rounding the
north of Novaya Zemlya, Jacob van Heemskerk called
across from his boat to William Barents, “ to know how
he did,” and Barents shouted back, “ Quite well, mate.
I still hope to be able to run before we get to Wardhuus.”
Then a little later he spoke to his companion and said,
“ Gerrit, are we about Ice Point ? If we be, then I pray
you lift me up, for I must view it once again.” And he
was lifted up, and for the last time, with the trained eye
of a mariner who knows the distinctive outline of every
landfall he has ever looked upon, he saw the promontory,
that, dxuring half the year in the high noon of a perpetual
night, confronts under an appalling void “ the dead level
of a glacial, a barren and absolutely lonely sea.” A few
more days passed and the great explorer had died,
CHAPTER V
THE FIRST SAILING
lEN Henry Hudson and his crew
attended the Holy Communion service
at the church of St. Ethelburga, on
April 19th, 1607, it was expected
that they would leave England “foure
days after.” As a matter of fact
their ship, the “ Hopewell,” of
eighty tons burden, did not set sail
from Gravesend till May Day.
Eleven years had passed since the famous expedition
of William Barents. In the meantime the old proud
Queen had died, and her place upon the throne of
England had been taken by a touchy, vain, ungainly
Scotsman, who seemed curiously unfitted to wear the
crown of England upon his head, upon that booby’s
head, “ too hard to be afiected by wine,” but as crammed
with erudite cranks as a walnut is with meat. All was
changed. As Sir Walter Raleigh was reported to have
said, “ The old fox and his cubs had entered London.”
The affairs of the Muscovy Company had not been
going too well. Their trade with Russia had been
seriously embarrassed by rivalry with the Dutch, who,
through the energy of Balthasar de Moucheron’s brother,
Melchior, had firmly established themselves at Archangel.
It was at this period of discontent that Hudson seems
to have suggested renewing the search for a short northern
passage to the East. His plan was to sail straight across
the North Pole. The same suggestion had been made
THE FIRST SAILING
25
eighty years previously by a certain Robert Thorne — an
agent of a rich Bristol firm, and the son of one of
Cabot’s early companions, who had presented a long and
eloquent letter to Henry VIII on this very subject.
Master Thorne had made the bold assertion that “ there
is no land uninhabitable and no sea unnavigable,” and
had followed this up with many plausible arguments in
favour of reaching the East by this new way. “ So that
if I had facultie to my will, it should be the first thing that
I would understand, even to attempt if our Sea north-
ward be navigable to the Pole or no. . . . Now then if
from the sayd Newfoundlands the sea be navigable, there
is no doubt, but sayling Northward and passing the Pole,
descending to the Equinoctial line, we shall hit those
Islands, and it should be a much shorter way. . . . For
they (the sailors) being past this little way which they
named so dangerous (which may be two or three leagues
before they come to the Pole, and as much more after
they passe the Pole) it is cleare, that from thence foorth
the seas and landes are as temperate as in those parts,
and that then it may be at the will and pleasure of the
mariners, to choose whether they will sayle by the coastes
that be colde, temperate, or hote. For thus being past
the Pole, it is plaine, they may decline to what part they
list.” The ingenious clerk, however, was never given
an opportunity to put his theory to the test.
To us it seems incredible that such a suggestion
should ever have been seriously mooted. We know the
difficulties that it involved, we know that we live upon
a planet whose two flattened ends are contracted with
inconceivable frigidity. Serious-minded, well-educated
men, even at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
were by no means sure of this. They advanced the
theory, with a considerable show of reason, that proximity
to the Pole, “ that place of greatest dignity on the earth,”
would bring with it a sudden and miraculous relief !
26
HENRY HUDSON
They held, in fact, the extraordinary notion that after the
first belt of Arctic cold had been won through, the
climate, as the actual Pole drew near, would grow warmer
and warmer, believing, as they facetiously put it, that the
sun at the far north “ was rather a manufacturer of salt
than of ice.” They argued that “just as in the Red sea,
Ormus, and the country about Balsara, on this side the
Tropike there is found greater heat than under the line
itself,” so in the extreme north the cold was likely to
grow less. Peter Plancius believed this, explaining that
“ near the pole the sun shines for five months con-
tinually ; and although his rays are weak, yet on account
of the long time they continue, they have sufficient
strength to warm the ground, to render it temperate, to
accommodate it for the habitation of men, and to produce
grass for the nourishment of animals.” He justified
this reasoning in theological fashion by a neat analogy.
If a small fire is kept lighted in a room all the time, the
warmth of the room will be more easily maintained than
by means of a large fire that is constantly allowed to go
out.
The Rev. Samuel Purchas held much the same opinion,
strengthening it with still other arguments. “ But if
either by the North-east or North-west or North a passage
be open, the sight of the globe (the image of the site of
the world) easily sheweth with how much ease, in how
little time and expense the same might be effected, the
large lines or Merideans under the line, conteyning six
hundred miles, contracting themselves proportionably
as they grow nearer the Pole, where that vast line at
Circumference itselfe becomes (as the whole Earth to
Heaven, and all earthly things to heavenly) no line any
more, but a Point, but Nothing, but Vanitie.”
It was then in the direction of “ this Point, this Nothing,
this Vanitie ” that Hudson steered, in the sure conviction
that he and his second boy and his ten mariners would
THE FIRST SAILING
27
soon be sailing through “ the sea of Chin,” even until
they came to Zipangu, where the palace roof was covered
with a plating of gold “ in the same manner as we cover
houses, or more properly churches, with led.”
The names of his crew were as follows : John Colman
(mate), William Collins, James Young, John Cooke,
James Beubery, James Skrutton, John Pleyce, Thomas
Baxter, Richard Day, James Knight, and John Hudson.
In twenty-six days they were off the Shetland Islands.
Here they took soundings and found that the bottom of
the sea was “ blacke, ozie, sandie,” and covered with
“ yellow shells.” The reports given of these elementary
soundings are almost always provocative, the similes
used by the seamen of the day, in their efforts to describe
the accidental morsels of ocean floor brought up for
examination, often conveying to the reader a far more
realistic notion of the actual nature of the substance
scrutinized than could have been effected by more
scientific words, as, for example, when pebbles are
described as being “ like beans,” or sand “ like Doves’
dung.”
On May 30th they were by observation in latitude
61° ii', and it was there that Hudson records notic-
ing the dip of the needle. “ This day I found the
needle to incline 79 degrees under the horizon,” a
phenomenon that had been already remarked upon
by Christopher Columbus and Sebastian Cabot. Pass-
ing to the north of the Faroe Islands and Iceland,
they sighted Greenland on June 13th. Hudson’s
knowledge of this vast island continent, which he
knew by the name of Engronland, was extremely con-
fused. He seems to have imagined, as Davis did
before him, that the southern portion of it was an island
separated from its mainland by a strait. This miscon-
ception owed its origin to Frobisher’s reliance on the
Zeni chart, that notorious source of geographical mis-
28
HENRY HUDSON
information. This ambiguous paper Hudson probably
had with him, together with a copy of the more con-
scientious “ card ” of William Barents.
We may assume that his first landfall was near King
Oscar’s Fiord. From that day till June 22nd he sailed
slowly northward along the east coast of Greenland,
naming a certain headland “ Young’s Cape (a name still
to be found on charts) and a hill near it “ Mount of God’s
Mercie.”
Few sections of the earth’s surface can offer a more
disconsolate appearance than this ice-bound strand. No
trace of early Scandinavian colonization has ever been
found upon it, and to this day, except for a few explorers
and an occasional troop of Eskimos, it has remained
untenanted, a country of ice and snow and of the musk-
ox !
Indeed, as the longest day of that summer drew near,
of that summer when, amid the sweet June pastures of
Warwickshire, Shakespeare’s daughter, Susanna, was
married, we notice that even John Pleyce was affected by
the grim prospect about him. The mariner journalist
evokes for us something of the melancholy of the scene.
“ We saw some land on head of us, and some ice ; and it
being a thicke fogge we steered away northerly. . . .
Our sayle and shrouds did freeze ... all the afternoone
and all the evening it rained. . . . This was a very high
land, most part covered with snow. The neather part
was uncovered. At the top it looked reddish, and
underneath a blackish clay, with much ice lying
about it.”
From June 15th to June 17th they lay to, because of
fog and an unfavourable wind. It was here that they
noticed the current “ setting to the south west,” which
sweeps down the east coast of Greenland, round Cape
Farewell, and up through Davis Strait, where it is turned
by the water moving down from Baffin Bay. It is the
THE FIRST SAILING
29
current that brings to the Eskimos from the Siberian
tundras their priceless driftwood.
On the 20th they steered north-east, till noon, and
afterwards north-north-east, thinking they might find
a navigable sea, but presently there was more land on
the port-side. They had again fallen in with Greenland.
Hudson continued to be uncertain as to the real nature
of the coast he was tracing, and regarded this fresh land-
fall as a newly discovered region, which he named the
land of “ Hold-with-Hope.” In support of his theory
that the further north they went the milder they would
find the climate, this land is announced to be “very
temperate to our feeling. ... It is a mayne high-land,
nothing at all covered with snow ; and the north part
of that mayne highland was very high mountaynes, but
we could see no snow on them.” It is clear, however,
that Hudson felt disquieted by having come upon more
land, when he had hoped and expected to find an open
sea. He anticipates criticism for having deviated from
his avowed purpose of sailing across the Pole “ in hailing
so Westerly a course.” He did so, he explains, because
he wished to investigate the “ Groneland ” of the Zeni
chart. “ It might as well have been open sea as land,
and by that meanes our passage should have beene the
larger to the Pole. . . . And considering wee found
land contrarie to what our cards make mention of, we
accounted our labour so much the more worth. And,
for ought that wee could see, it is like to bee a good land,
and worth the seeing.” It is interesting to note that on
the Zeni chart Greenland is made to join up with Norway.
In the neighbourhood of Hold-with-Hope they saw many
birds, some “ with blacke backes and white bellies in
form much like a duck ” and others “ with blacke backs
and white bellies and long speare tayles.” It is just
possible that the former were auks, even great auks.
Long before this time, the sun was always above the
30 HENRY HUDSON
horizon. Once they saw three grampuses playing
about their ship, merciless hunting-dogs of the ocean,
whose appetite it is to eat out the tongues of whales,
till that mammal is fain to return once more to land, to
the ancient habitat of its ancestors, and in its monstrous
extremity does often get itself stranded.
From June 2ist to June a7th Hudson endeavoured
as well as he might to sail northward, but was apparently
headed oif by the ice barrier that lies between Greenland
and Spitsbergen.
NORTH POLAR REGIONS.
This map illustrates Hudson’s first and second voyages to the north.
The red lettering denotes names used by Hudson.
CHAPTER VI
SPITSBERGEN
ARLY in the morning of June 27th
they sighted Spitsbergen. Hudson
always refers to this land as Newland,
and it was so marked on the Hondius
map ; but John Cornelius Ryp, who it
will be remembered was with Barents
when it was discovered, definitely states,
“We gave to that land the name of
Spitsbergen for the great and high points that were on it.”
Hudson’s Dutch chart had caused him to be on the look-
out for land ; but the atmosphere was foggy, and it was
hard to tell what part of Spitsbergen they were off ; per-
haps they were a little to the south of Prince Charles
Foreland.
The next day they sailed northward, encoimtering
much dangerous ice, until by midnight they were near
Vogel Hook. A storm that they encountered on June 20th
“ proved the hardest storme that we had in this voyage.”
From July ist to July 6th “ every kind of vagueness is
accumulated.” Certain authorities believe they spent
the time in sailing backwards and forwards between
Prince Charles Foreland and the mainland of Spitsbergen,
others that they became “ embayed ” somewhere near
Ice Sound (Grooten Inwyck). All was snow, mist, fog,
and ice, and probably Hudson was as puzzled as his com-
mentators have been since to know where he was. When
he at length emerged from this “ sacke ” he apparently
had a mind to make use of a north-east wind that was
32
HENRY HUDSON
blowing, to sail round the most southern point of Spits-
bergen. July 8th, however, proved calm, and they spent
the day in stopping a leak and in mending their rigging.
As they worked they saw many seals and “ two fishes
which we judged to bee sea-horses or morses.”
The uncertainty revealed in those words shows us that
none of Hudson’s crew had as yet been employed by the
Muscovy Company in the massacre of these animals on
Bear Island, Indeed, in spite of the fact that Octher, a
wealthy and adventurous Norwegian, had as early as the
ninth century presented King Alfred the Great with the
tusks of this animal, they had remained, it seems, through-
out the Middle Ages hardly known by people inhabit-
ing countries south of the Baltic. “ This animal whose
head I have drawn here was taken intheNetherlandish Sea,
and was I2 Brabant ells long and had four feet,” wrote
Albert Dtirer under his fine drawing of a walrus head.
The wind now altered again, and Hudson changed his
coxxrse ; and during July 9th and loth he sailed north
once more along the western coast of Prince Charles
Foreland. On the afternoon of the loth they found it
necessary to sail south-south-west to escape from ice and
“to get more sea-roome.” On the nth, “having a
fresh gale of wind at south-south-east,” they sailed
towards the northern end of Spitsbergen. On July 1 2 th,
at midnight — though of course it must be remembered
that the visibility was that of day — ^William Collins,
from the crow’s-nest saw Vogel Hook “ bearing south-
south-west twelve leagues from us.” On July 13th, at
noon, “ by observation we were 80 degrees 23 minutes.”
“ Seeing that we know their courses from this pomt till
next day, when they were off the mouth of Whales
(King’s) Bay, and that we can thus reckon back from a
known position, it is demonstrably probable that for
80° 23' we should read 79° 23',” so reasons Sir Martin
Conway.
SPITSBERGEN
33
On July 14th they entered Whales Bay. Here, on
all sides of them, were seen those prodigious warm-
blooded animals, with the outward form of fishes, the
successors of ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, which had for
thousands of years passed placid, unrecorded lives,
taking their pleasure unmolested within the circum-
ference of these undisturbed waters. And now these
terrestrial reptiles, so monstrously transformed, observed
with eyes “ small as the eye of an ox ” the first intrusion
of an enemy, in physical construction insignificant, but
more terrible in calculating ferocity than any “ killer.”
The tameness of these fish was incredible ; one of them
lounged under the keel of the ship and made her “ held ”
to one side, “ yet by God’s mercie we had no harm.”
On the northern side of Whales Bay stands the moun-
tain headland called Cape Mitre, which Hudson named
Collins Cape, “ by the name of our boat-swaine, who first
saw it ” ; on its southern side were noticed “ three or
four small islands or rocks,” and these may still be seen
near Coal Harbour. “ At the mouth of the bay we had
sounding thirtie fathoms, and after, six and twentie
fathoms ; but being further in, we had no ground at an
hxindred fathoms, and therefore judged it rather a sound
than a bay.” Sir Martin Conway has given his testi-
mony “ that King’s Bay agrees with the bay described in
all particulars. The sounding at its mouth is 27 fathoms,
whilst within there are 250 fathoms.” So emphatic a
word of confirmation from the pen of an explorer as dis-
tinguished as Sir Martin, comes as a relief to the vexed
historian who is employed in trying to reconcile con-
flicting opinions as to the exact course taken by a vessel
through mist and fog more than three hundred years
ago !
While in this bay, Hudson allowed John Colman, his
mate, and William Collins, his boatswain, and two
others of the crew, to go on shore, but no sooner had they
c
34
HENRY HUDSON
left than a gale of wind from the north-east sprang up,
bringing with it a fog, so that Hudson had to sail the
“ Hopewell ” to and fro, “ waiting for their coming,”
The men were not away much more than half an hour,
yet in that time were able to find a pair of walrus teeth,
a dozen or more deer horns, some whalebone, and a
stone of the country. They also drank water out of a
stream, which they declared to be of an excellent quality.
They felt the want of a better ship’s boat for the explora-
tion of the intricate inlets of the bay. They came upon
a flock of wild geese and the “ footings ” of several
animals ; these probably were of “ savage beares and
hungry foxes which are not only the civilest, but also the
onely inhabitants of that comfortlesse country.”
That afternoon they left the bay and continued to
sail north. By the morning of the 15 th they had brought
Collins Cape “ to beare off us south east.” They now
followed that part of the coast known to sailors as “ The
Seven Icebergs,” where may be seen “ the precipitous
sea-faces of the glaciers with their beautiful greenish
blue colour.” It was into a glacial crevice in this very
vicinity that Fotherby, not many years afterwards, records
having thrown pieces of ice “ which in their falling made
a noise on each side, much like a piece of glass throwen
down the well of Dover Castle.” Pleyce describes the
shore here as being “ a very high mountaynous land,
like ragged rocks with snow betweene them.”
On July 1 6th they sailed as far as Amsterdam
Island, naming its northernmost cape “ Hakluyt’s
Headland,” after the great and good Archdeacon
of Westminster, who had still at that date nine
more years to spend at the laborious and self-imposed
task by which he conferred so immeasurable a benefit
upon England. This excellent clergyman, whose life
passion led him to grow ” familiarly acquainted with the
chief Captaines at sea, the greatest merchants, and the
SPITSBERGEN
35
best Marriners of our nation,” had, at one time, been the
Rector of Wetheringsett, in Suffolk, that blithe nursery
of remarkable priests. Hakluyt ! Hacklewit ! As long
as free, crested, cormorant-traversed waves break upon
the homely beaches of England, so long will this name
be cherished, alike by the innocent and the learned !
Well may we whose imaginations have been stirred by the
record of England’s seafaring traditions subscribe to
Drayton’s poetic apostrophe !
Thy Voyages attend
Industrious Hackluit ;
Whose reading shall inflame
Men to seek fame,
And much commend
To after times thy wit.
William Barents had rounded this highest point of
the western coast, and had explored some distance
stretching eastward. The accotmt of Hudson’s move-
ments, as given by Pleyce, is extremely confusing. “We
saw more land joyning to the same, trending north in
our sight, by meanes of the cleamesse of the weather,
stretching farre in 82 degrees and by the bowing and
shewing of the skie much further.” Had they reached
a position from where, away on the horizon, they
could see the Seven Islands, or were they deceived,
perhaps, by the ice-blink taking the form of land “ by
the bowing and shewing of the skie,” or did they really,
as Sir Martin Conway suggests, “ add on longitude to
latitude ” ? We cannot tell. Now was the moment,
if ever, for Hudson to test his plan of sailing straight
across the Pole to China. He himself tells us that he
hoped to have “ a free sea.” Alas, he saw only “ an
abundance of ice compassing us about by the north and
joyning to the land.” There was nothing for it but to
sail south agam, with the possible idea of rounding the
southern end of Spitsbergen and trying for the northern
HENRY HUDSON
36
passage by way of its eastern coast. They purposed to
keep in sight of land, and, if contrary winds were en-
countered, to seek harbour “ and to trie what we could
finde to the charge of our voyage,” words which probably
refer either to hunting walruses and seals or to searching
for minerals. Some authorities have thought it pos-
sible that Hudson had sailed under John Davis, and if
this was really the case, he may very well have learnt
from that captain to defray the cost of an exploring
voyage in this indirect manner, for Davis in his second
expedition to the north had returned with a profitable
cargo of salted cod.
For the next four days they proceeded southward, and
by July 20th they had reached Bell Sound. By their
observation they were 77® 26', the actual mouth of Bell
Sound being 77° and 40'. They noticed the mountains
divided by valleys on the northern side of the bay and
mistook them for islands. They observed also Mount
Starashchin to the south of the entrance to Ice Sound,
some twenty miles to the north. Its projections looked
to them like “ heapes of come.”
One of the especial delights of reading these old
mariner journals is in the selection of the incidents their
writers saw fit to record — ^matters of the gravest geo-
graphical importance being often juxtaposed with what
happened to be of chiefest interest imder the hatches
during any particular day. Here, for example, John
Pleyce suddenly interpolates that one of the company
“ killed a red-billed bird.”
They were in sight of land on July 23rd and on July
25th, and then they sailed away westward, apparently
with the idea of returning to England by the north of
Greenland through “ Davis his streights,” an intention
proving that Hudson was still far from comprehending
the true conformation of that land. During those last
days of July they encountered some fierce storms, and at
SPITSBERGEN
37
one time were in danger of being driven upon a portion
of that great ice barrier, “ Glacies ab Hudsono detecta
anu 1607,” as it is marked on the Hondius map, which
he had come up against earlier in his voyage. There was
an extremely thick fog at the time, and the sea was very
“ loftie.” Suddenly they heard “ a great rutte,” and
realized that they were being driven in its direction.
Immediately they lowered their boat and tried to warp
the ship away from the evil growling sound caused by
the swell as it beat up against the hollow margins of the
ice, that same curious sea-muttering welcome enough
on more than one occasion to Arctic explorers dragging
their sledded canoes behind them towards the edge of
the limitless pack-ice. The sailors’ efforts would have
availed them little, “ had it not pleased God to give us a
small gale at north-west and by West, a wind we had
not found common in our voyage. God give us thank-
full hearts for so great deliverance.”
By July 29th they were once more back near the
southern end of Spitsbergen. “Wee saw an island bearing
off us north-west from us 5 leagues.” This island was
probably the Lammas Island marked on the Hondius map.
Sir Martin Conway takes it to have been the mountain of
Rotchesfell off the mouth of Horn Sound, and not the
Dun Islands. The island was named on Lammas eve,
on the eve, that is, of the old feast day of “ Loaf-mass,”
which in mediaeval England took its place as one of the
four quarter-days, the other three being Martinmas,
Candlemas, and Whitsun.
They now passed down the coast of Spitsbergen,
which for ten miles south of Horn Sound is distinguished
by low hills and large flats. It was described by the
explorers as being “ the likeliest land that wee had seene
on all parts of Newland, being playne riggie land of a
meane height and not ragged, as all the rest was that
wee had seene this voyage, nor covered with snow.” It
HENRY HUDSON
38
was the last glimpse Hudson was ever to have of
Spitsbergen.
They then sailed for England. On the morning of
August 1st, at four o’clock, they sighted Bear Island,
of Barents’ discovery. Perhaps it was the glimpse they
got of Mount Misery rising out of the summer sea to so
brave a height that caused them to write of it as being
“ a very ragged land on the water side, rising like hay-
cockes.” The English in those days used to call the
island “ Cherry Island.” There is something irritating
about Stephen Bennet’s rediscovering it seven years
after William Barents, and trying to substitute for the
simple nomenclature of the Dutchmen the surname of that
“ thirty pound knight,” one of whose chief distinctions
was to have eaten a sturgeon out of the River Ob ! At
this period the most savage walrus massacres yearly took
place there, the heavens above the island echoing with
strange brute cries.
After leaving Bear Island, Hudson seems to have
taken a somewhat westerly course, and because of thus
“ ranging homewards ” accidentally discovered Jan
Mayen Island, to which he gave the name of Hudson’s
Tutches. This island was rediscovered continually,
but eventually preserved the name of Jan Jacobsz May,
a Dutch captain. On August 15th they put into the
Faroe Islands, and a month later arrived at Tilbury in
the Thames.
This map illustrates Hudson’s first voyage to Spitsbergen. The red
lettering denotes names used by Hudson.
CHAPTER VII
AN INDUSTRY INAUGURATED
0 ROM the point of view of the Mus-
covy Company, Hudson’s first voyage
cannot have seemed very successful.
He had not satisfied expectations. He
had not sailed across the Pole, he had
not fulfilled his promise of reaching
those far-off ports where little yellow
men “ with their hair tied in a single
knot on their heads ” undid corded bales by the water
fronts of a perfumed sea. Instead, here he was back in
London, before ever the mulberry leaves in the Temple
courts had begun to take on their autumn tints.
Hudson, however, had convinced himself that what-
ever might be the configuration of the Greenland shore
beyond his land of Hold-with-Hope, there was no prac-
ticable route that way. He had, in fact, eliminated from
further speculation a very considerable area of that tan-
talizing northern circumference. Also, from the reports
that he gave of the number of whales he had seen off
Spitsbergen, he encouraged the merchants to extend their
activities northward beyond Bear Island.
It must be remembered that at this date the whaling
industry was still in its infancy. English mariners did
not know how to set about killing these superb creatures,
and had to hire Basques to instruct them in the use of
the harpoon, fishermen who had for generations been
scanning the horizons of the Bay of Biscay for the silvery
spoutings of these far-voyaging mammals, who with
39
40
HENRY HUDSON
enormous mouths agape sifted the ocean for their watery
victuals.
Hudson’s few words were enough. A war of destruc-
tion was opened against these creatures on a scale that
would have seemed incredible to mediaeval minds. In
Hudson’s own day the solitary inlets of Spitsbergen
became overcrowded with ships jealously emulating each
other in the activities of a trade that offered such high
profits. So prosperous, indeed, did this business be-
come that a large town, “ Smeerenburg,” Blubber-town,
grew up near Hakluyt’s Headland, where the Dutch
established a site for boiling down whale oil in copper
cauldrons.
One chronicler writes : “ Bakers went there also to
bake bread. In the morning when the hot rolls and
white bread were drawn from the oven, a horn was blown,
so that some enjoyment was to be had at Smeerenburg.”
The number of whales frequentmg those waters was
past all credence. On every side their gibbous backs
protruded above the surface of the ice-blue sea. One
captain records that “ the whales lay so thicke about the
ship that some ran against our cables. . . . One lay
under our beake head and slept there a long while. At
which time our carpenter had hung a stage close by the
water, whereon his tooles lay. And wee durst not
molest the said whale for feare she should have over-
throwne the stage and drowned all the tools. In the
end she went away, and carried the ship’s head rormd,
her taile being foul of the cable.”
And so the terrible decimation began, a decimation
that has continued up to the present day. The blubber
was at first used for making soap, an especially good
soap, with the help of which the laces and ruffs, the
stomachers and elaborate headgears of the seventeenth
century were washed white as hoar-frost. The history
of the whaling industry would form a curious chapter.
AN INDUSTRY INAUGURATED
+1
Whenever the flax harvests of Europe failed, the price
of whale oil rose to astonishing figures, men having made
the fortunate discovery that this vegetable product could
be replaced by the layers of fat enfolding the vast skele-
tons of these living animals, whose vertebrae were large
as mill stones. Their oil, as an important source of
glycerine, was used during the late war in the manu-
facture of explosives, and so these harmless monsters had
perforce to contribute their life’s blood to the appalling
contrivances invented by their enemies to their own
damnation.
Driven from their ancient haunts they learned to fre-
quent only the remotest sections of the watery surface of
our planet, but even in these hidden retreats they have been
pursued. Scott and Shackleton reported whales off the
high ice barrier that runs from South Victoria Land to
King Edward VII Land. Immediately ships with deadly
modern appliances set sail for this sanctuary, and more
meat and bones were speedily made to serve as manure
for the rice fields in Japan, “ only the blood escapes, and
flows down the flencing-stage in sheets of steaming red,
to stain the tide.” It can hardly be doubted that, in
spite of Government regulations, this extraordinary
creature will soon become extinct. Today over ten
thousand whales are killed each year by the Norwegians
alone.
The spectacle of nature at work “ in her fury ” is
indeed something to contemplate ! These animals,
who long years ago assumed a fish-like form, so that they
might enjoy an aquatic existence with undisturbed com-
posure — ^how could they have believed it, if some pro-
phetic spirit of destiny had whispered into their tiny
ears “ without conches,” to inform them that the small
ship moving through the fog was the harbinger of such
appalling frightfulness ?
Age after age had passed by, and year after year they
42
HENRY HUDSON
had sailed to the north and sailed to the south. With
passionate attention, during each circumspect progress,
the females nourished their young with white milk
drawn from teats placed far back in their slippery
abdomens. With wide-open mouths they dived through
the bulging ocean, drinking “ the brit,” till their crusta-
cean nutriment lay stranded upon the wide levels of their
enormous tongues. Their huge bulk and the solitary
spaces of their selected element seemed to insure for
tlxem a large measure of security. In dumb obedience
to the law of their being, they discharged the simple
service of their lives. With the waves of the sea
lapping against their gleaming flanks, what had they to
fear ? Above their rounded backs, above the watery
circumambient desert in which they lived, cold un-
affrighted stars each night rose to their changeless
stations.
But the explorer’s word to the merchants was sufii-
cient. The records preserved of the early days of the
industry are full of a curious interest. “ The whale,”
writes one captain, “ is a Fish or Sea-beast of a huge
bignesse . . . her tayle of tough solid substance which
we use for blocks to chop her blubber on.” Her move-
ments, we are told, are very formal ; but “ when she is
lanced the blood entering her head, she blows the water
and blood as high as the tops of the masts out of the
nostrils she has in her head . . . then she friskes and
strikes with her tayle. . . . We prick her to death.”
John Pleyce, who probably supplemented his journal
from Hudson’s log-book, tries to suggest that all the land
north of Vogel Hook was discovered by the “ Hopewell ”
for the first time. Gerrit de Veer’s joximal and the map
derived from Barents’ card obviously invalidate this claim.
During the disputes over the rights to the Spitsbergen
fisheries, which took place in the decade immediately
succeeding Hudson’s voyage, the English tried, perhaps
AN INDUSTRY INAUGURATED 43
at the suggestion of Samuel Daniel, the poet, to make
themselves and others believe that Spitsbergen was in
reality nothing else than the long lost Willoughby’s
Land, which, had it been true, would have strengthened
their right to these waters of discord on the score of
prior discovery. As it was, King James, in 1613, issued
“ a Patent under the broad seal of England to forbid all
strangers and others, but the Muscovia Companie to use
the coast,” a document which was duly presented to the
Dutch. However, it merely provoked these interlopers
to give out “ many uncivil speeches against the Kings
Majestie, not esteeming his Commission ; alleging that
there was good law in Flanders for what they did,” and
after they had completed a successful season to sail home
“ like grim lions.” And the Dutch were not the only
poachers. Like hungry birds of prey, ships arrived from
every direction, from Hull, from France ; and from Spain
even, brought thither by an English renegade sailor
called Nicholas Woodcocke ; and there were other
“ lewd and bad people ” besides.
From those years, until 1920, when a treaty awarded
its sovereignty to Norway, Spitsbergen was a No-Man’s-
Land. After the first “ whale rush ” had denuded its
waters of these fish, it was not much frequented. Russian
trappers, however, used regularly to visit the country,
hunting game on the moxintains where even in summer
there was no grass “ save only such as grows upon the
moores and heathie grounds in the North parts of
England, which we call Heath, or Ling.”
At the beginning of the present century, an effort was
made to work coad mines in the cormtry, and today no
less than two hundred and fifty thousand tons of coal are
shipped every year to Norway from Svalbard, or “ cold
coast,” as the Norwegians have renamed Spitsbergen.
Hudson’s Tutches, or Jan Mayen Island, also played
a considerable part in the days of this Arctic scramble.
44
HENRY HUDSON
It is a mountainous island, some sixty miles long by four
broad, and was called by the Hull fishermen “ Trinity
Island,” and by the French the “ He de Richelieu.”
The Dutch frequented it for the purpose of killing walrus,
and in 1635 seven Dutch seamen wintered there. How-
ever, when the Zeeland fleet arrived for the fishing
season, in June of the following year, they found “ the
burghers of Jan Mayen Island ” all dead. An eighth
presence had been with them, none other than “ Herod’s
daughter,” as the superstitious Russian trappers of Spits-
bergen used to call the scurvy or terrible mal de la terre.
After this untoward experiment, the cliffs of rusty red,
with dirty snow upon them, were left to the fulmars and
kittiwakes. Today the high slope of Mount Beeren-
berg, “ with its enormous base,” remains as it was when
Hudson discovered it, aloof and unvisited.
CHAPTER VIII
THE SECOND SAILING
HE failure of Hudson’s first voyage
did not discourage the Muscovy Com-
pany from employing him the following
year on a second attempt to find the
desired North-East Passage.
His plan was now either to discover
an open way between Spitsbergen and
Novaya Zemlya, or, failing this, to look
for a strait that would give him entrance to the Kara
Sea, somewhere through the main body of Novaya
Zemlya.
He again sailed in the “ Hopewell,” but on this
occasion she was fitted with a better ship’s boat. Her
crew was made up of the following men : Henry Hudson,
captain ; Robert Juet, mate ; John Cooke, boatswain ;
Arnold Lodlo ; Philip Staffe, carpenter ; John Barnes ;
John Braunch, cook; John Adrey, James Skrutton,
Michael Perse, Thomas Hilles, Richard Tomson, Robert
Raynar, John Hudson, and Humfrey Gilby. It will be
noticed that Hudson’s crew had been increased by four
men, and, if we except his son John, included only two
mariners who had sailed with him on his first voyage,
James Skrutton (Strutton) and John Cooke.
The new mate, Robert Juet, who had replaced Colman,
has always been regarded by historians, and with good
cause, as having had a sinister influence upon Hudson’s
fortunes. He was an elderly man, cynical, sceptical,
and dangerous, who came from Limehouse. As will
45
HENRY HUDSON
46
appear later, Michael Perse and Arnold Lodlo were
neither of them sailors to be relied upon ; but no such
accusation could be brought against the new carpenter,
Philip StafFe, who was an honest man from East Anglia.
The account we have of this voyage is of especial
value, since it is written by Hudson himself.
The “ Hopewell ” set sail from St. Katherine’s dock
on Friday, April 22nd, some weeks before Tom Coryat
crossed the Channel to tour the Continent “ on his horse
with ten toes.” In a month’s time they were approach-
ing the Lofoten Islands, on the west coast of Norway.
There they encountered fog. It also grew cold, “ search-
ing cold,” to use Hudson’s own expression ; and some
of the crew became sick, including Philip Staffs, the
carpenter. By making use of every favourable wind,
they slowly advanced northward, till they sighted North
Cape. It was clear weather, and they passed several
Norwegian fishing-boats. Hudson now ordered Philip
Staffs, who had recovered from his illness, to construct
a mast for the new ship’s boat, while the rest of the crew
made a sail for it.
On the morning of June 7th they took soundings, and
had groxmd at 150 fathoms. At night they had no
ground at 1 80 fathoms, “ and this,” remarks Hudson,
“ increased hope.” Hope of what ? Hope of a deep,
wide, warm channel, an imperial water-way to Cathay !
The following morning they came into “ a blacke blue
sea.” Hudson himself always held the theory that this
blue sea indicated the proximity of ice ; and sure enough,
on the morrow they saw some, “ being the first we saw
in the voyage. ’ ’ Determined to get through it if he could,
Hudson still held to his northerly course, but by four in
the afternoon they were in danger of being “ embayed ”
and had to return as best they might “ with a few rubbes
of our ship against the ice.” By eight o’clock they were
once more free. They now encountered rough weather,
THE SECOND SAILING
47
and it was not till June 15th that the sea was
“ asswaged.”
On the morning of this day, one of the seamen who
happened to be on deck saw a mermaid. He immedi-
ately shouted to the rest of the men who were below, and
another seaman came up and also saw her. The names
of these two sailors were Robert Raynar and Thomas
Hilles. “ She came close to the ship, looking earnestly
on the men.” But as the two looked down over the side
of the vessel with wonder at her, she was turned over by
a wave and disappeared from sight.
It is by no means the only record that we have of such
appearances. During the sixth century a mermaid was
caught at Bangor, on the shore of Belfast Lough, and was
baptized and even admitted into some old calendars as a
saint, “ imder the name of Murgen.” In the early part
of the fifteenth century “ a wyld woman ” was washed
through a breach of a dyke in the Netherlands, and was
found by some milkmaids slapping her tail in the mud-
stained grass, unable to get back to the water. They
took her to Haarlem, where she is reported to have lived
for several years, and learned to spin with her webbed
fingers, and was wont “ to adore the cross.” This was
put on record by John Gerbrandus, a Carmelite monk,
in 1J04. Also, at the same date, a merman was seen
by some fishermen off the coast of Denmark. “ He rose
close to their boat, blew up his cheeks, made a kind of
lowing noise and dived.” Another “ sea-wyf,” as the
Dutch characteristically called them, was caught near
Borneo, and lived for nearly a week in a large vat. “From
time to time she uttered little cries like those of a mouse.
She would not eat, though she was offered small fish,
shells, crabs, lobsters, etc. After her death some excre-
ment was discovered in the vat like the secretion of a cat”
Henry Hudson was obviously extremelyiinterested in
what the two men had seen, and most carefully records
HENRY HUDSON
48
in his log-book the exact appearance of this girl-fish,
whose home was so far removed from glistening beaches
and banks of bright seaweed. The two men saw her
for only a few minutes, floating on the suirface of a hun-
dred and eighty fathoms of cold sea water, but they had
time to form a clear idea of her figure. “ From the navill
upward, her backe and breasts were like a woman’s . . .
her body as big as one of us ; her skin very white ; and
long haire hanging downe behinde, of colour blacke :
in her going downe thy saw her tayle, which was like the
tayle of a porposse, and speckled like a macrell.”
Till June i8th they continued sailing to the north as
best they could. On that day, however, they fell in with
the ice-pack, and, after following its margin for some
distance, were afterwards compelled to sail in a south-
eastward direction towards Novaya Zemlya, through a
sea alive with innumerable gulls. Once they heard an
unfamiliar and startling noise, which they took to be the
roaring of polar bears.
In all stories of polar expeditions these bears play an
important part. With their long necks and small heads,
with hair growing at the bottom of their feet to prevent
them from slipping on the ice, with a coat white as milk
except in the case of very old animals, when it takes on a
yellow hue, these formidable creatures manage to sustain
life in the peculiar territory they inhabit, whose only
escarpments are icebergs, and whose only earth is snow.
In those seas porpoises often carry upon their backs
their claw-marks ; sometimes, however, these bears kill a
walrus, sometimes a seal, sometimes a white fox ; in an
hour of extremity they will even eat lichen and seaweed,
and then get them away to some sheltered crevice, to
sleep the profound sleep of an animal who fears no enemy.
Little do they wot of forests with sheltering tree trunks
and delicate articulate leaves. A long crepuscular
winter, amid the blanched shadows of moonlit ice, to be
THE SECOND SAILING
49
replaced by the glittering light of a summer sun that
never sinks, such is the cosmos they know.
Hudson was now approaching the coast of Novaya
Zemlya. Just as the route between Greenland and Spits-
bergen had been blocked by ice the year before, so now
was the open sea between Spitsbergen and Novaya
Zemlya. He was faced by two alternatives : either to
sail to the south and try to pass through one or other of
the two straits to the north and south of Vaigach Island,
or to discover a new channel leading through the body
of Novaya Zemlya into the Kara Sea.
The failure of Pet and Jackman, and also of the Dutch,
to gain any practical advantage by entering the Kara Sea
through the Vaigach passages, led him to adopt the second
plan, which was rendered all the more feasible from the
fact that in the chart drawn by Barents the presence of
just such an inlet was suggested. By entering the Kara
Sea further to the north, might it not happen, in accord-
ance with his theory of a warm polar ocean, that he would
evade the obstructions that had thwarted his prede-
cessors ? As a matter of fact, the opening for which he
was looking does actually exist in the form of the
narrow strait, Matochkin Shar, but much further
north from South Goose Cape, which Hudson sighted
on June 26th.
CHAPTER IX
NOVAYA ZEMLYA
HE next day, Hudson sent Juet and
John Cooke and four other men on
shore to fill casks with fresh water.
They found that the land was by no
means as barren as they had expected.
The sun was hot, and on every side the
snow was rapidly melting. Down the
slopes of each hill ran streams filled with
that particular grey cloudy water which, whether seen on
Mount Kenya, or on the high lawns of the Engadine, or
in the Rocky Mountains, always owes its origin to dis-
solving snow. Along the shore, and at the foot of each
glen, fresh grass was everywhere coming up, forcing its
way through the old last year’s grass, pressed down under
its cold covering. In the soft mud where the land was
boggy, they were able to examine the spoors of various
animals. They noticed the flat “ footings ” of several
bears, the sharp indents of deer’s feet, and the small dog-
like pad-marks of foxes. They also picked up and
carried back to Hudson some deer’s dung, together with
some horns and whalebone. As they were rowing to
the ship, several walruses appeared, swimming about
near the “ Hopewell.”
Hudson now sent another batch of men on shore tmder
Arnold Lodlo. He directed them to make their way to
a certain part of the coast which looked from the ship
to be a likely place for the walruses to land upon. They
did not find any walruses there, but only a wooden cross,
£0
NOVAYA ZEMLYA.
This map illustrates Hudson’s second voyage to Novaya Zemlya. The
red lettering denotes names used by Barents and Hudson.
NOVAYA ZEMLYA
51
similar to those that had been seen by Barents. Dr.
Asher considered that these crosses had been set up by
no Christian fingers. “ It is a well-known fact,” he
wrote, “ that the cross is not only an object of veneration
among Christians, but it is also worshipped by some
heathen, quite independently of all Christian influence.”
If the cross was put into place by the Samoyeds who
live in the desolate tundras between the White Sea and the
River Ob, he is probably perfectly right ; for these semi-
demi Mongols of Siberia, in those days, knew little enough
of Christian dogma and doctrine, as is proven by the
following record of their religious observances. “ The
Priest beats a drum with a stick covered with the skin
of a harte. . . . Then he singeth as wee use heare in
England to hallow, whope, or showte at houndes, and the
rest of the company answere him with this, ‘ Owtes, igha,
igha, ihja.’ ” Also, the ethics of these people were little
concerned with that personal chastity held in such high
esteem by St. Paul, “ their wives they buy for Deere, and
will have, if they have abilitie foure or five Wives, with
whom he lyeth by turn every night several.” Their
neighbours, the Russians, regarded them with the
greatest contempt, as being little better than outcast
scavengers ! When a Russian fisherman killed a seal,
he would cast away the parts of the flesh he did not want
“ to the Fowles of the Sea ; except some poor Samoied
came that way, who taketh it, though it have lyen putri-
fying two or three dayes and dryeth it, and maketh good
cheere with it with his Familie.”
Lodlo and his party brought back to the ship two
pieces of this cross, which, as a matter of fact, may very
well have been raised by Russian hunters who used to
come there “ to himt Ducks, Geese, and Swannes, which
most yeeres they get in abundance, and make good profit
of their Feathers and Downe.” I like to think it was
so. I like to think that these pieces of wood, abandoned
HENRY HUDSON
52
in that northern desolation, had been adjusted into this
particular shape by no accident, but rather by men dimly
cognizant that by their action they were leaving a symbol,
a token, of that incident in human history that has had so
mysterious an influence on the wavering and uncertain
souls of mortals. I like to think that this cruciform
timber had been laid together by a people who carried in
their minds a living memory of that procession which
fifteen centuries before had wound its way, past olive
trees drooping and sorrowful, to a certain green hill, far
enough removed from the hoarse aquatic echo of a
seal’s bark.
Besides pieces from this “ true cross,” the sailors
brought back to the ship moss, and flowers, and other
green things. The flowers were probably a kind of
buttercup which grows in great profusion on Goose
Land in the summer. The next day still another party
went on shore, and carried back to the ship a supply of
fresh eggs and twenty-four birds ; for they had come
to a land where wild-iowl of every kind are plentiful, a
land visited by geese and duck and every species of gull,
a land where even the peregrine falcon has been seen, that
haughty bird which I have often observed from the high
headlands of Dorset dart through the air upon its quarry
with the appalling precision of a deadly javelin cast by
the hand of God.
On June 29th they manoeuvred the “ Hopewell,” by
rowing and sailing, round the promontory towards which
the walruses seemed always to swim. The sea was
smooth, and by two o’clock that afternoon they came to
anchor near an island in the mouth of a river. They
found that a strong ciurrent was setting out to sea, and
twice that night their ship drifted from her moorings.
The next morning they rowed her and towed her into a
better position under the island. From there they could
see great masses of ice being driven past them by the
NOVAYA ZEMLYA
53
current, which was very strong. Indeed, by twelve
o’clock at night (the sun being always above the horizon)
the ice had been carried so far out to sea, that even from
the crow’s-nest it was lost to sight. They were at the
mouth of the bay they called Costin Shar, and the out-
flowing movement of the water caused Hudson to believe
that he was now opposite the strait for which he was
looking, “ that narrow gulf (Matochkin Shar) with only
a streak of sky visible between the frowning masses.”
Not far from the island was a rock, upon which some
twenty walruses were sleeping. It seemed a tempting
opportunity to kill these animals, the value of whose
bodies was being each year more and more appreciated
by the Muscovy Company. The indolent disposition
and clumsy gait of these harmless pinnipeds left them
completely at the mercy of the bold agents of the London
merchants. These gentlemen had not been slow to
realize that walrus tusks could be converted, with small
inconvenience, into good saleable ivory, their hides into
good saleable harness leather, and the fat of their bodies
into good saleable lamp oil. What misgivings could
they reel ? Surely those great tusks were created to be
used for a better purpose than to rake for molluscs !
Here in these cold regions there lived an animal as large
as a bullock, and almost as valuable, which was entirely
incapable of defending itself.
The early walrus hunters wondered at the ease with
which “ these cattle ” allowed themselves to be killed,
and, indeed, never ceased from marvelling at their habits
and at the extraordinary goblin-like lineaments of their
outlandish physiognomies. “ It seemed very strange
to us to see such a multitude of Monsters of the sea lye.
like hogges upon heapes,” writes Jonas Poole, and adds,
“ when all our powder and shot was spent, wee would
blow their eyes out with a little Pease shot, and then come
on the blind side of them, and with our Carpenters axe
HENRY HUDSON
54
cleave their heads. . . . Because their teeth grow
downward, their strokes are of small force or danger.”
The same seaman records that he and his men had filled
as many as a thousand in seven hours, by means of herd-
ing them toward the land, so that presently the bodies
of those killed formed a barricade which prevented the
living from reaching the sea ; and then he says signifi-
cantly, “ we plyed our businesse.” Can we be altogether
blamed for the lack of sympathy we feel on learning that
this particular seaman was in the year i6i i “ miserably
and basely murdered between Radcliffe and London ” ?
Truly, the discovery of the Arctic regions, of which
we English are so justly proud, brought nothing but
dread disaster to these friendly fin-footed carnivores,
who for thousands upon thousands of years had
existed undisturbed, now lying quiescent for hours
on their favourite frozen ledges, now employing their
time in digging for “ gapers ” at the bottom of the sea.
Only one instinct was strong enough to rouse them out
of their accustomed torpor. In the springtime they
would gather on the land, and for a fortnight, neglectful
of food and drink, abandon themselves to that emotion
before which “ all creation trembles and faints.” At
this season, when mate calls to mate, their sea-troll cries
will carry for miles over the echoing ice.
In order to make as sure as possible of the walruses
on the rock, Hudson sent the whole of his crew after
them, leaving only himself and his son to mind the
ship ; but even so they managed to kill but one of the
animals, the others escaping because of the nearness of
the water. Before returning to the ship, the men
explored the island under the lee of which the “ Hope-
well ” was sheltering. It had steep sides and a flat top,
and was three hundred and twenty yards long by one
hundred and sixty yards broad, or, as Hudson wrote,
still making use of the more ancient method of measuring
NOVAYA ZEMLYA
55
distance reminiscent of an age fast vanishing, “ two flight-
shot (long-bow shot) over in length and one in breadth.”
They returned to the ship with the tusked head, and a
large bird they had killed and some more eggs.
The next day Hudson sent out the boat again, under
the command of Juet, to locate, if possible, another place
where the walrus came on shore, and also to row to the
bottom of the bay, in order to investigate the sound out
of which a current came strong enough to sweep past the
ship to the northward even against the tide. Juet, on
his return, declared that the mouth of the sound was
wide and deep, and the water that came from it was salt
and had all the appearance of flowing from the Kara Sea.
Hudson thereupon decided to sail the “ Hopewell ”
further in. At six o’clock the next morning, however,
they had to contend with great blocks of ice that came
driving upon their ship, very “ fearful to look on,” and
the whole of the day was employed by the men in
fending it off from the sides of their vessel with beams
and spars.
On July 4th they set sail, entered the mouth of the
sound, crossed a reef, and found themselves in a wide
space of water, with the same strong current flowing out
of it. Hudson and his crew now felt confident that this
passage would lead them to the east coast. Then the wind
changed, and it became impossible to sail the ship further.
Juet therefore was again sent out in the boat, with five
men. They were furnished with food and weapons,
and were instructed, if the stream seemed navigable, to
row on until such time as they were convinced that it
was actually “ trending eastward.”
The ne^ morning the wind had veered to the west,
and it seemed as if the “ Hopewell ” would be able to
follow her pilot boat, but before they had time to get
their sails up, it changed to the north again. At noon
Juet returned with the news that the opening had grown
HENRY HUDSON
S6
shallower and shallower as the boat advanced, so shallow,
in fact, that in the end they had not had more than four
feet of water under their keel.
They now made use of the north wind to sail out of
Costin Shar Bay, “ with sorrow that our labour was in
vaine : for, had the sound held as it did make shew of,
for breadth, depth, safenesse of harbour, and good
anchor ground, it might have yeelded an excellent passage
to a more easterly sea.”
That evening they came to anchor at the mouth of the
opening under a cliff they had named “ Deer-Point.”
There Hudson sent Lodlo and some others on shore to
try if they could come up with any walrus. They saw
none, but returned on board at ten o’clock with nearly
a hundred “ wellocks,” or black guillemots. That night
it was stormy out at sea, so they remained anchored.
The next morning “ a stormie and shifting west wind ”
was still blowing, but by nine o’clock in the evening it
had veered again to the north, and they “ set sayle and
stood to the westward, being out of hope to find a passage
by the north-east.”
Hudson at this juncture might well have tried one or
other of the Vaigach straits. We know that it had been
in his mind “ to passe by the mouth of the River Ob, and
to double that way the North Cape of Tartaria.” By the
north cape of Tartaria, Hudson meant Cape Tabin of
the Hondius map, for the existence of which Pliny was
the only authority. It was thought that when this pro-
montory was once passed, the land would fall away
rapidly to the south, an illusion that was brought home
to Baron Nordenskibld, who, in 1878, after he had
roxmded Cape Chelyuskin, had to spend more than a
year in the icy seas above Siberia before finally achieving
what for centuries had been the ambition of so many
navigators.
Hudson fpr a time concentrated his attention upon
NOVAYA ZEMLYA
57
the impossible task of rediscovering the far-famed
Willoughby’s Land. He sailed westward, now across
a sea that was “ loftie,” now moving over a “ rustling
tide.” By midday of July 1 1 th they came into “ a greene
sea of the colour of the mayne ocean,” such as had not
been viewed since the day the cook fell sick in the
beginning of the voyage and they had first been
“ impestered ” by ice.
The next morning they saw more porpoises than at
any other time during the whole voyage. The existence
of these creatures is an enviable one. To follow whiting
with an easy rotary motion from sea to sea ! I have
often watched them, coasting round the gleaming chalk
bastion of the White Nose, and have envied them their
placid immxmity from jarring distress, now only visible
as brown shadows under water, now displaying a curved
and shining body as they sail on and on through the sea
of our childish fancy, flecked, and crested, and deep, and
white, and blue. Three of these creatures, so it is said,
were once enclosed by a fence in the Frome at Wareham,
and uttered the most distressing cries by day and by
night, their dolorous voices sounding across the Dorset
water-meadows like the calling of lapwings, so bitterly
did they lament the fate that deprived them of their sweet
freedom.
By July 17th the “Hopewell” was off Vardo,
a place that ever plays an important part in these
Arctic expeditions, being the first European land to
be raised by ships coming from the north. It is
an island wWe cattle are given fish for their fodder.
By July 27th they were off the Lofoten Islands, and found
it necessary to place a light in their binnacle.
It is possible that Hudson, discontented with the lack
of success that had attended his second voyage, had a
little before this deliberately turned the vessel’s head
westward, with the intention of running into the “ Furious
HENRY HUDSON
58
Overfall ” of Captain Davis “ for an hundred leagues.”
This opening on the north coast of Labrador, which
since the publication of Davis’ journal had always been
referred to by these words, was, as a matter of fact,
nothing else than the mouth of Hudson Strait. Davis
had described it in the following manner : “ We fell
into a mighty race, where an island of ice was carried by
the force of the current as fast as our barke could sail.
We saw the sea falling down into a gulfe with a mighty
overfal, and moving with divers circular motions like
whirlepooles, in such sort as forcible streams passe thorow
the arches of bridges.” With his disappointment
regarding the eastern passage still heavy upon him, we
can well imagine how Hudson’s passionate life-illusion
might centre upon this hope in the west. John Davis
himself had never been given an opportunity of exploring
the promising opening, having been killed in the “ Ormuz
busines ” in 1 604, at a time when he had it in his mind
to look for the passage “ on the backside of America,”
where the coast faces Japan. The tide, or “ Furious
Overfall,” rushes in and out of Hudson Strait with the
greatest violence at the rate of six miles an hour. In
the strait itself the water rises to the height of thirty,
forty, and even sixty feet, while after traversing Hudson
Bay, its rise on the western shore of that inland sea is still
twelve feet.
But if Hudson did actually make an attempt to sail
westward, his will was very soon over-ridden by his crew.
On August 7th he writes ; “ I used all diligence to arrive
at London, and therefore now I gave my companie a
certificate under my hand, of my free and willing return,
without persuasion or force of any one or more of them.”
Now this is a strange entry for a ship’s captain to make,
and the mere existence of such writing goes to prove
that there had been trouble of some sort. It is, in
fact, the first indication we have of the nature of the
NOVAYA ZEMLYA
59
foul outrage that was to be Hudson’s undoing, the
first carrier cloud, as it were, heralding the storm that
was to bring forth in due season such black and
ill-omened happenings.
They arrived safely at Gravesend on August 26th.
CHAPTER X
THE DUTCH SCENE
HE negative results of this second
voyage of Henry Hudson seem, for the
time being, at any rate, to have quenched
the ardour of the London Merchants in
their search for a northern passage to
the Indies. The fact that explorers like
Hudson, with their souls stirred by a
lust for discovery, could be held back
byrconsiderations of profit and loss, appeared to certain
select and learned spirits of the age, who themselves
shared this mania for securing for human beings an exact
knowledge of the planet upon which they lived, a most
outrageous anomaly.
Samuel Purchas, that admirable clergyman who rivalled
the great Hakluyt in his indulgence of this peculiar
passion, and who, as he confesses, had never been further
than two hundred miles from Thaxted in Essex where
he was born, wrote some brisk words upon this very
subject, “ That which I most grieve at . . .,” he cries,
“ is the detention of further discovery of the Pole and
beyond, ... the desire of gain everywhere causing
debate, and consequently losse of the best gaine both in
Earth and Heaven. Merchants might get the world
and give us the world better, if Charitie were their Needle ;
Grace their Compasse ; Heaven their Haven, and if
they would take the height by observing the Sunne of
Righteousness in the Scripture-astrolabe, and sounding
their depth by a Leading Faith, and not by a leadden
bottomlesse Covetousnesse.”
THE DUTCH SCENE 6i
But it was not fated that the business prudence of
these London speculators should hold back Henry
Hudson from his dedicated vocation. In those days,
“ when the world was young,” reports of daring nautical
expeditions travelled far. There was scarcely a seaport
in Europe that had not at one time or other received
“ authentic news ” as to the discovery of the sought-for
passage — news as to foreign ships having been seen with
full-rigged bulging sails, placidly advancing through the
still waters of the mythical Straits of Anian ! Small
wonder, therefore, that the enterprising and jealous
directors of the Dutch East India Company, at Amster-
dam, with a reward of two thousand five hundred florins
still before the country as a prize for this very discovery,
had been kept in touch with the activities of so intrepid
a navigator as Hudson, a navigator who, so itwas reported,
had sailed further north than any mariner had done
before him, had sailed, indeed, within less than ten
degrees of the Pole itself.
These men now sent for Hudson to come to Amster-
dam, Emanuel van Meteren, their wise old Dutch
Consul in London, probably acting as intermediary.
They wished to consult with him, they said, and learn
his opinion with regard to the prospects of any future
action in these northern seas. Hudson reached Amster-
dam some time toward the end of the year 1608.
It is interesting to note that in the interval he had
had an opportunity of attending a family ceremony,
nothing less than the christening of a grand-daughter,
Alice, which took place at the church of St. Mary
Aldermary, on September i8th, 1608. The child was
the daughter of his eldest son, Oliver, and sixteen
years later she was to be married at the same church
to a certain Francis Bagle, ‘‘a peticot-maker” of Watling
Street.
The better to understand the various influences that
62
HENRY HUDSON
led to the discovery of the Hudson River, it is necessary
to remind ourselves, in a rapid survey, of those events
which, beyond all expectation, had raised Holland, an
insignificant water-logged country, to the position of a
formidable power amongst the nations.
Throughout the Middle Ages the Netherlands had
prospered. The Flemish workers by their skill in weaving
brocades and tapestries, and in the manufacture of broad-
cloth and linen and all manner of silk goods, had built up
a very large industry, while the merchants of Flanders, by
their enterprise and probity, had directed toward “ this
kernel of Europe ” all the principal trade-streams of the
Continent. The high road out of Venice, by which the
coveted produce of the East was carried, led to Antwerp, as
being the central mart for its distribution. Indeed, the
cities of these lowlands, which had, only with the greatest
difiiculty, been secured from submersion by the waters of
the North Sea, had taken upon themselves the attributes
of so many ant-hills, drawing within their boundaries
the substance of every surrounding area. By the simple
programme of fearing God and honouring the King, it
seemed that this country was destined to grow richer
and richer.
Then many unexpected things happened. Waves of
religious feeling, obstinate and dangerous, began suddenly
to disturb the ease and deep repose of the country. At
this critical juncture their royal sovereign, who, by
marriage and inheritance had accumulated vast lands
under his sceptre, suddenly took it into his head to
abdicate and spend the rest of his life in supervising the
pomp and pageantry to be provoked by the funeral-rites
of his own death. Even in so strange a manner do the
winds of eternity penetrate palace walls !
Charles V had been succeeded by his son, Philip II,
a ruler who possessed a very different temperament.
Philip was a perfect representative of the type of ma n
THE DUTCH SCENE
63
especially dangerous to human commonwealths. Con-
vinced that he was acting as an infallible instrument in
the hand of God, the correctness of his own personal
conduct was only matched by the meticulous narrowness
of his own vision of life. Penned up in his Spanish palace
like the princely punctilio that he was, he endeavoured
to compel the nations of Europe to conform to his own
prejudices. The unhealthy riches that poured into his
coffers from the New World postponed for many years
the collapse of his preposterous plans, plans which, from
the first, encountered in the Netherlands the grimmest
opposition. For it chanced that a certain young noble-
man of more ancient lineage than that of any Hapsburg,
upon whose shoulder Charles V had leaned on the day
of his abdication, suddenly appeared, to obstruct with
“ plain Heroic magnitude of mind ” his tyrannous
inventions. How dramatic is the spectacle of this
monarch, with all the finesse of his bigoted deceit, being
suddenly confronted by the simple honesty of so dis-
interested a leader of the people as William the Silent !
Year after year, in the name of religion, the bloody
persecution continued, and year after year the military
prowess of the Spaniards proved itself inadequate to the
task of subduing the stubborn provinces. That grave
burghers, rough sailors, and illiterate peasants, culti-
vators of bulbs and winter-roots, could, under the guid-
ance of a single man, successfully challenge the power of
Spain, set all Europe agape ! Yet, even when that
“ odious heretic of heretics ” had been assassinated in
his quiet country house at Delft, there were foimd others
to take his place.
Three hundred thousand citizens, however, fled out
of Flanders. Of those that remained, countless numbers
were killed, some hung upon gibbets, some burnt alive,
and some cast headlong from the tall steeples that
mediaeval piety had built to adorn the flat landscapes
HENRY HUDSON
64
of their homeland. In his painting of the Massacre
of the Innocents, the elder Bruegel has perpetuated a
scene common enough in those days. No township was
secure, no village safe. Santiago ! Santiago 1 Espafia !
EspaSa ! a sangre ! k came ! k fuego ! h sacco ! St.
James ! St. James ! Spain ! Spain ! blood ! flesh !
fire ! sack ! ! yelled the terrible soldiery, when during
“ the Spanish fury ” they rushed through the streets of
Antwerp.
For it was Antwerp more than any other town that
suffered. The mutinous Spanish veterans, the soldiery
of France, the mercenaries of Germany, each in turn
concentrated their fury upon the great and wealthy city ;
and, like plump rats from a corn stack at threshing time,
its merchants had scattered. In a single generation
Antwerp fell from her high estate. With England
holding Flushing as one of her cautionary towns the
trade of the Schelde was paralysed. The city was
ruined. Boats carrying cargoes to her were com-
pelled to unload in Zeeland. Antwerp had fallen.
“ Paapen uit,” “ Out with the Papists I ” That cry,
though it brought freedom to the seven rebellious northern
provinces, reduced the obedient provinces to a state of
abject misery. Wild beasts roamed at large over the
countryside. On one occasion, travellers were actually
attacked by wolves within two miles of the gates of
Ghent. The contrast between the north and the south
became plain to all. Overbury, the Englishman, de^
dared after making a tour through Belgium, “ It is a
Province distressed with warre, . . . and to conclude
the people here grow poor with less taxes than they
flomish with on the States’ side.”
And then as it became more and more apparent, under
the brave generalship of William the Silent, that man of
peace, whose very skull had been indented by long
wearing of the helmet of war, that the Northern Provinces
THE DUTCH SCENE
6 ;
were in a fair way of holding their own, the refugee
merchants began to reassemble at Amsterdam. Antwerp
was supplanted, and this other city now took its place
as the great centre of European commerce. It became
a sanctuary of civilization. Here the printers plied their
curious trade, here historians and philosophers and
theologians congregated, here artists flourished, and here
also the rich Belgian merchants, keeping themselves aloof
from the native population, plotted for the day when
every Spanish soldier would be driven out of their beloved
home in the south. Perhaps the most sagacious of these
men was William Usselincx, who realized from the first
that the best means of effecting their purpose lay in
crippling the enemies’ overseas trade, and for this reason
persuaded his compatriots to turn to the sea for their
salvation.
And now, eleven years after the body of Philip II
had been eaten by worms, Spain was negotiating a truce
with the Netherlands as with “ an independant power.”
For two years the diplomatic overtures continued, with
little or no hope of result. All the important nations
of Europe had sent to the Hague their representatives.
These plenipotentiaries stood round in the council
chambers like men who watched with an impatient
interest the separation of a stately staghound and a deep-
digging badger, who though eager enough to fly at each
other’s throats, were for the moment, out of sheer
exhaustion, compelled to come to some sort of agreement.
It was into the remarkable arena of this prolonged badger-
baiting that Henry Hudson stepped.
One of the chief points of dispute in the negotiations
had to do with the right claimed by the United Provinces
to trade with the East Indies. Ever since Philip had
been unwise enough to forbid ships from the Netherlands
to carry on commerce with Spain and Portugal, the sailors
of the northern provinces, the terrible Beggars of the
£
66
HENRY HUDSON
Sea, had viewed with covetous eyes the East India traffic
by way of the Cape of Good Hope. For several years,
however, the long and dangerous voyage round Africa
deterred them from invading those xmknown seas, and
they confined their activities to waylaying treasure ships
in the home waters of the Atlantic.
Now, in 1598, John Huygen van Linschoten, the
very same gentleman of letters who had made so large
a discourse about the first Dutch expedition into the Kara
Sea, published a book containing every kind of detailed
information with regard to the East Indies and the Spice
Islands. This man had lived for thirteen years in
Bombay, and during the whole of that time had done
nothing but accumulate facts in any way connected with
this new and most astonishing commerce. The book
appeared just after the Dutch had made their first ten-
tative efforts to trade with the East, and the contents of
its pages were eagerly assimilated by minds teased already
with avaricious curiosity about these far-off places.
Even today the volume makes interesting and instructive
reading, and it will be well perhaps to indicate its quality
by a few accidental quotations.
“ China,” he writes, “ contains divers faire Univer-
sities and Scholars where they studie Philosophy, and the
lawes of the land, for that not any man in China is
esteemed or accounted of, for his birth, family or riches,
but only for learning and knowledge . . . being served
and honoured with great solemnities, living in great
pleasure and esteemed as Gods.” An edifying passage
enough for the Dutch, who, not many years later, were to
cause their countryman, the wisest philosopher of his
age, to resort to the shift of crawling into a box !
From another sentence it becomes apparent that even
in those early times the Chinese were at no loss in finding
a subtle solution for a certain importunate anxiety which
from the beginning has weighed most heavily upon the
THE DUTCH SCENE 67
minds of men. “ Their women,” he writes, “ esteeme
it for a great beautifying to have small feet . . . which
custom the men have brought up, to let them from
much going, for that they are . . . immeasurably
leacherous and unchaste.” He presented his readers
with a realistic description of every animal, bird, and
plant. “ Elephants are in many places of India, specially
in the country of Aethiopia behind Mosambique among
the blacke Caffares. . , . They are very fearfull of a
rat or a mouse, and also of the Pismyres, because they
fear they would creepe into their snouts.” He notes
the advantages and disadvantages of taking opium.
“ It maketh a man to hold his seede long before he shed-
deth it, which the Indian women much desire . . .
although such as eat much thereof, are in time altogether
unable to company with women and are wholly dried up
. . . whereof it is not so much used by the Nobilitie.”
There was more in the book which, though perhaps not
of such universal interest, was pertinent enough to navi-
gators eager to hear authentic reports of the unknown
Malay Archipelago.
The first attempt at the new adventuring had been
made by Cornelius Houtman, sent out by the Bewind-
hebhers or managers of the new ships, namely, Dirk van
Os, Hassalaer, and Jan Poppe, who, together with six
others, had associated themselves into a company called
the Company of Foreign Parts. This expedition had
successfully established a Dutch fort at Amboyna.
Immediately upon its return, with large profits for its
promoters, the “ Spice Island rush ” began. But it was
soon found that while some ships came home heavily
laden with precious goods, others were less fortunate,
being either captured by the enemy or forced to return
empty, vessels firom their own country having gathered
in the rich harvest before them.
It seemed to the States-General, under the advice of
68
HENRY HUDSON
the wise John van Olden-Barneveldt, who represented
the interests of the municipal dignitaries in this burgher
revolution, that these spirited ventures could be rendered
more damaging to Spain if they were better organized.
In the year 1602, therefore, the Dutch East India Com-
pany was formed, for the purpose of combining the
resources of the various independent merchants into a
single corporate body. By this means there sprang up
overnight, as it were, a most powerful national weapon,
under the direct patronage of the Republicans.
The charter granted by the States-General to this
company gave them the power to make and unmake
treaties with the native princes, to build factories and
fortresses, and to declare peace and war in the name
of the C^vernment. The company was enormously
wealthy, far wealthier than the corresponding company
founded in England at about the same time. Its fleet
was made up of forty large ships, innmnerable small
ships, six hundred cannon and five thousand sailors. Its
capital amounted to no less than 50,000.
Now for one reason or another the creation of this
huge monopoly was exceedingly unpopular with certain
private merchants, especially, perhaps, with the refugees
from the south, who were always disposed to be jealous
of the power of their hosts, the Hollanders. These men
regretted the freedom of action they had enjoyed during
the earlier years, and resented an arrangement that
pooled the spoils of their enterprise.
One of the most powerful of these malcontents was
Balthasar de Moucheron, the celebrated merchant king,
who had fled from Antwerp “ for his religion’s sake,”
and now lived at Veere, in the vicinity of Middelburg.
This man, because of his vast maritime interests, was
given a place as one of the directors of the new company,
though he seems never to have acknowledged the honour
or to have taken advantage of the privilege it bestowed.
THE DUTCH SCENE
69
Second in importance to de Moucheron amongst these
disaffected adventurers was, perhaps, Isaac Le Maire,
a wealthy refugee trafficker full of subtlety and resource
who had also been allowed an honorary place on the
board.
The charter with which the Company had been pro-
vided gave them a monopoly of trading with the East,
either by the Cape of Good Hope or by the Strait of
M^ellan. It contained, however — and this point was
quickly noted by Isaac Le Maire and his friends — ^no
specific provision with regard to the discovery of any new
route. It was, indeed, just this dainty omission that had
caused the Company to send for Captain Henry Hudson.
If there was going to be a new passage discovered, they
wished the discovery to be made by some one in their
own employ and not by envious friends, who might well,
if such a short-cut was really found to exist, begin
seriously to threaten their monopoly, and even perhaps
(who could tell ?) procure from the States-General a
second charter, with special trading privileges by the
new-found way.
CHAPTER XI
TENTATIVE OVERTURES
T is no easy matter to unravel the con-
flicting diplomatic aims entertained by
the various important personages who,
upon Hudson’s arrival at Amsterdam,
had, for a period of nearly two years,
been assembled together in the ancient
banqueting-hall at the Hague, a ban-
queting-hall decorated with captured
Spanish standards, for the purpose of patching up a truce
between Spain and the United Provinces.
John van Olden-Barneveldt, the great patriot states-
man of the Dutch, who a few years later was to be requited
for his labours after so evil a fashion, had his heart set
upon obtaining a truce with honour, that is to say, with
full recognition of the United Provinces as a sovereign
and independent state, and with a full acknowledgment
of their right to trade in the East Indies. The shrewd
old man, however, was by no means sanguine about the
ultimate result of the negotiations, and is reported as
having said that he thought “ rather to see the lambkins
now frisking so innocently about the Commonwealth
transform themselves into lions and wolves.” Prince
Maurice, with reluctance, gave his suspicious support
to the peace, and his restless attitude was shared by the
Dutch merchants, who dreaded lest the truce would
bring with it the departure of the rich refugees and
a consequent revival of the prosperity of Antwerp.
Philip III, the pathetic tool of his greedy prime minister,
TENTATIVE OVERTURES
It
held out on three points : (i) That the United Pro-
vinces should relinquish their claim to trade with the
East Indies. (2) That they should permit the open
exercise of the rites of the Catholic religion within their
borders. (3) That they should formally acknowledge
their subjection to Spain. Albert and Isabella, the
resident rulers, wished for a truce at all costs, because
their credit had been ruined by Philip II cancelling his
debts in 1597, and they had no means with which to
continue the war. James I of England, represented by
Richard Spencer and Ralph Winwood, secretly desired
that the Dutch should be prevented from trading in the
East, and in many other ways hoped and expected to get
profit to himself out of the opposed interests of the parties
concerned. In the end, this most learned fool, with a
scholar’s inaptitude for business, lived to become the
laughing-stock of Emrope, in that he surrendered to
Barneveldt the English cautionary towns for the paltry
sum of ^ 2 50,000 ; to Barneveldt, from whom they had,
been mortgaged by the old thrifty Queen, after a sound
scolding, for his war “ that had lasted already much
longer than the siege of Troy did.”
The statesman most directly concerned with our history
was President Pierre Jeannin. This aged politician,
whose protestations were so invariably benevolent, was
in reality occupied, like a sober raven amongst starlings,
in picking up for his sovereign every unconsidered trifle
that might come his way. His master, Henry IV,
cherished a secret ambition that in the general confusion
he might before long be recognized as the ruler of this
upstart country, and failing this, that he would, with the
suppression of the Dutch trade with the East, be himself
in a position to engage in those lucrative ventures.
Negotiations, however, had hardly opened, when the
news came of the destruction of the Spanish fleet at
Gibraltar by Jacob van Heemskerk. This great Dutch
HENRY HUDSON
72
sailor, the very same who had called out to Barents, asking
him how he did, when in open boats they had rounded
the northernmost Cape of Novaya Zemlya, had, with the
utmost gallantry, sailed into the harbour of Gibraltar,
and inflicted upon Spain the greatest naval disaster she
had suffered since the destruction of the Armada. We
can scarcely wonder that the Dutch inscribed upon his
monument, near the central pillar of the Oude Kirk, in
Amsterdam, the words, “ The man who ever steered his
way through ice or iron.” His victory altered the com-
plexion of affairs at the Hague very considerably. “ You
must show your teeth to the Spaniard if you wish for
a quiet life,” laughed Henry of Navarre to Francis
Aerssens, the Dutch representative in Paris. The
United Provinces were now in a much stronger position
for driving a good bargain, and during the time of
Hudson’s arrival negotiations were slowly drawing
towards a truce very much in their favour.
Evidently Hudson, in his first interview with the
Directors or the Dutch East India Company, remembered
how his plausible theory of sailing right across the Pole
had impressed his former English employers, and he
forthwith repeated to these foreign merchants all his old
arguments about the climate growing warmer, the nearer
he had sailed to the Pole, a fact proved by his having
seen herbivorous animals in the extreme north. It so
happened that another pilot had, at this same time, been
afiirming that if a ship steered boldly for the open sea it
would find a free passage, “ the greater depth of water
and the agitation of the waves preventing the formation
of ice,” so that Hudson’s corresponding theory, coming
from one who had so recently returned from two expedi-
tions in the Arctic Ocean, carried augmented weight.
Yet the memory of Barents’ voyage was still fresh in their
minds, and yielding to pressure from the Chambers of
Zeeland, they eventually fobbed Hudson off with a
TENTATIVE OVERTURES
73
vague promise of employment in the following year,
giving as an excuse that it was impossible for the eight
directors of Amsterdam to commit themselves without
consultation with the rest of the Council of Seventeen,
whose meeting at Middelburg was not to take place till
March 2 5th, at which time it would be too late in the year
to make the necessary arrangements for an Arctic
expedition. They therefore dismissed him, giving bim^
however, a slight recompense for his trouble.
Hudson was no ordinary sea captain looking for work ;
but, as was the case with Barents, with John Davis, and
afterwards with William Baffin, the finding of a passage
to the East had become for him an intellectual obsession.
For this reason he not only had spent his time trying to
interest the merchant financiers in his schemes, but had
also passed many hours with learned cartographers and
geographical students, thmnbing maps and poring over
old tattered marine manuscripts. Now the greatest of
all these industrious investigators of the hidden places
of the earth was Peter Plancius. That remarkable divine,
who has been called the Hakluyt of Holland, was himself
a refugee from the Obedient Provinces, having escaped
over the border in the disguise of a soldier, a class of
persons who, truth to say, were in those times as plenti-
ful in the Netherlands as are apples in October. Ever
since his arrival in Holland, two matters had occupied
his attention, the discovery of a northern passage to the
Indies, and the refutation of the doctrines of ffiat great
man, the son of a common cutler, Jacobus Arminius, the
founder of the Remonstrant Church, who, in direct
contradiction of that “ Saint Calvin of Geneva,” was
inclined in the field of theology “ to limit the range of the
unconditional decrees of God.”
It is clear that Dominie Plancius, the tutor of these two
most noble pupils, Barents and Heemskerk, detested no-
thing so much, both in the physical and the metaphysical
HENRY HUDSON
74
world, as vague outlines. Their mutual interests drew
Hudson and Peter Plancius into a close intimacy, into so
close an intimacy that Hudson confided into the ears of
the discreet pastor certain secret conclusions that he had
not deemed prudent to reveal at the more formal hearing
of the merchants. For there is evidence that Hudson,
in spite of the plausible arguments he had offered to the
Directors in its favour, was in reality “ out of heart ”
with the North-East Passage, and had now, as he hinted
in the journal of his second voyage, set his hopes upon
the north-west. Perhaps because he knew he had been
srrmmoned to Amsterdam on the strength of his know-
ledge of the north-east route, Hudson had not dared to
reveal his real opinion to anybody except Plancius,
whose scientific enthusiasm gave him the necessary confi-
dence. He even went so far as to trace out a map,
the better to illustrate to the learned clergyman certain
indications upon the north coast of America on which
he based his hopes. This rough draft was kept for many
years by Plancius, and indisputably proves that Hudson
had other plans in his head than those divulged to the
Company.
We have seen how Henry IV of France had been
jealously watching the success that had come to the Dutch
from their invasion of the East Indies. His own colonial
adventures in Canada had brought him little or no
money, and his royal avarice had been piqued by the
rumours of the enormous dividends that had poured into
the money chests of his thrifty neighbours. He was exceed-
ingly eager to put his thumb into this same rich pie, but
in order to send ships to these unknown seas and to open
up communications with these unknown native poten-
tates, he recognized the necessity of having expert guid-
ance from some one or other who was thoroughly
acquainted with the “ tricks of the trade.’ ’ Isaac Le Maire
was suggested to him as being the very person he wanted,
TENTATIVE OVERTURES 7;
and he lost no time in getting in touch with this wealthy
merchant through his ambassador, Pierre Jeannin.
Le Maire declared himself willing to give the royal
speculator all the assistance that was in his power, but at
the same time expressed himself strongly in favour of
postponing the organization of a French company until
it could be seen how the truce negotiations would develop
with regard to the Dutch trade with the Indies. If it
was forbidden by the treaty, it would be easy, so he
asserted, to form a company in France, made up of
members of the old Dutch corporation. The tactful
Jeannin also favoured a delay for diplomatic reasons.
As one of the freelance merchants, Le Maire watched
the negotiations between Hudson and the representatives
of the hated Company with the greatest interest ; and
as soon as he knew that his friend, the English captain,
had been dismissed, he got into communication with
Jeannin through the medium of his brother, Jacob Le
Maire. “ Because the East India Company feared
above everything to be forestalled in their design,” his
interviews with Hudson were kept as secret as possible.
He suggested to Hudson that he should now seek employ-
ment with the King of France, and, at the same time,
pointed out to Jeannin that if the English sailor could
discover a short passage by way of the north, it would
be of the utmost advantage to Henry. “ The whole
voyage, both out and home, can be finished in six months
without approaching any of the harbours or fortresses of
the King of Spain ; whilst by the road round the Cape
of Good Hope, which is now in common use, one gener-
ally requires three years and one is besides exposed to
meet and fight the Portuguese.” He also explained to
the French minister that a sum of four thousand crowns
would be required to fit out a ship for the discovery.
Hudson seems to have expressed himself as quite
willing to serve under the French flag ; and this fact was
HENRY HUDSON
76
duly communicated to Jeannin. Like the wise man
that he was, Jeannin immediately got in touch with
Plancius, who happened just then to be at the Hague,
and without letting him know anything about the plan
that was developing, received from him confirmation of
Hudson’s assurances “ that there must be in the northern
parts a passage corresponding to the one found by Magel-
lan near the South Pole.” He then wrote to the King,
recommending the scheme : “ Even though nothing
should come of the plan, it will always be a laudable thing,
and the regret will not be great, since so little will be
risked.” However, before this letter left for France,
the situation had taken another turn. The fact that
Hudson had been holding secret meetings with the
influential merchant had somehow become known to the
Amsterdam Directors ; and these men, fearing lest
through their hesitation the Company would find itself
over-reached, forthwith recalled Hudson, and, out of hand,
signed a contract with him, a contract which they hoped
would be, in due course, ratified by the Chambers of
Delft, Rotterdam, Hoorn, and Enckhuysen.
#
CHAPTER XII
THE DUTCH CONTRACT
L can hardly doubt that this drastic
step was taken at the advice of Dirk
van Os, that far-seeing man who had
been one of the organizers of the first
Dutch expedition to the East Indies,
and who was responsible later for
draining the lakes of Holland and
converting them into arable land. It
was he, with his brother Benoindhebber, J. Poppe, who
sigTxd the contract on behalf of the Company.
A copy of this contract, which was to have such
momentous results in the annals of discovery, was found
half a century or more ago by Henry C. Murphy. It
runs as follows :
CONTRACT WITH HENRY HUDSON
“ On this eighth of January in the year of our Lord one thou-
sand six hundred and nine, the Directors of the East India Com-
pany of the Chamber of Amsterdam of the ten years reckoning of
the one part, and Mr. Henry Hudson, Englishman, assisted by
Jodocus Hondius, of the other part, have agreed in manner follow-
ing, to wit : That the said directors shall in the first place equip
a small vessel or pcht of about thirty lasts burden, with which,
well provided with men, provisions and other necessaries, the above
named Hudson shall about the first of April, sail, in order to search
for a passage by the North, around by the North side of Nova
Zembla, and shall continue thus along that parallel imtil he shall
be able to sail Southward to the latitude of sixty d^rees. He shall
n
HENRY HUDSON
78
obtain as much knowledge of the lands as can be done without any
considerable loss of time, and if it is possible return immediately
in order to make a faithful report and relation of his voyage to the
Directors, and to deliver over his journals, log-books and charts,
together with an account of everything whatsoever which shall
happen to him during the voyage without keeping anything back ;
for which said voyage the Directors shall pay to the said Hudson,
as well for his outfit for the said voyage, as for the support of his
wife and children, the sum of eight hundred guilders ; and, in
case (which God prevent) he do not come back or arrive hereabouts
within a year, the Directors shall further pay to his wife two hundred
guilders in cash 5 and thereupon they shall not be further liable to
him or his heirs, unless he shall either afterwards or within the
year arrive and have found the passage good and suitable for the
Company to use 5 in which case the Directors will reward the
before-named Hudson for his dangers, trouble and knowledge in
their discretion, with which the before-mentioned Hudson is
content. And in case the Directors think proper to prosecute
and continue the same voyage, it is stipulated and agreed with the
before-named Hudson, that he shall make his residence in this
country with his wife and children, and shall enter into the employ-
ment of no one other than the Company, and this at the discretion
of the Directors, who also promise to make him satisfied and con-
tent for such further service in all j ustice and equity. All without
fraud or evil intent. In witness of the truth, two contracts are
made hereof of the same tenor and are subscribed by both parties
and also by Jodocus Hondius, as interpreter and witness. Dated
as above, (signed) Dirk Van Os, J. Poppe, Henry Hudson, (lower
down signed) Jodocus Hondius, witness.”
The contract is interesting for several reasons. It
contains the first allusion we have to Hudson’s family,
which consisted, as we know, of his wife Katherine and
her three sons, Oliver (already married and the father
of Alice), John (his father’s companion on his voyages),
and Richard. The smallness of the remuneration
offered to Hudson is remarkable. It equalled about
for himself and £16 for his wife in the case of
THE DUTCH CONTRACT
79
his never returning. It will be noticed that Hudson’s
name is written in plain English, Henry Hudson, so that
the American affectation of alluding to him as Hendrik
can hardly be justified. Also the fact that Hudson found
it necessary to have Jodocus Hondius at his side as a
translator proves that his acquaintance with the language
of his employers was slight, and this is borne out by
his own written statement on the back of the treatise by
Iver Boty saying that he had had that paper translated
for him from Dutch into English. It was in all proba-
bility at this time that Hudson gave Jodocus Hondius
those geographical details relating to his recent Arctic
explorations which the careful engraver duly entered
upon his map of those regions, published by him in his
edition of Potanus' History oj Amsterdam.
That Hudson should have been on such friendly terms
with Hondius again goes to prove that he possessed a
personality capable of appealing to men very different
from the rough mariners with whom he had to do in the
ordinary course of his life. This Jodocus Hondius was
a man of no mean parts. He had executed certain
bronze statues for Alexander Farnese, the Duke of
Parma; and had at one period visited England, where he
engraved pictures of Cavendish and Drake, a service
which he may possibly have performed for Hudson.
It was at this time, also, that Hudson received a com-
munication from another distinguished acquaintance, no
less a person, in fact, than Captain John Smith. This
spirited adventurer sent letters and maps to him suggest-
ing that a passage might be found somewhere to the
north of the Colony of Virginia. Captain John Smith
was essentially a man of action, one of those competent
individuals whom one comes across in every position of
life, and who, wherever they are met with, &1 the hearts
of men widi confidence. After having suffered many
perils by land and water, after having killed in single
8o
HENRY HUDSON
combat three Ttirkish champions, after having intro-
duced a system of signalling for the Archduke of Austria,
after having been enslaved in Constantinople, this gentle-
man-of-fortune had become associated, in 1 607, with the
foundation of the new colony at Jamestown. And it is
probable that, without the help of his aggressive sagacity,
this hazardous venture would have come to a sorry end.
It was he who negotiated with the Indians through the
help of the “ matchless Pocahontas,” winning his personal
freedom with the gift of a grindstone ; it was he who
put sentinels on Hogs’ Island; it was he who planted grain
in its season, and who made surveys of the surrounding
country of such extraordinary accuracy that they were
used as evidence in a border dispute between the states of
Maryland and Virginia as late as 1 8 7 3 . It was doubtless
in his exploration of Chesapeake Bay that he had heard
rumours from the Red Indians of vast waters to the west-
ward, rumours which perhaps referred to the existence
of Lake Erie, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, and Lake
Superior, and which, together with certain suggestions
derived from the planisphere that Dr. Michael Lok had
made for Sir Philip Sidney, seemed to indicate that further
to the north of the colony, somewhere under the latitude
of 40°, the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean might
be divided by only a thin strip of land, which, very pos-
sibly, was penetrated by some sort of sound or channel.
This enticing fancy probably owed its origin to Veraz-
zano, who, during his famous voyage, had landed on
Accomac Peninsula and “ stared at the Pacific ” from
some high hill that overlooked Chesapeake Bay ! The
more accurate maps of the time were based on Ribeiro’s
chart, which itself was derived from the more careful
observations of Verazzano’s rival, Estevan Gomez. We
find the false fancy constantly recurring. A Venetian
cosmographer, in 1542, actually laid down on his globe a
narrow strait, leading to the 'West, in the latitude of the
THE DUTCH CONTRACT 8i
Hudson River, while the thinness of the continent mars
the accuracy of Witfleet’s map published in 1603.
Captain Smith had evidently been influenced by those
fallacious notions that appeared to be so curiously con-
firmed by the reports of his Indians, and he had found
time to communicate to his friend Hudson certain maps
and papers which seemed to give support to his theory.
The receipt of this package increased Hudson’s eager-
ness to try his luck in the West. Unfortunately, how-
ever, the Directors were determined that he should sail
once more in search of the eastern route. Even Plancius,
who still clung to his old theory of rounding the northern
end of Novaya Zemlya, gave him small encouragement
with regard to his new hope, assuring him “ upon the
relation of a person who had explored the Western part
of that country that it was continuous land.” Yet so
dispassionate “ an investigator of new matters ” was the
worthy clergyman, that, in spite of his own personal
opinion, and in spite of the fact that he knew Hudson’s
employers had given him strict instructions to sail by
way or Novaya Zemlya and by no other way, he yet, of
his own free will, produced and lent to his friend, the
English seaman, the journals of Captain George Wey-
mouth, the man who had commanded the last expedition
of consequence to the north-west, and who by his
example, as Captain Foxe afterwards declared, “ lighted
Hudson into his straights.”
The sailing instructions that were given to Hudson
have been preserved for us through the medium of Van
Dam, who acted as counsel for the East India Company
for fifty-four years (1652-1706). In his manuscript
history of the Corporation he wrote, “ This Company in
the year 1609 fitted out a yacht of about thirty lasts
biorthen and engaged a Mr. Henry Hudson, an English-
man, and a skilftil pilot, as master thereof, with orders to
search for the aforesaid passage by the North and North-
F
§2 HENRY HUDSON
east above Novaya Zemlya, towards the lands or straits
of Anian, and then to sail at least as far as the sixtieth
degree of North latitude, when if the time permitted he
was to return from the straits of Anian again to this
country. And he was further ordered by his instruc-
tions, to think of discovering no other routes or passages,
except the route around by the North and North-east
above Novaya Zemlya ; with this additional provision,
that if it could not be accomplished at that time, another
route would be the subject of consideration for another
voyage.”
More even than the River Ob, the mythical Straits
of Anian intrigued the imagination of explorers. Briggs,
the mathematician who introduced the use of logarithms,
actually goes so far as to describe them. “ The straits
of Anian,” he writes, “ where are seated the large king-
doms of Cebola and Quirira, have great and populous
cities of civil people ; whose houses are said to bee
five stories high, and to have within them pillars of
Turquesses.”
It would seem that the Directors already felt a certain
uneasiness with regard to what Hudson might do when
once he was away on the high seas. Apparently, when
he was preparing to start, there was some dispute as to
the amount of wages that were to be paid to the English
sailors ; and we read in one of the Company’s letters
these words, “ If he begins to rebel here under our eyes
what will he do if he is away from us ? ” Would he
treat them in the same high-handed fashion that he had
treated Dirck Gerritsz, their trusted ship’s chandler and
chief boatswain ?
The emphatic nature of their instructions does seem,
however, to have had its effect upon Hudson, for until
he had trouble with his crew, he appears to have made
up his mind in good earnest to give the Novaya Zemlya
route another trial. Yet even with this evidence of good-
THE DUTCH CONTRACT 83
will before us, we are fully justified in recording the fact
that he set sail from the Texel with his cabin full of
papers having to do with the Western Passage, and with
his idea of coming to “an outlet sea through Lumley’s
Inlet from Davis’ Straits.”
CHAPTER XIII
THE THIRD SAILING
HE ship allotted to Hudson was small.
It was bmlt with a high forecastle and
poop, and above water resembled in
appearance the shallow-bottomed Vlie
boats that were constructed for use in
the Zuider Zee. It was named the
“ Half Moon,” and sailed with a mixed
crew of Dutch and English. We
of two English mariners who crossed
the North Sea to accompany their old captain on this, his
third, voyage of discovery. The one was Robert Juet,
who had kept a journal (now lost) of the second voyage,
and to whose journal of the third voyage we are indebted
for most of what we know of the exploration of the
Hudson River ; and the other, John Colman, Hudson’s
former mate, who on the first voyage had explored Whales
Bay in Spitsbergen.
Few of the longshoremen who watched the small
craft with its skipper, Heyndrik Hoitsen, sail out of the
Ij, could have guessed that the ship was embarking upon
an expedition pregnant with far greater historic interest
than the discovery of any fabled straits to Cathay. The
cold March water, disturbed by the keel of the “ Half
Moon,” gave them no hint, the spring winds that
whistled round the great warehouses and blew up against
their bonnets dust dislodged from the merchandise
gathered from every quarter of the known world,
whispered no prophecy. The massed heaps of quarried
know the names
THE THIRD SAILING 85
stone and the piles of Baltic timber deposited there on
the shore of this stoneless and treeless land presented to
their eyes an aspect altogether ordinary.
Five days after the departure of the “ Half Moon ”
a truce of twelve years, “ good, firm, loyal and inviolable,”
was signed between Spain and the United Netherlands ;
but even this momentous event weighs light, when
balanced against an achievement wherein germinated the
seeds that were to bring forth to magnificent birth one
of the proudest cities that the perseverance and ingenuity
of the human race have ever raised out of wood, stone,
and iron.
Rubens was a young man of thirty-three, Rembrandt
an unwitting baby, Teniers had not yet been born, when
Hudson, obedient to his instructions, steered his way
for tlie third time up the west coast of Norway. It
took the “ Half Moon ” more than a month to arrive
at the North Cape, which they sighted on May 5th.
From that day till May 1 9th the only record of the voyage
in existence is to be found in Van Meteren’s history.
The old Consul, whose special knowledge was perhaps
derived from a conversation with Hudson himself,
writes that a mutiny took place, originating in quarrels
between the Dutch and the English. Some of the Dutch
sailors had been used to employment in the East Indies,
and the unwisdom of engaging such men in Arctic dis-
covery had become a byword amongst the captains of
that time. We can well imagine that the transition
from the sultry heat surrounding the coasts of Tidore
and Ternate to the searching cold of Goose Land, where
the sails of the ship would grow stiff and frozen, and where
it was often necessary to knock off blocks of ice before the
ropes would run freely through the pulleys, wovdd be likely
to fill the hearts of these “soft” sailors with the profoundest
discomragement. They apparently refused to sail a single
le^ue further in so inauspicious a direction.
86
HENRY HUDSON
It is evident that Hudson was not what is generally
known as a strong naan, was not, that is to say, a captain
whose self-confidence was vigorous enough to dominate
unruly spirits in the forecastle ; and in this particular case
his natural inclination toward peace and compromise
received support from the fact that he himself had small
hope of bringing his passionately desired project to a
successful issue by following the course officially mapped
out for him. Juet makes reference to this “ black fort-
night ” in the following crafty manner. “ After much
trouble, with fogges sometimes, and more dangers of
ice. The nineteenth, being Tuesday, was close stormie
weather, with much wind and snow, and very cold :
the wind variable between north north-west and north-
east. We made our way west and by north till noone.”
“ Then,” he remarks, ” we observed the sunne having
a slake, and found our height to bee 70 degrees, 30
minutes.”
The last sentence is interesting in that it contains the
first written record of a sun-spot, a phenomenon that a
year later was to provoke the attention of Thomas Harriot,
Sir Walter Raleigh’s man, the same person who invented
algebra in its modern form, and who, from Ilfracombe,
was the first astronomer to observe Halley’s comet. This
scientist, beside whom, so Christopher Marlowe declared,
“ Moses was but a juggler,” was, during the spring of
1609, helping to make light the imprisonment of his
heroic patron in the upper story of the Bloody Tower,
by the subtle practice of alchemy and astronomy in the
“ still ” house. He it was who derived a philosophic
theology_ “ wherein he cast off the Old Testament,” ^d
his insatiable curiosity was only quenched by a “ slake ”
in his own nose, which took the form of an incurable
cancer.
The fact that Robert Juet, from Limehouse, should
make use of this North Country word “ slake,” as being
THE THIRD SAILING 87
most apposite to what he had seen, is strange. The
word means literally “an accumulation of mud or
slime.” It should be remembered also that the observa-
tion was made with the naked eye, as the curious practice
devised by Sir Dudley Digges’ grandfather, “ of dis-
covering by perspective glasses set at due angles all
objects pretty far distant in the country round about,”
had only the year before been rendered practical by a
pair of spectacle-makers in Middelburg, who first made it
possible, by the invention of the telescope, for human
beings to observe with any degree of clearness those
chasms on the sun’s body, often many times larger than
the diameter of the earth.
From May 19th to May a^th they sailed back the
way they had come. Probably no one on board antici-
pated a return to Amsterdam with eagerness. Such
an tmtimely advent would mean humiliation to Hudson
and a risk of punishment to the men. During the
mutiny, Hudson had put before his crew two alternatives,
either to sail in search of a passage between the Virginian
Colony and the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, or to
sail direct to Davis Strait in order to investigate the
“ Furious Overfall.” The latter proposal seems to have
been the one that first met with general approval, though,
as it fell out, it was the former, and not the latter, which
was eventually undertaken.
On May 25th, when they were olF the Lofoten Islands,
they encountered a storm, which drove their small ship
scudding through the ocean westward. The sea was
“ so high and brake withall ” that they were compelled
to take in most of their sail. At four o’clock on the
afternoon of May a 8 th they raised the Faroe Islands.
The next day they reached the islands, but did not put
in to any harboiu, because they feared the rocks, whirl-
pools, and ebbing tides.
Hudson, as we have seen, had visited these islands
88
HENRY HUDSON
before. These seventeen “ sheep islands,” or “ feather
islands,” are projections of that gigantic volcanic ridge
which stretches between Iceland and Scotland. From
the sea, so jagged and broken an appearance does their
rock-bound coastline present, that it often takes the form
of cloisters, as though it were protected from the black
northern waves by a ruined and lofty masonry, like the
shattered arches that remain standing today at Glaston-
bury. Sometimes these granite ramparts give place to
cliffs so sheer that the fishermen launch their boats by
means of ropes, themselves climbing down steps cut out
in the face of the rock. In the time of Hudson, the
chief industries of the islands were sheep-raising, fishing,
and the slaughter of pregnant seals, which the men, with
flaming torches in their hands, would pursue in the dark-
ness of their tunnelled caves.
As soon as they came to anchor, on May 30th, Hudson
sent his ship’s boat into the harbour, and had the sailors
fill all the water-casks with fresh water, an employment
that occupied them until ten o’clock in the evening.
On the next day, as the weather was fine and the sun
shming, Hudson and most of his crew landed and went
for a walk on the island. It was early summer, and the
turf roofs of the houses must have been showing green —
of the houses built so close together that men could not
pass between them except in single file. It would have
been interesting to have listened to thejudgements of these
Jacobean sailors on the manner of life of the cormorant-
eating islanders they met, on the manner of life of this
rude people, who spoke the ancient Norse tongue, and
whose practice it was to pull the wool from their sheep’s
backs, to pluck the ears of their scant barley-crops by
hand, and to winnow them under die feet of their dancing
daughters. ^ By noon they were on board again, and that
afternoon, in good earnest, set sail Westward Ho !
They now kept a sharp lookout for Busse Island, but
THE THIRD SAILING 89
saw no sign of it. In fair weather they continued their
voyage until June I5thj when they were overtaken by a
tempest. Waves “ whose ridges with the meeting
clouds contend ” beset their small ship ; and they lost
their foremast overboard, and suffered other damage.
Wild weather continued till June 19th, when they were
able to do some repairs.
Theirs was not the only vessel that year that suffered
from the mutinous winds of the Atlantic. The “ Sea-
Venture,” carrying Sir George Somers to the new Colony
in Virginia, was driven on to a reef off the Bermudas,
“ fast lodged and locked for further budging,” so that
he and his crew found themselves marooned on that
island for several months. The palms, the coral strands,
the pellucid grotto-pools of “ the still-vex’d Bermoothes ”
impressed the imaginations of the shipwrecked crew in
the strangest way. The miniature island-cluster, which
even to this hour is rumoured to be afloat on the ocean,
was full of unexplained noises, “ Of calling shapes and
beckoning shadows dire,” was, in fact, bewitched ; and
it was the tales of the experiences of Somers and his crew
coming to the ears of the English poet, that evoked from
his passionate fancy The Temfest^ a play that itself con-
tains all the depth and wonder and entranced beauty of
a hollow sea-shell, of a far-fetched murex, making music
for the ears of a listening God.
They continued to sail westward, and on June 25th
they sighted a ship. Immediately, from noon to six
o’clock, they gave chase to this unknown vessel, which
was sailing in an easterly direction. It must be remem-
bered, in connexion with this confession, that Hudson
and his men had been brought up in an age when all
that floated was regarded as possible booty. Whether
Hudson, if he had overtaken the ship, intended to do
more than merely “ speak with her ” must remain
unknown.
90
HENRY HUDSON
At last they approached “ the Banks ” of Newfound-
land. Their soundings brought up white sand and
shells. On July 3rd5 which was clear and sunny, they
were amongst French fishing ships, which from the days
of the Cabots had been accustomed to visit these coasts.
On the night of July 5th, Juet took an observation of their
position by the North Star and Antares, the fiery red
appearance of the latter, as it consumes itself in the
shocking gulf of space, making it conspicuous, and there-
fore useful for the purposes of navigators steering their
way over the watery earth. On July 8 th they anchored
and spent some time fishing in these waters of Baccalaos,
taking a hundred and eighteen cod in five hours and
seeing large shoals of herring. The next day they
fished again, but had not enough salt with them for
preserving their catch. On July 12th they sighted
land, “ a low white sandie ground, right on head of us.”
Before they could approach it, however, to find an
anchorage, they were enveloped in fog, in one of those
dense fogs that in midsummer suddenly descend upon
the coast of Maine, obliterating under a dim cloud hill
and headland.
THE EAST COAST OF NORTH AMERICA.
This map illustrates Hudson's third voyage.
CHAPTER XIV
THE NEW WORLD
HE fog continued for two or three days.
When at last it lifted, they found they
SB ^ anchored close to five islands,
«/ probably somewhere near Penobscot
misty ; but in spite of this, they were
native canoes
^ manned by six Red Indians, one of
whom spoke a few words of French. These savages
had evidently been treated well on former occasions,
for they seemed to welcome the presence of the “ Half
Moon ” in their waters. Hudson gave them food and
drink, and presented them with trinkets that he had with
him for trading purposes. In return they informed the
sailors that there were gold, silver, and copper mines in
the country. The next day they drew closer into the
shore and anchored the “ Half Moon ” off the mouth
of a river. Some of the men now disembarked, and set
about cutting down a tree to replace the lost mast, and
spent the day in preparing it, and in mending their sails.
At that time a belt of huge pine trees grew down to the
very surf.
On the afternoon of July 19th they again went on
shore. They filled their water-casks and caught thirty-
one lobsters. The natives once more came on board,
but their friendly overtures were met with mistrust by
the European sailors. The following afternoon more
natives appeared, this time in boats designed after the
HENRY HUDSON
92
French fashion. The day was bright and sunny. The
natives tried to barter beaver skins and other fxrrs “ for
redde gownes.” Hudson had some of these garments
on board, “ red cassockes,” as Juet calls them, remem-
bering perhaps ecclesiastical vestments that he had seen
worn by priests as a boy. The 21st and 2 and they
spent on shore, making ready their mast ; and on the
23rd they brought it on board and put it into place and
“ rigged ” it.
On July 24th they again went fishing, and, besides
several cod, brought back a halibut, or “ holy butt,” the
largest of all the flat fish that used to be brought into
mediaeval kitchens during the season of fasting. That
evening the sailors noted where the Indians moored their
shallops ; and the next morning some of them went out
early in their scute and stole one of them, and brought
it back to the ship. Not satisfied with this truculent
exploit, they returned again to the shore, with muskets
“ and two stone pieces or murderers,” and drove the Red
Indians from their houses, and “ tooke spoyle of them.”
That Hudson, the friend of Plancius, the friend of
Hondius, the friend of John Smith, and also possibly
of the good Archdeacon of Westminster, should have
consented to such an evil, is extraordinary, and can only
confirm us in our belief that through some inherent
weakness of character he was incapable of keeping his
insubordinate crew under control. If this was not the
case, we must with reluctance give our assent to the
theory that, in spite of his noteworthy enthusiasm for
discovery, he possessed a nature in its essence crass and
brutal.
In connexion with this unfortunate incident, and with
others that were soon to follow, we cannot prevent our
minds from reverting to John Davis, and to his manner
of treating natives, begruling the simple hearts of the
Eskimos of Greenland “ with musicians from Sandridge,
THE NEW WORLD
93
in Devonshire,’’ till they gambolled and ran races with
the sturdy English yeomen “ like children together.”
The next day, at five o’clock in the morning, fearing
reprisals, the “ Half Moon ” set sail towards the south,
“where the sea, upon the north west part, may very
probably come much nearer than some doe imagine.”
A week later they were off Cape Cod. Hudson at first
was uncertain of his position, and named what appeared
to him a newly discovered section of the coast “ New
Holland.” However, he presently recognized his
mistake. “ And this is that headland which Captaine
Bartholomew Gosnold discovered in the yeere 1602,
and called Cape Cod, because of the store of cod-fish
that hee found thereabout.” In the evening of this day
some of his men went on shore, and, as was the case
with that other “ promised land,” these forerunners of
the Plymouth fathers returned to their fellows carrying
“ goodly grapes.” The next day was hot, and they
came to anchor under a promontory.
It was there that they heard a mysterious noise, as
though some “ Christian ” were calling to them. There
is something perplexing about these unexplained sormds
heard by travellers in remote and empty places. If the
merchants crossing the great desert of Lop “ were de-
tained by their natural occasions until the caravans had
passed a hill and were no longer in sight they unexpectedly
heard themselves called by their names in a tone to
which they were accustomed.” Frid^of Nansen, in our
own time, records that as he was traversing the white
ice-pack of the Polar Sea, he heard very distinctly, and
not far off from where he stood, a noise “ something like
the sound made by a goat’s horn when blown on.”
Hudson sent out the ship’s boat, but the men found no
Christian, only Indians, who had, perhaps, been shout-
ing to each other in the security of their green forests.
Being ignorant of the manners of their visitors, these
HENRY HUDSON
94
wild men welcomed the sailors, and one of them allowed
himself to be brought on board, where he was given
food to eat and liquor to drink. Indeed, Hudson gave
him as much as four glasses of liquor, so that when he
was taken back to land “ he leapt and danced.” All this
occurred possibly on the south side of Stage Harbour,
in Massachusetts. The natives are described as posses-
sing green tobacco, and pipes, the bowls of which were
made of earth and the stems of “ red copper.”
They now continued sailing southward past the island
of Nantucket, past Martha’s Vineyard, at first with some
care, owing to sand-banks, but afterwards with the open
sea before them. They had small profit out of their
stolen boat, which was being towed behind the “ Half
Moon ” ; for one day “ she came running up against
our Sterne, and split in all her stemme ; so we were faine
to cut her away.” By August i8th they were olF the
coast of Virginia and within reach of Jamestown, where
Hudson’s friend, John Smith, was struggling with the
various difficulties that beset that early settlement, “ where
gold is more plentiful than copper is with us and where
all their dripping-pans are pure gold.” It would have
seemed natural for Hudson to put into the river. Per-
haps he was deterred from doing so by the fact that he
was sailing under the Dutch flag. He did not sail far
down the North Carolina shore, not as far, probably, as
Cape Hatteras.
On Au^st 19th they stood to the north again, pur-
posing to inspect narrowly the whole line of coast down
which they had come, on the chance of discovering the
desired passage. On August 21st they encountered a
storm, which did them some damage. Juet was also
disturbed by the behaviour of the ship’s cat, which
“ ranne crying from one side of the ship to the other.”
In those days every mood and movement of a cat was
watched witi interest — of these uncommitted grimalkins
THE NEW WORLD
95
which with their slit eyes, for food’s sake, sit on our laps —
for were they not almost certainly in league with the
powers of darkness, highly favoured prickreared minions
of the devil ?
By August 26th they were off Charles Cape, named by
Hudson, Dry Cape. Before them was Chesapeake Bay,
“ a white sandie shoare, and sheweth full of bayes and
points.” That evening Hudson sent a boat out to take
soundings. On August 28 th they reached Delaware
Bay. To the north-east he descried land which he took
to be an island, but which was Cape May. He sailed
into this “ south river ” some distance. They soon
realized that to explore it properly they would require
a ship of less draught. Robert Juet twice climbed to
the masthead in the hope of viewing a deep and open
channel. Coming out of the bay, they csontinued to sail
north, though their advance was seriously hampered by
currents. In the small hours of the morning of Septem-
ber 2nd, they saw signs of a bush fire, but could not with
clearness make out the coast along which they were sail-
ing, “ a drowned land with trees behind it,” but when
the summer sun rose, Harbour Hill, on Long Island, and
Navesink, on the Jersey shore, became visible, and, a
little later, the gleaming flats of Sandy Hook.
CHAPTER XV
NEW YORK HARBOUR
T must be clearly understood that
Henry Hudson was not the first Euro-
pean to discover the Hudson River.
He was the first, however, to sail any
distance up the river and to return
with practical records of his achievement
at a time when there were traders
ready and eager to take advantage of
his explorations.
The honour of first discovering the river must be
given to Giovanni da Verazzano, a navigator in the
service of the French King Francis I. This Italian
entered New York harbour in 1524 as master of the
“ Dolphin,” exactly eighty-five years before the arrival
of the “ Half Moon.” In a letter that this man wrote
to his “ most serene and Christian Majesty,” he describes
his adventure in the following words : “ After proceed-
ing one hundred leagues, we found a very pleasant
situation among some little steep hills {infra piccoli colli
eminentt) through which a very large river, deep at its
mouth, forced its way to the sea ; from the sea to the
estuary of the river, any ship heavily laden might pass,
with the help of the tide, which rises eight feet. But
as we were riding at anchor in a good berth, we would
not venture up in our vessel, without a knowledge of the
mouth ; therefore we took the boat, and entering the
river, we found the country on its banks well peopled,
the inhabitants not differing much from the others, being
86
NEW YORK HARBOUR
97
dressed out with the feathers of birds of various colours.
They came towards us with evident delight, raising loud
shouts of admiration, and showing us where we could
most securely land with our boat. We passed up this
river, about half a league, when we found it formed a
most beautiful lake three leagues in circuit, upon which
they were rowing thirty or more of their small boats,
from one shore to the other, filled with multitudes who
came to see us. All of a sudden, as is wont to happen
to navigators, a violent contrary wind blew in from the
sea, and forced us to return to our ship, greatly regret-
ting to leave this region which seemed so commodious
and delightful, and which we supposed must also contain
great riches, as the hills showed many indications of
minerals.”
Sailing in the same year, hard behind the Italian,
came a Spanish caravel, imder the command of Estevan
Gomez, a Portuguese captain in the Spanish service ;
and it is probable that he also visited this “ commodious
region,” naming it the river of St. Antonio. Both
expeditions set out with the avowed purpose of finding
a north-west passage.
That Verazzano was the first European to discover
the Hudson River is not a fact patriotic Italians intend
to have passed over lightly. When the present writer’s
interest was first engaged in the study of these nice
historical matters, he remembered, or fancied that he
remembered, having seen a statue erected to Verazzano’s
memory somewhere down on the Battery, in New York
City. Immediately he wrote for confirmation of this,
and received an answer from the one to whom his letter
had been addressed : “Yes, that broad-shouldered mon-
strous torso, squashed on its legless trunk upon that
square pedestal like a beggar on a board, is Verazzano.”
But although these Italian and Portuguese captains
visited New York Harbour before Hudson, and were
o
HENRY HUDSON
98
in their turn, in all probability, followed by other Euro-
pean adventurers seeking shelter in the auspicious bay,
the appearance of the “ Half Moon ” may be taken, for
all practical purposes, as the original starting point for
that long record of conflicting events out of which New
York, as we know her today, has sprung. The small
ship that sailed so stubbornly past the site of the present
Battery, and up the great river, was in actual fact the
visible forerunner, like a bird with white wings seen by
prophetic eyes, of a new and amazing epoch in the history
of mankind, an epoch which would entail the fall and
decline of a primitive and valiant race, and the rise into
power of a new people, pragmatical and predacious, and
possessed of an energy that has never been matched.
The prow of the small Dutch boat divided the waters,
and lo, in the twinkling of an eye, under the shadow of
eternity, there sprang up, upon a waste land, a mass of
accumulated matter, inordinate and positive ! Girder
piled upon girder, pilaster upon pilaster, and each fitted
together with so crafty a balance, that as turret and
tower cast their dizzy reflections across the encircling
waters, the very builders stood to wonder.
The first night, the “ Half Moon ” anchored some-
where outside the Narrows. To the north of her rose
the cliffs of Long Island, to the south of her, the coast of
New Jersey. “ This is a very good land to fall in with,
and a pleasant land to see,” wrote Robert Juet, anticipat-
ing in simple language the judgement of a vast vinbom
posterity. The next day was misty, but by ten o’clock
it cleared, and they weighed anchor and sailed close
up to Staten Island. On September 4th, Hudson sent
his ship’s boat to the shore, probably opposite Gravesend
on Coney Island. Several Indians came on board,
being possibly some of those “ swarthy ” innocents who,
ignorant of the deep-bellied future, had stood in solemn
amazement, singing songs of welcome to these intruders
NEW YORK HARBOUR
99
come to them out of the East “ on the back of a strange
fish or sea monster.” Juet thought they seemed " glad
of our coming,” and with the greedy eye of a common
footpad, noticed that they possessed “ yellow copper.”
The next day was again spent on shore by some of the
crew. This time it seems they explored the woods of
Monmouth County, on the mainland of New Jersey.
Chiefly they admired the oaks, “ of a height and thick-
ness that are seldom beheld ” ; but they also looked with
delight upon the graceful linden trees, and upon the blue
plums, and red and white vines, that flourished in those
ancient forests — ^at that time of the year bright with
asters, with poison-ivy, and with Vir^nia creeper.
Juet remained on the ship, but was rewarded, in his
turn, by receiving some “whortleberries,” or huckle-
berries, which he thought “ sweet and good.” How
one would have liked to have seen the white hand, grown
hard with the hauling of ropes, receive from the long-
fingered brown hand that gift of blue berries ! Some of
his visitors wore the famous head-dress of feathers,
others were covered with the skins of elk and fox. Juet
again comments upon the copper they were wearing.
On September 6th, Hudson sent John Colman, with
four other men, through the Narrows. As they rowed
into New York Harbour, their nostrils inhaled “ a sweet
smell.” It was one of those late summer days when the
coxmtry about New York is at its best, when great velvet-
winged monarch butterflies flutter from flower-head to
flower-head, or with quivering contentment settle upon
sultry, hon^-scented milkweed blossoms, when each
glen is red with stag-horn sumach and each slope yellow
with tasselled golden-rod.
Diflferent enough the scene must have appeared to the
eyes of John Colman from that which he had looked upon
in Whales Bay two years before, when he had found
and brought on board the “ Hopewell ” “ a payre of
100
HENRY HUDSON
morses teeth in the jaw,” and when a grey fog had sud-
denly come down, obscuring from sight the bleak coast-
line and high glacial ledges of Spitsbergen. Alack !
He was about to be enshrouded in an even darker night ;
for at the hour when the duck came down to feed on the
wild celery, they were attacked by two canoes, and this
rmfortunate seaman was killed by an arrow, which pierced
his throat. For no obvious reason, the Indians, after
their first onslaught, seem to have drawn off, leaving the
four sailors with their dead mate. Before they were
able to regain the ship, “ the merciless and pitchy night ”
had closed in on them ; and, to make matters worse, it
began to rain. They tried to anchor, but found them-
selves at the mercy of the tide that was too strong for their
grapnel. Ignorant of the fact that Indians seldom
fought in the dark, they spent the night aimlessly rowing
to and fro, every moment anticipating a worse disaster.
The next morning was fine, and they were soon able
to get their bearings ; but it was already ten o’clock
before they reached the “ Half Moon” with the corpse
of John Colman. Later in the day they buried him at
Colman’s Point, which seventeenth-century Dutch maps
place near Sandy Hook.
If the crew of the “ Half Moon ” was mistrustful
before, their suspicions now passed the bounds of all
reason. They hauled up their boat and barricaded the
sides of their ship with waste boarding, and kept the
sharpest lookout. The next day they allowed some
natives to come on deck ; and, while tiiey were barter-
ing Indian corn for knives and beads, the sailors made
conspicuous the boat in which they had been attacked, to
see “ if they would make any show of the death of our
man.” But the ruse was entirely unsuccessful. The
copper-coloured physiognomies of the Red Indian
chatterers remained unmoved. They were far more
occupied in parting with their hereditary grain — of the
NEW YORK HARBOUR loi
same variety that has been found in the ancient tombs
of Peru — than in takmg notice of the blood-stained boat !
The next day “ two great canoes ” came up to the
“ Half Moon.” But because some of the natives carried
bows and arrows, they were regarded with suspicion ;
and perhaps in retaliation for the death of Colman, two
of their number were prevented from leaving the ship.
To satisfy the rough humour of the seamen, these
sav^es, “ with large black eyes and fixed expressions,”
were dressed up in red coats. The practice of kid-
napping natives in those days was almost universal.
Verazzano had done it, Gomez had done it. The
Indians that Frobisher had brought back were the
“ cannibals ” written about by Montaigne.
In contrast to the crude attitude towards “ natives ”
that prevailed at this time, and, indeed, still prevails
amongst the graceless, how reviving “ to the spirits of
just men ” come the characteristic comments of the
great Frenchman, whose magnanimous and emanci-
pated personality can never receive from us sufficient
honour. “ I am sometimes troubled we were not
sooner acquainted with these people, and that they were
not discovered in those better times, when there were
men much more able to judge of them than we are. I
am sorry that Lycurgus and Plato had no knowledge of
them ; . . . I should tell Plato that it is a nation wherein
there is no manner of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no
science of numbers, no name of magistrate or political
superiority ; no use of service, riches or poverty ; no
contracts, . . . the very words that signify lying,
treachery, dissimulation, avarice, envy, detraction,
pardon, never heard of. . . . They are savages at the
same rate that we say fruits are wild, which nature pro-
duces of herself and by her own ordinary progress.”
On September iith the “Half Moon” herself
came through the Narrows and sailed into New York
103
HENRY HUDSON
Harbour, sailed past Kioshk Island, or Gull Island, as
the Indians, because of the number of sea birds that
haunted its level beaches, used to call Ellis Island. The
next day they were anchored somewhere near the Forty-
Second Street Ferry.
How one’s mmd strains to envisage Manhattan as
it was then in its virginal beauty ! For unnumbered
years it had remained, except for the slow progressions
of Nature, unaltered. Each spring the tender green
grass had sprouted freshly from the cold snow-
soaked ground, and each summer the leaves of the
forest had spread themselves out to give shelter to phcebe-
bird and to scarlet tanager. But yesterday, but three
hxindred years ago, the boulders that protrude so sullenly
out of the sloping levels of Central Park had felt upon
their ridged and glittering surfaces nothing but the
pressure of the brown feet “ of a sensible and warlike
people.” Each morning the still glades that now sur-
round “ the Shakespeare Garden ” had suffered no worse
intrusion than from the shy presence of delicate listening
deer. There was an Indian village, the village of Sap-
pokanican, where today, in the Gansevoort Market, I
have seen the country carts, at dawn, disburden their
loads of cauliflowers and of yellow carrots.
Yet the wilful instincts that guided the lives of these
sable-haired men, as they set out from their settlement
to hunt, were identical with ours — as they set out to
hunt in the reedy swamps that then existed near Washing-
ton Square, set out to catch furred, finned, and feathered
creatures in mid-winter, treading with the siure footfalls
of animals over the cri^ surface of the frost-white lagoons.
Whenever we pause for a moment to watch monstrous
scoops, with clumsy maws, feeding upon the earth of
the island, in preparation for a new building, what a
palimpsest of history is opened before our eyes, had we
the wit to see it I Below the graves of the white men.
NEW YORK HARBOUR
103
below where the negro slaves of the old Dutch settlers
were buried, on more than one occasion there have been
revealed the doubled-up brittle bones, “ with arms flexed
and crossed and head thrown back,” of an original in-
habitant, who also, in no other fashion than we, had
received upon him, in his day, the benediction of sun
and of moon.
CHAPTER XVI
THE HUDSON RIVER
HE next day the “ Half Moon ” was
anchored somewhere in that stretch of
the river that is overlooked by Grant’s
Tomb. Four canoes came to the ship’s
side, with a “ great store of very good
oysters ” ; and these molluscs, looking
the same, smelling the same, and
tasting the same, as they do today,
were handed to the sailors in exchange “ for trifles.”
In the evening, at the turn of the tide, they went
still Either up the river, till, at the hour when the
katydids begin their reiterated chorus, thej^ had reached
a position somewhere near Spuyten Duyvil.
On September 14th they sailed almost to West Point,
passing die high escarpments, fifteen miles long, of the
Palisades, passing those frowning bastions down which,
during that magic prelude between the melting of the
snows and the opening of the petal-like leaves of the
dogwood, streams of water can be seen from the landing-
stage of the Yonkers’ Ferry, like threads of silver twine,
white and stationary, against the flat rock-precipices
over which they fall.
_ Often and often has the author of this book pushed
his way through the forests that surround Sneyden’s
Landing— forests that even yet have hardly recovered
from their ravishing under the axes of early lumbermen —
till he has stood upon that high inaccessible level called
the Eagle Rock, where, with mind and spirit liberated at
THE HUDSON RIVER 105
last, he has contemplated in a state of exultant awe a
prospect so noble in its proportions that it has even been
able to sustain the too conspicuous oil-tanks of Mr.
John D. Rockefeller, “ painted green out of courtesy.”
There, from that giddy ledge, where the mountain-pinks
first flower, the river may be seen, far below, stretching
its majestic volume, argent against vert, down to the sea,
down to where, like an insubstantial rack-built city, the
gleaming towers of New York are just discernible,
shivering and trembling uncertainly, twenty miles away,
in the bright sunshine of a New World.
It is, indeed, sad to remember how in the past the banks
of this sovereign river have suffered defilement and base
disfigurement at the hands of ignorant men. So heed-
less has the United States been of the care of her gates,
that she allowed one of the most striking features of the
river, the bold projection called “ Indian Head,” under
which, in Hudson’s day, flew the heron, the pelican,
and the osprey, to be removed and ground to pieces by
a gravel-contractor I
On the “ Half Moon ” sailed — ^past Yonkers, past
the spot where Jeremiah Dobbs was long afterwards to
have his ferry, past the great Hook Motmtain, which
overlooks Nyack, with Tarrytown three miles away on
the other side of the river, that Hook Motmtain which
came to be known as Verdrietig Hoek, or Tedious Hook,
because the early Dutchmen, if they encountered contrary
winds in Tappan Sea, or over against “ the meadows ”
of Sneyden’s Landing, had it before their eyes as a land-
mark for so long a time.
The two captured Indians escaped on September 1 5th.
“ This morning our two savages got out of a port and
swam away. After wee were under sayle, they called
to us in scorne.” That night the “ Half Moon ” was
off Kingston, with the Catskill Moimtains well in view.
On September i8th, Juet’s journal has this entry ; “ In
io6 HENRY HUDSON
the afternoon our master’s mate went on land with an
old savage, a governor of the country ; who carried him
to his house, and made him good cheere.” There is
little doubt that Juet meant to write “ our master and his
mate,” referring to the only occasion when Hudson
himself went on land, somewhere between Castleton
and Hudson City.
A valuable fragmentary record of what occurred has
been preserved for us by one of the Directors of the
Dutch West India Company, John de Laet, in his
History of the New World. De Laet extracted the
passage from Hudson’s own journal, now lost, which we
know was at the time in his possession. The quotation
is written in so agreeable a tone that it goes far to dispel
any doubts we may have felt with regard to the charity
of Hudson’s personal nature.
“ I sailed to the shore in one of their canoes, with an
old man, who was the chief of a tribe, consisting of forty
men and seventeen women ; these I saw there in a house
well constructed of oak bark, and circular in shape, so
that it had the appearance of bemg well built, with an
arched roof. It contained a great quantity of maize or
Indian corn, and beans of last year’s growth, and there
lay near the house for the purpose of drying, enough to
load three ships, besides what was growing in the fields.
On our coming into the house, two mats were spread
out to sit upon, and immediately some food was spread
served in well-made red wooden bowls ; two men were
also despatched at once with bows and arrows in quest of
game, who soon after brought in a pair of pigeons which
they had shot. They likewise killed a fat dog, and skinned
it in great haste with shells that they had got out of the
water. They supposed that I would remain with them
for the night, but I returned after a short time on board
the ship. The land is the finest for cultivation that I
ever in my life set foot upon, and it also abounds in trees
THE HUDSON RIVER 107
of every description. The natives are a very good
people, for when they saw I would not remain, they
supposed that I was afraid of their bows, and taking
their arrows, they broke them in pieces, and threw them
into the fire.”
One likes to think of Hudson thus, indulgent, good-
humoured, sitting on a bulrush mat, at ease in the
simple habitation of these people, the memory of whom
haunts our minds whenever we escape from the shrill
importunity of modern American life into the wild
woods. They have vanished, gone from the mountains,
gone from the forests, but never can we see a solitary
rock, moss-grown and secluded, under the wintry trees,
but our imagination is touched with a whisper of their
presence. I have scrambled through the rmderbrush
of the Catskill Mountains, by ferny hollow and murmur-
ing stream ; and as my feet pressed down the leaf-mould,
over-muffled with creeping arbutus, I have been aware
of them and their long past, brushing against my con-
sciousness like an echo, like the wind in the pine needles.
Here, by this forest river, came mothers labouring in
travail to give birth to tmy cinnamon-coloured mortals.
Here by this rocky ridge on the Montoma hillside,
puissant men bent their bows, strung with the sinews of
animals, against wolf and bear. Here, from this high
lawn, artless uncommtmicative boys, with the insupport-
able ardour of youth in their blood, watched the round
shining sun rise over a landscape wide and free.
With knives formed deftly out of shells, with stone
axes and stone-tipped arrows, these people performed,
vmdistracted by the disease of thought, the simple occu-
pations of each hour. We with our modem methods
of living have our reward, but many generations have yet
to pass before the legend of this haughty and ruined
race will go unheeded. Wherever a common crow,
flying over the tmseen tree-tops, utters its hoarse lone
HENRY HUDSON
io8
cry, the spirit of the Indian lives. Wherever a beaver or
musk-rat splashes, the Indian is not dead. The oyster’s
shell was his platter and the turtle’s shell his cup, white
water was his drink and the fruits of the earth his victuals.
Loyal and cruel, magnanimous and merciless, he lived
to be uprooted like the wild vines whose grapes taste
bitter to the palate of God. Whenever, down in some
side street of New York City, I have observed one of this
race, dressed in the filthy habiliments of his ancient
enemies, yet even so, still recognizable by the rising
swing of his unusual walk, “ there,” I have said, “ goes
a king in exile.”
On September 19th the “ Half Moon ” reached an
anchorage somewhere in the vicinity of Albany ; and
the following day Hudson sent his Dutch mate, with
four other men, to explore further up the river in the
ship’s boat. They returned at nightfall and reported
that upstream the water became narrower and less deep.
Long before this it must have been clear to Hudson that
the great river was not the desired channel he sought.
It is possible that, as far as the Highlands, he still
cherished a faint hope that, rounding some foreland, he
would see unmistakable evidence of having accomplished
his desire. The Strait of Magellan is less wide at
certain points than is the Hudson River ; and yet it had led
the Spaniards, beyond all expectation, into the Southern
Pacific.
The principal sources of the Hudson River lie in the
virginal glens of the Adirondack Mountains, and it is
interesting to remember that during the very same
summer which witnessed the white sails of the “ Half
Moon ” passing between the massed green foliage of
the primeval forests the peerless French explorer Cham-
plain had been present in the foothills of the same
mountains, only a few days’ journey to the north. It
was, in truth, under the shadow of the Adirondack
THE HUDSON RIVER X09
Mountains that Champlain had, with the help of his
musket and a troop of sixty Algonquin and Huron
warriors, defeated ^e Iroquois. Exultant over their
victory, his feral allies had retraced their steps through
the woods at the lake’s margin, torturing to death, as
they went, the prisoners they had taken. For however
much my Lord Montaigne, sitting at ease in his round
tower, under his well-hung Catholic bell, may commend
these people who “ made war upon all the world,” and
however much we may be disposed to admire then-
courage, the ferocity they were wont to display towards
their enemies should not be altogether forgotten. Even
in the annals of man they were remarkable, of laugh-
ing man, who has never been, God knows, prone to
mercy.
It would seem that Red Indians knew no other means
of expressing the jubilation of victory than by physically
degrading tEe conquered, who, with Spartan stoicism,
pitted their own personal pride against the atrocious
handiwork of those into whose power they had fallen.
Strapped to a fir tree, while their enemies pulled at the
tendons of their slit wrists, or tore off their nails, or poured,
boiling water on their scalped skulls, they would mock
their torturers with songs or triumph on their lips. The
appalling midnight yell of the yagesho, the fabled naked
bear, could not have sounded more shocking than did these
unnatural “ death-songs ” of victory in defeat, that would
rise from the dim, intimate forests mto the unaffrighted
American sky. On September 21st Hudson proposed
to sail the “ Half Moon ” further up the river, but was
prevented from his purpose by the number of Red Indians
who came on board. The native name for the locality
of Albany was Schenectadea, “ the place you reach by
travelling through pine woods,” a name which, to my
mind, more than any other, suggests the manner of life
of these people, who themselves upon occasions under-
no
HENRY HUDSON
took long migratory expeditions on foot over the forest
floor, like the elks they hunted.
Hudson that day entertained some of the chiefs in his
cabin, giving them wine and spirits to drink, “ to try
whether they had any treacherie in them.” Under the
influence of the stimulating poison the primitive men
grew as merry as skunks in moonlight. An Indian
woman had come with them, and her decorous demeanour
in the strange environment won even the praise of Robert
Juet. “ She sat so modestly as any of our country
women would doe in a strange place.” Presently one
of the savages, an old man, who had been on board for
several days, became dead drunk, and his comatose
condition so alarmed his companions, that they left the
ship. They returned later in the day, with strings of
wampum, with which they perhaps hoped to purchase
enfranchisement for their chief from the mysterious evil
that had fallen upon him. This wampum was the
native currency, made out of the stem of the periwinkle
and the shell of the rotmd clam ; and it later came to
havej-a recognized value amongst the Dutch, so that
four strings of “ good splendid seawan of Manhattan ”
were equal to a stiver. While these events were taking
place, the carpenter of the ship was at work on shore
making a yard-arm.
The next day the mate and four other men were again
sent out, in the ship’s boat, to explore the river higher up.
This time they rowed to a position some twelve miles
above Albany, perhaps to as far as where Waterford now
stands. Meanwhile, the strayed reveller, having slept
quietly all night, was better, which made the savages
“ glad ” when they came to the ship, at noonday, to
enquire about him — so glad, in fact, that they returned
again to deliver an oration of thanks to Hudson, and to
present him with tobacco and more bead money. They
also sent one of their number back to the shore, who
THE HUDSON RIVER
III
reappeared presently with venison “dressed by them-
selves,” which they ^ve Hudson to eat, and made him
reverence. By so simple a means, and by so simple a
sacrament, did these fond men endeavour to accommo-
date themselves to a contact charged with their doom.
CHAPTER XVII
THE DEPARTURE
N the evening the boat returned “ in
a shower of rain,” the men more firmly
convinced than ever that, higher up,
the river would be useless for shipping.
On September 23rd the wind blew from
the north-west, and they began their
return jomney. Presently they ran
into a mud bank, where they were
stranded for some hours ; but at the rising of the tide,
which is felt as far up the river as Albany, they floated
free again, and were able to anchor for the night in deep
water. The followbg day they once more “ came on
ground on a banke of oze in the middle of the river.”
This was not far from the place where Hudson had gone
on land. Again they were released by the tide, and
spent the afternoon on shore, gathering chestnuts. The
next day, a little further down the river, they put in to
the west bank. They noted the various kinds of trees
they saw growing there, many of which seemed to them
“ suitable for ship-building and for making large casks
or vats ” ; and they also noticed a slate-like material,
which they thought could be used for roofing houses.
As the wind now blew from the south, they kept the
ship where it was for another day. They were visited
by two native canoes. In one of them was the same old
man who had been drxmk, and he brought with him two
old Indian women and two Indian maidens. Hudson
entertained them and gave them a knife, while they, in
THE DEPARTURE
113
return, not only presented him with tobacco and
“wampum,” but dso made gestures as much as to
say that the whole country round about was at his
command.
We can well conceive how the mind of this old Red
Indian had been excited by the sudden intrusion of these
hospitable strangers into the uneventful days of the
forest life that he had lived for so many years. We can
well conceive how he had revolved all the circumstances
of it, as he lay “ under the blue heavens,” and yet had
never — no, not for a single moment — suspected its grave
import for him and for his children and for his children’s
children. For sixty, for seventy years, he had handled
stone-sinkers for his nets, had opened oyster-shells, had
snared turkeys, killed bears, inhaled the clear forest air,
sat talking in the enclosure of a hut raftered with bent
hickory saplings, looked up at the shadowy craters of
the moon, which punctually, once a month, in her pleni-
tude, transformed to the glittering white of mother-of-
pearl the rippling surface-currents of the River Cohoha-
talea. He had Tain with his women, and regularly per-
formed the physical functions that Nature demanded of
his body, and, during all this time, and during the time
of his fathers before him, there had been no indication
that the essential background of the life he knew could
be changed. How, indeed, could he have foretold that
the white man, who made so much of him, who regarded
his surprise at each novel experience with so shrewd
and so genial an eye, was, in fact, a living signal that the
urge of necessity which governs the way of men, was
moving inevitably towards new scenes, new dramas, new
history ; that the traders, who followed in his wake^
and who were to barter for furs behind well-built stock-
ades, would, in their turn, be succeeded by well-established
settlers, who woxild gradually exterminate his people, lay
low his mighty forests, and construct upon the wild earth,
H
HENRY HUDSON
1 14
township and citadel, divorced entirely from the manner
of living he knew and loved ?
On September 2,7th a north wind blew, and they
dropped further down the river. The old man had come
on board again, begging Hudson to visit him once more
and eat with him, but because of the favourable wind it
seemed wise to continue on their way. They next
anchored about the vicinity of Red Hook, fourteen miles
or so below Catskill Landing ; and there the mate and
three other sailors went out fishing, and caught “ mullets,
breames, bases and barbits.” By September 30th they
had reached a position below Poughkeepsie. There
more Indians came on board, and the men bought some
small skins. Juet declares that “ the mountaynes looked
as if some metall or minerall were in them.” The site
where Newburgh now stands he asserted to be “ a very
pleasant place to build a town on.”
On October ist they weighed anchor at seven o’clock
in the morning, and sailed seven leagues. This brought
them to the south entrance of the Highlands, near
Peekskill. More Red Indians came on board, with
skins for sale. We know that Hudson in his lost journal,
declared that the Indians had “ a great propensity to
steal, and are exceedingly adroit in carrying away what-
ever they take a fancy to,” an opinion probably based
upon what now happened.
While the crew of the ship was occupied in bargaining
with the natives for skins, an Indian, who for some time
had been observed paddling his canoe near the stern of
the ship, climbed on to the rudder and stole out of the
window of Juet’s cabin a pillow, two shirts, and two
cutlasses. It was a rash action. Better had he stolen
a bone from a man-eating hyena than a shift belonging
to this ancient dock-walloper ! His act was detected.
The alarm was given, and the savages, who a few minutes
before had been marvelling at the weapons of the white
THE DEPARTURE ti5
people, were now to witness the use to which they could
be put. The Dutch mate shot at the thief, hit him in
the chest and killed him. All was confusion. There
was a general stampede of the Indians overboard ; some
leaped into the canoes, others into the water. The sailors
rushed to man their boat in order to recover their lost
property. One of the swimming Indians, knowing
how easily a birch-bark canoe could be capsized, put
his hand on the gunwale of the “ Half Moon’s ”
boat. He paid dearly for his temerity, for the ship’s
cook, seizing a sword, with one blow, cut off the
dusky gripping hand, and the man was drowned. On
getting back to the ship, Hudson and his men set sail,
and dropped as far down the river as they could before
darkness fell.
The next day they came to anchor in their old haven
near the palisaded fort, Nipinichsan, off Spuyten Duyvil.
There more Indians approached the ship, and they
recognized one of the men they had dressed up in a red
coat. As soon as he had swum to shore, he had evidently
travelled down the river valley with swift intent to revenge
himself, if it was possible, upon the treacherous and
violent explorers who had made such rude sport of him.
Juet was convinced that he came now “ to betray them.”
None of the savages, therefore, were allowed to enter the
ship. Immediately a flight of arrows whistled about the
“Half Moon,” “in recompense whereof we discharged
sixe muskets, and killed two or three of them.” After
this, about a hxmdred more natives were seen collecting
at a certain point of the land, to aim more arrows at the
ship, whereupon Juet “ shot a falcon at them, and killed
two of them.” The savs^es now fled to the shelter of
the woods, except nine or ten men, who manned a canoe,
and with the utmost determination paddled towards
them. Juet let off a second charge from his falcon,
which killed another Indian and shot through their
HENRY HUDSON
ii6
canoe. Meanwhile, his comrades had hit three or four
more of them with musket shots.
They then weighed anchor and went down the river
as far as Hoboken. Juet, as they passed it, observed the
white-green colour of the Weehawken cliff, “ as though
it were either a copper or silver myne ; and I think it
to be one of them, by the trees that grow upon it.” There
they remained undisturbed. “ We saw no people to
trouble us ; and rode quietly all night.”
The next day was “ thicke weather,” and they stayed
where they were, but with some trouble, owing to their
anchor “ coming home.” The following day they
manoeuvred with the help of a favourable wind, until
they were “ clear of all the inlet ” when, with free hearts,
they set “ mayne-sayle, sprit sayle, and top-sayles, and
steered away east-south-east, and south-east by east off
into the mayne sea.”
CHAPTER XVIII
IN ENGLAND AGAIN
VEN when “ the river of the Steep
Hills ” had been left far behind, and the
last misty outline of the American
coast had vanished, Hudson experi-
enced difficulty in dealing with his
dangerous and vacillating crew. The
natural course for the ship to have
taken was back to the Netherlands.
Instead, the Dutch mate suggested that they should
winter in Newfoundland, so as to be near at hand to
continue the search “ of the North-western passage of
Davis through out.” Hudson knew the mutinous
temper of his men far too well to risk a plan which might
entail a shortage of food, and for this reason proposed lhat
they should sail to Ireland. This expedient met with
general approval. As it turned out, however, they
actually came into the harbour of Dartmouth, in Devon-
shire, on November yth, a little over a month after leaving
“ the North River.”
Immediately upon landing, Hudson sent a notice of
his return to his Dutch employers, together with certain
suggestions. He proposed to them that he should go
out again for a search in the North-West, and that besides
the pay, fifteen hundred florins should be laid out for an
additional supply of provisions. He desired also that
six or seven of the more insubordinate members of his
crew should be exchanged for odiers, and its number
raised to twenty. He would then, so he intimated, leave
ii8
HENRY HUDSON
Dartmouth in the beginning of March, so as to be in the
North-West toward the end of that month, and spend
April and the first part of May off the coast of New-
foundland fishing ; from thence he would sail to the
North-West and occupy his time in exploring, till the
middle of September, when he would return to Holland
along the north-eastern coast of Scotland.
The delivery of this communication was delayed
owing to contrary winds ; and, meanwhile, the English
Government, accusing Hudson of having undertaken
a voyage “ to the detriment of his own country,” forbade
him and the other English members of the crew of the
“ Half Moon ” to leave England. This “ Order in
Cotmcil ” xindoubtedly owed its origin to the fact that
news of Hudson’s discovery of a great navigable river
had reached the ears of the authorities. The sailors,
while waiting for further orders, could hardly have been
expected to remain silent. The fishermen, yeomen, and
sq\iires of Devonshire had for so long been accustomed
to listening to seafaring stories that it would have been
a miracle if some account of their adventures had not
leaked out as the returned mariners sat at ease in thatched
taverns cosy as beehives, down in the West Country.
When instructions from the Dutch Directors at last
reached Hudson, in January i6io, ordering him to
return to Amsterdam at once, they came too late. Van
Meteren, through whose responsible hands Hudson’s
log-books, journals, and charts probably passed on their
way to Holland, evidently resented the arbitrary ruling
of the English officials. “ Many persons,” he writes
in his restrained and dignified manner, “ thought it
rather unfair that these sailors should have been pre-
vented from laying their accounts and reports before
their employers.” During his long residence in England,
this stumous cousin of the great geographer, Abr aham
Ortelius, had had ample opportunity of forming his own
IN ENGLAND AGAIN
119
opmion upon our English character. “ The people,”
he declares, “ are bold, courageous, ardent, and cruel in
war, fiery in attack, and having little fear of death ; they
axe not vindictive, but very inconstant, rash, vainglorious,
light and deceiving, and very suspicious, especially of
foreigners, whom they despise. They are full of courtly
and affected manners and words, which they take for
gentility, civility, and wisdom.”
The “ Half Moon,” with the remnant of its crew,
stayed in England till July of the following year, when
it finally returned to Amsterdam. The next time the
historic ship put to sea, she was under the command of a
Dutchman, Commander Laurens Reael, and sailed for
the East Indies. The eventual fate of the valiant vessel
remains unrecorded.
It was not for several years that the full worth of
Hudson’s discovery of De Groote Noordt Rivier was
appreciated. Van Meteren himself merely refers to his
having found a river ” in Virginia,” while Hessel Gerritz,
as late as 1612, wrote that “ Hudson achieved nothing
memorable by this new way.” Indeed, when the rumour
began to circulate, on the return of the “ Discovery ”
from Hudson’s fourth voyage, that the North-West
Passage had been found, the suspicion arose amongst the
Dutch that Hudson had deliberately refrained from
exploring further to the north, that is, through Lumley’s
inlet, as was his original intention, being “ unwilling to
benefit Holland and the Directors of the Dutch East
India Company by such a discovery.”
But whatever might be the official opinion, certain
private traders were not slow to take advantage of so new
and so attractive an opening for prosecuting the fur trade.
Long before this, we read of Dutchmen poachmg in the
French preserves about the St. Lawrence River, whose
avarice for beaver skins led them to rifle the graves of
Indians buried in shrouds made of these valuable pelts,
120
HENRY HUDSON
Such resourceful gentlemen, we may well surmise, were
not likely to neglect so easy an entrance into the very
heart of the regions they coveted. They saw at once
the chance it gave them of competing with the Muscovy
fur dealers ; and the very next year they sent ships to
Manhattan Island, telling the savages that “ they would
visit them the next year again, when they would bring
them more presents, and stay with them a while,” but
adding with apparent ingenuousness, “ that as they
could not live without eating, they should then want a
little land of them, to sow seeds, in order to raise herbs
to put in their broth.”
In this way the invasion began. But it was not the
Indians who at first suifered betrayal, it was the beavers.
The savages had mixed their tails with their “ posho,”
had suspended their tails from the snakes’ skins with
which diey adorned their foreheads, had used their
russet-coloured hides to help them to withstand the
bitter winter winds that swept over their continent
from the north. But now, all at once, the demand for
the pelts of the sagacious creatures was increased to
proportions of unprecedented severity. A wholesale
massacre began, a massacre of these rodents who had
learnt through long ages of trial and error to fell trees,
to build dams, and to sink logs for their winter food,
with an ingenuity xmrivalled in the animal world. We
read of ships leaving the Hudson with cargoes of seven
thousand stos. Indeed, there was not an animal whose
coat could provide a covering for hairless man that was
not trapped, hunted, and killed.
The Dutch West India Company, which inherited
Hudson’s discovery, received its vague and magnificent
charter in 1621. In a hundred years, this land, that
for centuries had given shelter to every kind of wild
creature, underwent a furious ravishing. Man, into
y^hose keeping God ha 4 delivered the beasts of the field,
IN ENGLAND AGAIN 121
was^ asserting his prerogative, the prerogative to take a
terrible toll of life without misgiving or stint.
Then, as the fur -trading interests diminished and
gave place to the more settled regime of the Van Rens-
selaers, Van Cortlandts, and Philipses, the great landed
patroons, evil was meted out to the Indians also. For
a period, while the settlers were still few, the contest
was not unequal. Woach ! Woach ! Ha ! Ha !
Huch ! Wocach ! The terrible war-cry of the Red-
skins was heard with dread, with panic dread, by the
women of outlying homesteads, as they sat at their
Saxon wheels, spinning flax. But nothing could with-
stand the swift action of, the merciless non-moral law of
survival. Dominie Blom of Kingston, with the help
of Burgomaster Krygier, practically annihilated the
Indians of Ulster County ; and “ the only good Indian
is a dead Indian ” became the accepted password. The
twilight of the Mohawks and of the Iroquois had come,
and the stage was set for a new epoch.
‘ All things begin again ;
Life is their prize ;
Earth with their deeds they fill.
Fill with their cries.’
It will be remembered how the Directors of the
Muscovy Company had lost interest in Hudson after the
lack of success of his second voyage. The rumour of
this fresh exploit, however, had the effect of once more
directing the attention of the Lx^ndon merchants towards
him. Hudson had put to the test his theory of smling
across the Pole and had failed. He had tried every
possible route by the north-east and had failed. He
had now endeavoured to find a passage through the main
body of the North American coast, and had failed. But
there still remained the mysterious “ Furious Overfall ”
of John Davis unattempted.
122
HENRY HUDSON
At that time there were in London certain merchant
princes, men of culture, wealth, and enterprise, who were
ever ready to adventure their substance in the cause of
commerce and discovery. Perhaps the most influential of
these was Sir Thomas Smith, who had been one of the
original members of the English East India Company,
and who, during this very year, had been honoured by
James I in that he had hving about Sir Thomas’ neck
a gold chain, with a picture of his own royal features
pendent to it, in celebration of the launching of the
“ Trade’s Increase,” the largest mercantile vessel that
had, up to that time, been floated. This redoubtable
merchant was one of the first to recognize the importance
of an oversea trade, and had even been led so far by his
enthusiasm as to institute lectures on navigation, which
were delivered in his own house by Dr. Hood, and the
mathematician, Edward Wright. At this date, Sir
Thomas Smith had still half a score more years of useful
work before being buried at Sutton-at-Hone, in Kent.
Second in importance to Sir Thomas Smith was a young
man named Sir Dudley Digges, sprung from a learned
family, and himself educated at the University of Oxford.
This gentleman had married a Kentish lady, and had,
thereby, acquired the property of Chilham, near Canter-
bxuy, where a mansion of his building still stands.
After the return of the “ Discovery ” Sir Dudley Digges,
who had always shown the keenest interest in exploration,
published a book, entitled Of the Circumference of the
Earthy or a Treatise of the North-West Passage, a book of
which an uncivil acquaintance wrote, in a manner that
is only too familiar to some of us, “ Many of his good
friends say he had better have given four hundred pounds
than have published such a pamphlet.” Third in conse-
quence was Master John Wolstenholme, Farmer of the
Customs, who was knighted in 1617. This loyal York-
shire squire, whose grandson lost his life at Marston
IN ENGLAND AGAIN
123
Moor, had always been a great promoter of voyages of
discovery.
These three distinguished persons now banded together
with other influential people, as independent merchant
adventurers, to send Henry Hudson once more to sea.
The enterprise also had the support of Prince Henry,
that royal youth of pregnant parts, who, during the few
years that he lived, never withheld his patronage from
any project that had as its aim the advancement of the
Commonwealth, either in the arts, or in matters which
concerned the practical world. It was he — ^and we love
him for it — ^who fostered the whimsical genius of Tom
Coryat, and who befriended Sir Walter Raleigh in the
darK days of his imprisonment, asserting, with the in-
discreet impetuosity of youth, that none but his father
would keep “ such a bird in such a cage.”
This, then, was Captain Hudson’s formidable backing,
when he set sail from London, in the “ Discovery,” on
April 17 th, 1610, “ to try if, through any of these inlets
which Davis saw, but durst not enter, any passage might
be found to the other ocean called the South Sea.”
CHAPTER XIX
THE FOURTH SAILING
HE Barke Discovery,” Captain Wey-
mouth’s old ship, set sail from St,
Katherine’s Pool over against the
Tower, dropping down the Thames
with a number of other vessels that
had been waiting for a favourable
tide. Its crew was made up of
the following men : Henry Hudson,
captain ; Robert Juet, mate ; John Kmg, quarter-
master ; Robert Bylot ; Edward Wilson, surgeon ;
Francis Clemens, boatswain ; Silvanus Bond, cooper ;
Philip Staffe, carpenter ; Arnold Lodlo, Michael Butt,
Adame Moore, Syracke Fanner; John Williams, gunner;
William Wilson, John Thomas, Michael Perse, Adrian
Motter, able-bodied seamen ; Abacuk Prickett and
Bennett Mathues, landsmen ; Thomas Wydowse, a
mathematician ; and two boys, John Hudson, and
Nicholas Syms from Wapping.
Robert Juet, Philip Staffe, Arnold Lodlo, and Michael
Perse had already served under Hudson. Bylot was
a competent navigator, who came from the Precinct of
St. Katherine ; Edward Wilson, surgeon, was a young
man from Portsmouth, twenty-two years old ; John King,
the quartermaster, was honest, but somewhat choleric ;
Silvanus Bond came from London, and Adrian Motter
from Middlesex. Francis Clemens and Syms both came
from Wapping. The former was forty years old.
William Wilson was a mariner of ugly words and worse
124
THE FOURTH SAILING 125
actions. Of Michael Butt, Adame Moore, Syracke
Fanner, John Williams, and John Thomas we know
nothing ; they represent the actors who fill up the stage
for the drama that was to take place.
Thomas Wydowse, or Woodhouse, was a young
intellectual, who perhaps embarked on the expedition
out of an imprudent curiosity. Bennett Mathues, who is
described as “ a landsman,” had been probably engaged as
ship ’s cook. Abacuk Prickett was a servant of Sir Dudley
Digges, and had at one time been a haberdasher. He
had the ingratiating manners and the suave and ready
wit of a menial who has learnt to disguise his real emotions
and conceal his real thoughts. Another mysterious
individual. Master Coleburne, perhaps the same ma n
who had given Captain Weymouth trouble, sailed in the
“ Discovery,” having been “ written on ” by the pro-
moters of the voyage, possibly to play the part of
“ adviser ” to Hudson. His presence evidently “ got
on Hudson’s nerves,” for before the “ Discovery ” had
left the Thames he was put “ into a pinke,” a boat with a
particularly narrow stern, with a letter from Hudson
to the promoters, explaining the reasons for this action.
At Gravesend Henry Greene, a somewhat ambiguous
protege of Hudson’s, came on board. It was often the
custom for the directors of a voyage to pay a formal visit
to the ship before it sailed ; and as this singular young
man had not been “ set downe in the owner’s booke,”
it may well have been that Hudson considered it politic
that he should make his appearance lower in the river.
Greene, who for some time past had been staying with
Hudson in his house in London, was a self-willed scape-
grace. His parents, respectable people living in Kent,
had been outraged by the conversation and manner of
life of their offsprmg, who preferred above everything
the company of bawds, panders, pimps, and trollops.
He belonged to the underworld, was clever, physically
HENRY HUDSON
126
strong, and able to turn his hand to anything. Before
sailing, Hudson had persuaded a certain Master Venson
to open negotiations with Greene’s “ worshipful parents,”
and this excellent man had been able to extract from
the mother the sum of five pounds, to buy clothes for
her son, which money the prudent Master Venson had
insisted upon seeing “ laid out himself.” Hudson had
apparently taken a fancy to this ne’er-do-weel, and
had offered him a berth in his ship, promising upon his
return to England to use his influence with Prince
Henry, to have Greene made one of his guards. Greene
was completely devoid of any religious beliefs ; and he
used to shock Abacuk Prickett, who was a great reader
of the Bible, by asserting that with regard to religion
he was “ cleane paper,” whereon Prickett might write
what he wished.
Greene very soon made his presence on the ship felt.
” At Harwich he should have gone into the field with
one Wilkinson.” There is little doubt that this sug-
gestive sentence, the exact meaning of which has pro-
voked so much discussion amongst historians, was
inserted in Prickett’s journal to indicate roguery of some
kind or other. Was this unknown Wilkinson originally
a member of the crew, and was he put out of the ship
for some ill conduct } Or did Greene resort to a bout
of fisticuffs with this Wilkinson, or did the two men
disport themselves in some other even less decorous
manner in the green fields of Essex on that far-off May
Day ? It is a conundrum “ that might admit a wide
solution.”
They now had favourable winds, and sailed up the east
coast of England without further let or hindrance. On
May 2nd they were “ thwart of” Flamborough Head,
on the coast of Yorkshire, and by the 5 th they were off
the Orkneys. On May 8th they were near the Faroe
Islands, and by the i ith, on the morrow of that day when
THE FOURTH SAILING 127
Henry of Navarre had felt the assassin’s dagger enter his
heart, they had sighted Iceland. Here they were delayed
for a fortnight, owmg to bad weather, with fog and
contrary winds. Eventually they ancWed in Breidi
Fiord, on its west coast, and diverted themselves by
shootmg and fishmg and bathing in the hot springs of an
inlet called by them “ Lousie ” Bay.
It is interesting to know that Hudson and his men
spent so many days on this extraordinary island, which,
by the energy of a fire, too ferocious for our minds to
contemplate, has been thrown up from the bottom of
the sea. From the earliest times this land “ at the back
of the north wind,” which next to Great Britain forms
the largest European island, had been regarded by its
visitors with uneasy suspicion. There seemed something
sinister about so close and dramatic a juxtaposition of
ice and fire. The inhabitants of the place were uncom-
fortable beings, “at night dreaming alwaysof shipwreck,”
and in the day “ singing of the heroical acts of their
ancestors, not with any certain composed order or melodie
but as it cometh in every man’s head.”
Prickett regarded the activity of Mount Hekla with no
confident eye. It was, indeed, this volcano, more than
anything else on the island, that was looked upon askance
by foreigners. When in full eruption, its ashes have
been known to float as far as the Orkneys, so that
fishermen there have called to each other saying that
it was snowing a black snow. In its monstrous
travail it has cast from its crater pumice boulders
six feet m circumference, as far as fifteen miles. Small
wonder that this crater of Thule arrived at, as Pytheas
long ago recounted, by passing through “ a sluggish sea,
where there is no separation of sea, land, and air, but a
mixture of these elements that hath the substance of a
jelly fish,” should have been assumed to be nothing less
than the mouth of hell, now at last finally located. It
128
HENRY HUDSON
was reported that Icelandic fishermen could always tell
the day when any great battle had been fought, “ for they
see wicked spirits going forth and returning, and bring-
ing soules with them,” while for ever about its mouth
flew flocks of birds of evil association, such as ravens and
vultures. The people who lived at the foot of Hekla
had, so it was asserted, “ devils to serve them as familiar
as domestical servants.” Who indeed can doubt that
near so brave a grange rats were “ good and cheap ” ?
It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that such
rumours were welcomed with enthusiasm by the islanders
themselves, who were quick to appreciate the natural
corollary “ that there is nothing in all the world more
base and worthless than a country that containeth Hell
within its boundaries.” And presently there arose a
true patriot amongst them, one Arngrimus Jonas, who
was at pains to confute such calumnies. He explained
at some length, in his celebrated book, that the Hekla
rumour had its origin in the fact that people saw “ no
wood nor any such fewell layed upon the fire as they have
in their owne chimneys at home,” and that Etna is no
less famous for its “ inflamations ” ; and strenuously
denied that “ great swarmes of ugly black ravens and
vultures nestle there,” not only because they would be
driven from thence “ by fire and smoke being things
contrary to their nature,” but also for the reason that
Iceland “ hath no vultures, but that second kind of
eagles which Plinie noted by their white tayles and called
Pygarsi.”
But it was not only the shooting of wild-fowl, such as
partridges, curlew, plover, mallard, teal, and goose, that
occupied the attention of Hudson’s crew during their
Whitsuntide sojourn in the haunted island. Once more
the conduct of Henry Greene gave the men something to
talk about. Apparently he picked a quarrel with the
young Portsmouth surgeon, and was not content until
THE FOURTH SAILING 129
he had fought him on shore. Hudson seems to have
condoned his ill-behaviour, saying that he knew Wilson
had “ a tongue that would wrong his best friend.” The
incident bred much bitter feeling, and Wilson was only
with difficulty persuaded to come on board again.
Matters were not improved by some disloyal words
spoken by Juet, when under the influence of drink, he
declaring that Hudson had put Greene on board as a
kind of stool-pigeon, “ to crack the credit,” on their
return to England, of any one who happened to dis-
please him. The words did not reach the ears of Hudson
until after they had left Iceland, when he was in two
minds to sail back to the island in order to put on shore
the malign old man, leaving him to get home to England
as best he could in one of the visiting fishing-boats.
However, he eventually thought better of it, and they
continued to sail towards Greenland.
I
CHAPTER XX
HUDSON STRAIT
UDSON STRAIT, Ae “Furious Over-
fall” of Captain Davis, had been entered
by George Weymouth, and had been
inspected by Frobisher on his third
voyage, m 1578, who wrote of having
“ a fayre continent upon the starre-
board syde, and continuance still of an
open sea.” It had also been visited by
Portuguese navigators between 1558 and 1569, know-
ledge of its existence from this last source having duly
found its way on the maps and charts of the sixteenth
century. Hudson Bay, even, may be seen drawn out in
Ortelius’ atlas of 1 570, with the words Bata dos Medaos
upon it ; while Clement Adams’ version of Sebastian
Cabot’s planisphere, which was probably known to
Hudson, for at this date it was hangmg in the White
Hall Gallery, actually indicated that, just here, there was
a passage to the Pacific.
Weymouth’s attempt to sail through the Strait in 1 602
had been thwarted by the presence in his ship of a certain
clergyman, named Cartwright, who had travelled in
Persia, and on this occasion had been supplied with a
fresh black clerical gown, for use in Cathay. At the
first sight of ice this man had instigated a mutiny, and,
when Weymouth was asleep, had persuaded the crew to
alter the course of the vessel and sail for home. “ I came
out of my cabin,” writes Weymouth, “ and demanded
of them. Who bare up the helm ? They answered one
HUDSON STRAIT 131
and all.” Naturally the expedition was a failure, a fact
that Captam Luke Foxe does not hesitate to drive home.
“ Hee (Weymouth) neither discovered nor named any-
thing more than Davis, nor had any sight of Groenland,
nor was not so farre North ; nor can I conceive hee hath
added anything more to the designe ; yet these two,
Davis and he, did (I conceive) light Hudson into his
straights.”
Weymouth’s voyage had been succeeded, in 1606, by
an expedition under a seaman called John Knight. This
unfortunate man achieved nothing but his own death.
He landed somewhere on the coast of Labrador, walked
over a hill, with his mate, Edward Gorrill, and was never
heard of again, a happening which provoked the captain-
less crew to report that the natives of those parts were
“ a very little people, tawnie coloured, thin or no beards,
flat-nosed, and man-eaters.”
Besides the papers of George Weymouth, which
Hudson had received from Plancius, he had also in his
possession the celebrated sailing instructions of Boty,
or Bartsen, which had been used by Norwegian and
Icelandic sailors as a guide for reaching Greenland, even
before the time of Columbus. Hudson had been lent
this interesting document by Hondius, and had caused it
to be translated by a certain English merchant named
William Steere. From it he learnt all that was known
of the ancient colony of the Norsemen in Greenland.
It is difiicult for us to realize that this romantic settle-
ment lasted for as long a duration of time as has passed
since America was first visited by the English.
It was made up of two large districts, known respec-
tively as Osterbygd (or eastern settlement) and Vester-
bygd (western settlement). The Osterbygd possessed
twelve churches, one monastery, one nunnery, and
numerous farms, while Vesterbygd contained four
churches and ninety farms. The settlers owned sheep
HENRY HUDSON
132
and cattle, and lived in stoutly-built stone houses, some of
the ruins of which are still standing. There has been
found in recent times in Greenland a gravestone of a young
girl with the following rimic inscription upon it ; “ Vigdis
hviler her glede gud sal hennar.” (“ Vigdis rests here.
May God gladden her soul.”) How amazing_ are the
intricate vistas of history, and how hard for our imagina-
tions to pierce with enlightened vision the shadowed past !
Today, under cover of a few stunted willows, on a far-off
hillside we unearth a memorial stone, and even with so
intelligible a token before our eyes it still remains im-
possible for us, with any degree of clearness, to envisage
the distant morning when this Viking maid was buried in
the cold ground. And yet, like us, she also had cast
bewildered momentary glances up towards the starry
heavens, had listened to the same stories about Jesus
that we listen to, and had trembled as she heard rumours
of the Skraelings, the terrible undersized men who lived
in the North, and who had, so it was reported, little dis-
tinct speech, “ but made a show of a kind of hissing
after the manner of geese.” We hear the names of
these people, of Gunnbjom, the Norwegian, who first
sighted the vast continental island, of Eric the Red, who,
in 982, explored its south-western coasts ; of his son,
Leif Ericsson, who in the year 1000 was the first Euro-
pean to discover America ; of the long succession of
bishops who administered Christian justice to the
dwellers in those fiord valleys ; and yet they carry to us
little realization of the monotony and stir of life as it
developed, year after year, on the edges of that vast
tract of inland ice, which then, as it does to-day, covered
valleys and mountains rmder a single enormous glacier,
a glacier which, through overlapping and precipitation,
discharges into the northern ocean turreted islands,
of pure glass, of a magnitude sufficiently menacing to
command the attention of the preoccupied modern bag-
HUDSON STRAIT
133
men who, with souls self-deluded or dead, sit playing
with dotted cards, their legs outstretched under the
liquor-stained smoking-room tables of our great liners.
How can it be made possible for us to tear from its matrix
this child of human memory, till we see with realistic
comprehension the hardy existence, as it was actually
lived, of these dead men and dead women, who are dug
up in wooden coffins, their tall bones wrapped about “ in
coarse hairy clothe ” !
They tilled the ground, they fought the Skraelings,
they penetrated as far as Melville Bay, and then, because
of the disruption brought about by the Black Death and
the maritime monopoly of the Hansa, they were aban-
doned and forgotten. In the middle of the sixteenth
century an Icelandic bishop, whose ship was overtaken
by a storm near the coast of Greenland,” thought he
espied inhabitants driving cattle.” This is the last
rumour we hear of the lost colony. It has been supposed
by some that, left to themselves, they were exterminated
by their pigmy enemies ; but others contend that they
intermarried with the Eskimos, basing their conjecture
upon certain traditions and customs of imdoubted Norse
origin that still linger amongst this persistent little people,
who never leave the northern shores of our planet. It*
was the Indians who first gave to the Skraelings the name
by which they are now known. The Eskimos, when
referring to themselves, had always used the word Innuits,
which in meaning is equivalent to “ human beings,”
and well they might appropriate to themselves this
appellation, considering the supreme sapience they have
always exhibited m accommodating their lives to the
rigours of their selected environment, providing their
lamps with wicks of moss, contriving their bows out of
the rib bones of whales, and laying their new-born babes
to rest in bird-skin cradles.
For a long time no Europeans visited Greenland, and
HENRY HUDSON
134
then Martin Frobisher sighted it ; and afterwards
Captain John Davis, that admirable son of Devon, landed
on its shores and made friends with its primitive inha.bi-
tants. Both these mariners believed the southern portion
of Greenland to be an island ; and we know that Hudson,
even after his exploration of its eastern coast, still enter-
tained the delusion that a strait divided the north of
Greenland from that southern portion of it that had been
named by Davis “ Desolation.”
In Hudson’s journal we catch the note of satisfaction
felt by a navigator when he sights the land towards which
he is steering situated just where, by the reading of his
chart, it should be placed. “ The fourth day we saw
Groneland over the ice perfectly.” And yet, though he
had located Greenland, it was several days before he was
able to correct his original misconceptions, as becomes
apparent when he speaks of being “ off Frobisher’s
straits.” The chart that was brought back to England,
however, shows that he did eventually acquire a pretty
clear notion as to how the land actually lay.
There was much ” thick ribbed ice ” lying off Green-
land that year, so that Hudson was unable to bring the
“ Discovery ” close in to shore. Towards the end of
June they raised Resolution Island, having already seen
several “mountayneS of ice.” They now entered the
famous strait, which is four hundred and fifty miles long
and one hundred miles wide. Because of the masses
of ice that float backwards and forwards within its waters,
driven this way and that by its turbulent tides, its passage
has always been regarded by sailors as difficult, especially
smce its proximity to the Magnetic Pole renders the
ship’s compass, owing to the excessive dip of the needle,
useless. It is ciurious to note that this latter fact was
observed by Ruyschi, who perhaps was with Cabot on
his voyage of 1498 ; for on his map he says, “ Here a
surging sea commences, here ships compasses lose their
HUDSON STRAIT
135
properties.” The Hudson’s Bay Company in after
years used to instruct its captains not to meet the winter
stream of ice before July 15th, and to leave the bay not
later than the end of September. Hudson, therefore,
in entering the strait on June 25th, was trying to get
through a week or two too early, a fact that may well
explain the difficulties he encountered. A ship sailing
through the strait in fair weather is able to see both
shores, that on the north being bold and sloping, that on
the south being bluff and precipitous. During the two
.summer months when the strait is comparatively free
from ice, Eskimos from the north are said to cross it on
rafts.
Hudson soon foxmd it impossible to keep a direct
course westward, so he steered towards the south, approach-
ing the coast of Labrador near Cape Kattaktok. From
there he sailed north again, sighting the island of Akpatok,
which he described as a “ champaigne land ” and named
“ Desire Provoketh.” Contmuing to sail northward,
he touched the Saddleback Islands, near the northern
shore, and anchored there, naming them “ The Isles of
God’s Mercies.” Then, because of ice, he once more
crossed the strait in a southerly direction, again entering
Ungava Bay. By July i6th he was at the southern
extremity of the Bay, near Kohsoak or Big River. From
there he viewed Labrador, that cold and grim country
which at the present time is being exploited for paper-
mill pulp. Long before Hudson’s visit, Sebastian
Cabot had written of it, “ It is a sterile land. There are
in it many white bears and very large stags like horses,”
an observation wherein perhaps is contained the first
reference we have to the moose.
From thence Hudson sailed north once more, reaching
an island near the north-west cape of Ungava Bay on
July 19th, an island which he named “ Cape Hold with
Hope,” while the headland on the mainland he named
HENRY HUDSON
136
“ Prince Henry’s Foreland.” Between those two points,
when he sounded, he found bottom at 160 fathoms.
From there he sailed westward, along the southern shore
of the strait, naming headlands and islands as he went.
Cape Weggs, to the south of Charles Island, he called
“ King James Cape,” the eastern projection of Charles
Island “Queen Annes Foreland.” By August ist he
had passed between this island and the mainland, with
no ground at 1 80 fathoms. The next day he sighted the
most easterly cape of Salisbury Island, which he named
“ Salisbury Foreland.” From here he sailed west-
south-west fourteen leagues, and came into “ a great and
whirling sea.” The various adventures encoxmtered
during these long weeks have been admirably described
by Prickett.
Sometimes they would anchor by the side of a broad
island of ice, and the men would clamber out of the ship
and fill their casks from the pools of clear water that were
held in its basins. Glad to feel themselves no longer in
confinement, they would run and sport together. Several
times they were diverted by the sight of a polar bear.
One of these animals, on a certain occasion, seemed to
be actually making her way towards the ship ; but when
she realized she was being watched, she forthwith “ cast
her head between her hind legges, and dived imder the
ice,” and so got herself off scrambling as best she could
from floe to floe.
We cannot but admire Prickett’s vivid manner of
writing. Certainly this lackey knew well how to conjure
up before the eyes of his readers the things he saw — She
cast her head between her hind legges ” — that, we may
surmise, was a scene sufficiently imcommon to impress
the memory of the good Abacuk, who, doubtless up to
this time, had seen nothing larger than a rabbit scuttling
across a paddock to its hole in a bramble-patch, as, after
serving Sir Dudley with his malmsey wine, he had taken
HUDSON STRAIT
137
a turn “ in the gloaming ” towards the celebrated
heronry of Chilham Park.
Presently the great masses of drifting ice filled the
minds of the men with terror. They began to judge
that Hudson had lost his way. Everywhere was fog
and ice, ice and fog. Near Akpatok Island, in Ungava
Bay, their discontent had grown so great that they
refused to sail any further. They swore that they were
engaged on a fool’s errand. Juet openly jeered at
Hudson’s enthusiasm, making sport of his hope of reach-
ing the East Indies, “ of seeing Bantam by Candlemasse.”
Once more Hudson’s inclination towards compromise
displayed itself. Instead of breaking the wills of the
insubordinate members of his crew by some head-
strong action — as Drake did, for example, when with
his own hand, as the Spaniards always asserted, he
cut off the head of Thomas Doughty at Port St. Julian,
swearing that he would have the mutiny redressed, “ for
by the life of God it doth even take my wits from me to
think of it,” or as Cavendish did when he was “ matched
with the most abject-minded and mutinous company
that was ever carried out of England ” — Hudson, with
more humanity, but perhaps less prudence, took counsel
with his men, even going so far as to produce his
chart, so that he could explain to them exactly what his
plans were and how far they had been already carried out.
He then asked these mariners “with wrens’ hearts”
whether they wanted to go on or go back, “ yea or nay.”
To which question one sailor answered that if he had a
hundred poimds he would be glad to give ninety of it
to be back home again safe and sormd, “ sitting in my
Dolphin-chamber, at the rotmd table, by a sea-coal fire.”
Philip StaiFe, however, swore that if he had such a sum
“ he would not give ten of it to be back in England, but
on the contrary, would consider it as good money as ever
he had any.”
HENRY HUDSON
138
Of this occasion Prickett writes, “ After many words
to no purpose, to worke we must on all hands, to get
ourselves out and to cleere our ship.” Only once were
they able to land, and that was on the Saddleback Islands,
where Hudson sent a party of men, with Prickett
and Wydowse, to see if they could shoot anything.
They put up a covey of partridges, but all the birds
got away, except “ the old one,” which was shot by the
mathematician.
Now at last, with all their troubles apparently behind
them, they were approaching a narrow, navigable channel
between two noble headlands, whose mighty contours,
as far as they knew, had never before been looked upon.
CHAPTER XXI
HUDSON BAY
HERE can be no doubt that Henry
Hudson, as he sailed through the
narrows between Cape Digges and
Cape Wolstenholme, considered that
the most difficult part of the voyage was
over, and that he had actually discovered
the long-desired passage. On his left
towered the dizzy ledges of the famous
Labrador headland, a headland that terminates in a point
two hundred feet high, but is immediately backed by a
jagged perpendicular cliff that rises to an elevation of
nearly two thousand feet, and is full of crevices and giddy
platforms, where, in the breeding season, the sea-fowl
crowd so close that a hailstone could not pass between
them — ^foolish doves from the cotes of God, whose
plaintive crying, as they rise from their airy nesting
places, one above the other, to circle and poise themselves
in the buoyant sky, creates so insistent a volume of wild
sound that the men who pass that way on the decks of
hollow ships can hardly hear each other speak. Before
him was no river nor ice-filled sound, but an open sea,
wide and full, which must surely lead to where dark-
skinned men, who knew nothing of snow and frost,
employed themselves in packing their priceless mer-
chandise in boxes of almug wood.
Opposite Cape Wolstenholme, two miles away, rose
the vertical cliff of Cape Digges, itself over a thousand
feet high ; and it was between these two magnificent
131 )
140
HENRY HUDSON
promontories that the small ship passed, on that day in
August when was written the last entry preserved for us
in Hudson’s journal. For instead of sailing, as he sur-
mised, towards the balm-bearing East, he was, as a
matter of fact, being drawn surely and inevitably forward
to his own damnation.
Before entering the open water of the bay, he sent
Prickett and Bylot and Greene, and some others, to
explore Digges Island. Long afterwards, in his “ larger
discourse,” written at ease at home, Prickett described
his adventures with graphic exactness. He himself was
in charge of the boat. At first they found it impossible
to land, because of the steepness of the cliffs. The
afternoon was wild with rain and thunder, but ultimately
they came to shore somewhere on the north-east of this
island, which Hudson seems to have fancied at first was
part of the northern mainland. After a rough scramble
over the rocks, they got up into the interior. They saw
several herds of deer, but always out of range of their
muskets. They walked in the direction of a high hill,
but found it was further away than they had at first
imagined, so that they turned eastward and followed
the edge of a great stretch of water which was drained
by a stream that fell over the cliff into the sea “ as much
as wotfid drive an over-shot mill.”
We cannot help wondering what Master Prickett
knew of such matters, and can only conjecture that his
curiosity had led him upon occasions to stand on a stone
coping, to watch some “ furious overfall ” of the Kentish
Stour rush through its sluice, and that it was just such
a duck-pond recollection that prompted him to put on
paper this homely simile. But there was more than
the waterfall to remind him of the English countryside :
everywhere the ground was green with fresh grass and
sorrel. Presently they came upon a heap of stones piled
up in the shape of haycocks. Their appearance suggested
HUDSON BAY
141
that they had been placed together by human beings ;
and the inquisitive serving man coming up to one of them
must needs turn over the uppermost stone, to find to his
amazement that they were hollow and “ full of fowles
hanged by the neck.” It is likely that Prickett was
used enough to the kind of agreeable revelations that
accompany the opening of a larder door, but b this case
we may believe he was taken completely by surprise.
Prickett and Greene now went back for the boat,
arranging to row round the shore and take in Bylot and
the others at a place where they had noticed that the
valley came down to the sea. Meanwhile the weather
conditions had altered. The thunderstorm was over,
and a dense sea fog had come up. It obscured the high
coastland opposite and enveloped the waters of that
northern sea in a silent cloud of bfinitesimal grey par-
ticles of chilled moisture. Hudson, fearing that the
explormg party would find difficulty b locatbg the ship,
caused a number of shots to be fired. Once safely on
board, they gave an account of their adventures and tried
to persuade Hudson to remain anchored for a few days
where they were. Prickett, it is evident, felt no small
reluctance at leaving the stores of provisions he had
discovered.
Hudson would not consider waiting longer. Before
the prow of the “ Discovery ” extended a limitless sea
” with water like whay.” He began sailing southward,
“ confidently proud that he had won the passage.” As
far as possible he kept the eastern shore insight. He
passed between Cape Smith and Smith Island, b a
channel not above “ two leagues broad.” There exist
several groups of islands along this eastern coast, and
Hudson named one of these “ Riunney’s Islands.” Mans-
field Island appears on his chart ; while Foxe declares
that he also named Nottbgham Island, after the High
Admiral of England. From Cape Wolstenholme ffie
HENRY HUDSON
142
coast level falls to Cape DufFerin, and then rises again
as it approaches Cape Jones, past which Hudson had
to steer before entering James Bay. Here he spent
several weeks sailing to and fro, but never finding
the desired passage. He took in water and ballast, pro-
bably at Agoomska Island. The crew once more began
to murmur, reasoning amongst themselves “ concerning
our coming into the bay and going out.”
Such discontent obviously cast reflection upon
Hudson’s competence as a navigator, and the fact that
he voas uncertain as to what to do next rendered him
perhaps more than usually sensitive. On this occasion he
spoke out his mind to Juet, accusing him of disloyalty.
Juet, perhaps relying upon the dissatisfaction of the
sailors, with whom he had spoken, asked to be given an
open trial before the whole crew. The trial took place
on September loth. Hudson first examined and heard
“with equitie” all that Juet had to say in his own
defence, and then listened to the charges brought against
him. BennettMathues asserted that upon their approach-
ing Iceland, Juet had said to him “that hee supposed that
in the action would bee manslaughter, and prove bloodie
to some.” Others testified that soon after they had left
Iceland he had “ threatened to turne the head of the
ship home from the action.” Arnold Lodlo and Philip
Staffs swore with their hands on the ship’s Bible that
Juet persuaded them to keep their swords in their cabins,
together with their muskets, saying that the latter would
be “ charged with shot ere the voyage was over.”
Finally he was accused of having been at the bottom of
the trouble with the men in tifie strait, when he had
derided Hudson’s hope of reaching Java by the second
day of February.
Such damning evidence of bad faith put Hudson in
a strong position. The crew sided with him in thinking
“ it was fit time to pimish and cut off farther occasions
HUDSON BAY
H3
of the like mutinie ” ; and that very afternoon Hudson
deposed Juet from his position as mate, and put Robert
Bylot into his place at the same rate of wages. Also,
Francis Clemens, the boatswain, “ who had basely carried
himself to our master and to the action,” was replaced by
William Wilson, while Adrian Motter was made boat-
swain’s mate, and John King and William Wilson,
who had both “ very well carryed themselves to
the furtherence of the businesse,” were promised a
rise in their pay out of the boatswain’s “ overplus
of wages.”
Meanwhile Hudson assured the disgraced men that if
they behaved themselves in the future, “ he would be a
meanes for their good, and that he would forget injuries.”
It may well be imagined that vague assurances of this
kind carried little weight with sailors who had had their
wallets tampered with, nothing in the world being more
calculated to stir up that stagnant mire of evil blood,
present in the hearts of all mortal men, than money, the
gain of it, or the loss of it. Robert Juet nursed his
hatred like a red-eyed ferret in the hutch of his dark soul,
but for the present he was powerless to do evil.
But even when the sensation of this “ ship’s row ”
had subsided, the course of the “ Discovery ” remained
as much of a mystery to the crew as ever. Wydowse,
undisturbed, contented himself with supposing that
Hudson had a desire thoroughly to explore James
Bay “ for some reasons to himself known.” Prickett
and the rough sailors hardly credited him with any
purpose at all. “Up to the north we stood till we
raised land, then downe to the south, and up to the north,
then downe againe to the south,” and it must be con-
fessed that we also find it difficult to explam why Hudson
should have spent so much time “ in this labyrinth with-
out end,” instead of boldly roundmg Cape Henrietta
Maria and sailing for the western shore of Hudson Bay
14 +
HENRY HUDSON
which would be the most natural place to look for an
opening into the Pacific.
At Michaelmas they were in Hannah Bay, but came
out of it almost directly, and stood to the north again,
where they met with foul weather, and lay anchored
for more than a week. As soon as ever the wind abated,
Hudson, impatient of delay, ordered the men to heave
up the anchor. This they set about to do, but against
their own judgement, as a heavy sea was still running.
Just as the anchor was “ on peake,” the ship gave a
lurch, and the mariners hauling at it were thrown down
from the capstan, Michael Butt and Adame Moore being
seriously hurt. The cable also would have gone over-
board, had not Philip Staffe, whose experience had
prepared him for just such an emergency, cut it free
with an axe. After this they continued to sail to and fro
and eventually came to the south-west comer of James
Bay. Here Hudson sent out the boat to the land, yet
the water was so shallow that the men had to wade to the
shore, where, amongst rocks and driftwood covered with
snow, they came upon the “ footings ” of a man ! What
manner of human being it was who had traversed this
drear expanse, directing his way between stunted juniper
bushes and over snow-white levels with nothing but an
occasional wild duck to disturb the solitude of the
featureless littoral, they never discovered.
On board again they once more set sail. Philip Staffe
warned Hudson of the danger of rocks, and sure enough
they presently ran on a rift and remained stranded upon
it for twelve hours, “ but (by the mercy of God) we got
off unhurt but not unscarred.” We may believe that
Hudson's prestige was in no way strengthened by this
misadventure. They afterwards crossed to the south-east
comer of James Bay and dropped anchor in a harbour
where stood three hills. This harbour is now called
Rupert’s Bay. It is in latitude 51° 10', and is sheltered
HUDSON BAY
145
on the north by a granite hill, four hundred feet high,
which has since been named Sherrick Mountain.
Hudson now sent Prickett and Philip Staffe to the
shore, for the purpose of seeking out a good place for
wintering ; “ and it was time, for the nights were long
and cold, and the earth covered with snow.” Purchas,
writing only a few years afterwards, declared that Hudson
finding himself embayed in shallow water, “ committed
many errours, especially in resolving to winter in that
desolate place, in such want of necessarie provision.”
It is, however, difficult to know what else he could have
done, considering that the seas to the north, through
which he would have had to pass in order to return home,
were probably at this time of the year ice-locked. The
next day being November ist, they hauled their ship
aground close in to shore, and by the tenth of the
month the “ Discovery ” was frozen in.
CHAPTER XXII
THE WINTERING
T was during the very month that
William Shakespeare’s Winter's Tale
was being put on the stage for the first
time, that this other winter’s tale began.
It would be hard to conceive a more
desolate landscape than that which now
surrounded the marooned company.
The brackish water of James Bay was
frozen over and disfigured with hummocks of snow-
covered ice. The shore to the westward was very low,
with wide mud-flats, out of which projected an endless
series of snow-hooded rocks. On the edge of this white
waste grew small Arctic willows, so stunted by cold that
only a few inches of their twigs were visible above the
snow ; and behind this dwarfed vegetation, on each
bank of the river now known as the Nottaway, grew
spruce, and pine, and juniper, their branches mossy
on the south side, and all of them contorted and bowed
as though in paralysed flight from the cruel winds that
swept down upon them from the north.
The ship still contained a good supply of victuals, but
not enough to get them through the winter and bring
them back again to England. For this latter purpose
they already relied upon the number of birds that they
had seen nesting on the cliffs at Cape Digges and at
Cape Wolstenholme. Hudson began regulating the
distribution of the provisions, “ for it behoved us to have
a care of what we had ; for that we were sure of, but what
THE WINTERING
H7
we had not was uncertain ” : also, to increase the supply
of food, he offered rewards for any bird or beast brought
back to the ship ; at the same time giving instructions
that no sailor should go hunting by himself, but always
two together, the one carrying a gun, the other a pike.
Some time before this, John Williams, the gunner, died.
Now, it was the custom amongst sailors, in those days,
that if any of their number died on a voyage, his clothes
were forthwith sold before the mast to the highest bidder.
The unlucky gunner had possessed a mariner’s gaberdine
of grey homespun ; but instead of following the usual
practice Hudson promised to sell this garment to Greene,
who, as we know, was without clothes other than the ones
supplied to him by Master Venson. This arbitrary
disposal of the prized clout formed a fruitful subject for
discussion amongst the rest of the crew. However, as
it was in the province of the captain to arrange as he
thought best, the matter rested there.
Hudson now decided to build a house on shore, in
spite of the fact that when this very step had been sug-
gested at the end of October, he had refused to consider
it. Philip Staffe, realizing the difEculties of putting up
even the roughest shelter in the dead of winter, when
every plank would freeze to the ground, and the nails,
when he held them in his mouth, would take the very
skin off his lips, sent back word to the master “ that he
neither would nor could goe in hand with such worke.”
When these words of the carpenter were reported to
Hudson, he lost his temper and went down to Staffe
“ and ferreted him out of his cabbin to strike him, calling
him by many foule names, and threatning to hang him,”
thereby once more revealing a fatal weakness in the
management of his crew. Men, like animals, respond
best to reasoned firmness. A policy of “ frightfiilness ”
is dangerous, but nothing is so dangerous as conduct that
vacillates between propitiation and a show of false force.
HENRY HUDSON
148
This psychological axiom may be put to the proof with
any group today, with Russian moujiks, with American
or British strikers, with the Riffians, or with a band of
naked spear-bearing Masai in Africa. Men will recog-
nize monsters as their masters and saints as their saviours,
but in an emergency they will invariably cut the throats
of those leaders who are neither the one nor the other.
In this case the carpenter delivered himself of a con-
siderable amount of “ back chat,” declaring that he knew
“iwhat belonged to this place ” better than Hudson did,
“ and that he was no house carpenter.”
The next day, while still out of favour. Staffs, who
was one of the best hunters in the ship, took his fowling-
piece and went on land. Henry Greene went with him ;
and this so displeased Hudson, that to punish Greene, he
allowed Robert Bylot, who at this time seems to have
been in high favour, to have the gunner’s gown. It
was a method of retaliation unworthy of the great ex-
plorer, and one calculated to excite bad feeling. As soon
as Greene heard about it, he went to Hudson and chal-
lenged his former promise, at which Hudson began
railing against his favourite, telling him that he was a
rascal whom no one would trust with twenty shillings,
and that unless his manners improved he would not
receive from him a penny in wages.
It seems that after this, a reconciliation took place
between Hudson and Staffe ; for the latter went to
work and, like the skilful ship’s carpenter that he was,
soon put together some kind of shelter.
So the dark hours of the winter slowly passed
over the heads of the stricken and dejected men.
Scurvy, that imrelenting bane of sailors, broke out. The
blackened gums of their jaw-bones rotted round their
teeth, and their limbs swelled ; and Prickett grew lame
and the nails were frozen off the feet of Francis Clemens.
And ever about the isolated men was the same dismal
THE WINTERING
149
landscape, the same dismal and monotonous sea. Nothing
but miles and miles of snow, cusping the ridged and
rocky strand, and drifting higher and higher against the
juniper trees, which, like mute and despondent sentinels
of misery, stood about on the upper slopes. And behind
this immediate prospect lay the limitless northern
continent, stretching from Labrador to the ice-bound
swamps of the Mackenzie River, from the Mackenzie
River to the northern coasts of Alaska, and beneath
the burdened branches of the frost-resistmg evergreen
timber of this single vast forest moved the hardy animals,
the prices of whose pelts were presently to fill the purses
of London merchants. Enormous moose, too heavy for
travelling over the frozen crust, stabled themselves in,
keeping pathways open by their treading, so that they
could nuzzle at the twigs of the jack-pines powdered over
with snow. In snug hollows, huge pregnant sow-bears
dreamed away the winter rmdisturbed by any noise save
the nature-drugged respiration of their curled-up mates.
While to the north and to the south, over the crisp sur-
face of the forest floor dibbled with fallen twigs and tiny
dry-dead fir-cones, moved packs of timber-wolves, like
grey shadows, between the perpendicular never-ending
shafts of motionless, snow-drooping, perfectly silent
Christmas trees.
Was there nothing to awaken these uncircumscribed
regions out of their accustomed prehistoric torpor, no
sign by which its furry denizens could be made cognizant
of the abomination of desolation that was approaching,
that was indeed heralded by this band of white men
cooped up on the shore of this great dead sea of the New
World ? A few more decades passed, and the Hudson's
Bay Company was shipping beaver skins to London in
cargoes of fifty thousand. Bears, martens, foxes, and,
indeed, every breathing creature whose backbone was
covered with warm fur, were now ruthlessly flayed. Not
HENRY HUDSON
150
for nothing did the great Company select for its motto
Pro felle Cutem, Skm for Skin, not for nothing has it
selected for its telegraphic address today the single
significant word “ Beaver.”
As the days drew on towards Christmas, Hudson and
his crew came to subsist more and more upon ptarmigans,
birds provided by God for these. His chosen people,
after the same manner that He had sent down quail to
satisfy the hunger of the Children of Israel long ago
among the sandhills of Moxmt Sinai. But no token of
divine dispensation was capable of softening the hearts
of Juet, Greene, and Wilson, hearts harder than ever
was the heart of the obdurate Pharaoh of old. However,
as long as Bylot stood by Hudson, all was well. The
hour of darkness was nigh, but had not yet struck. In
the secret crevices of their minds they fed their black
thoughts and watched them grow.
We cannot refrain from contrasting the malignant
atmosphere of this splenetic winter’s camp with the air
of good-fellowship that had prevailed in the hut of
William Barents, fourteen years before, when he had
wintered in Novaya Zemlya. This, for example, was the
Dutch entry for Christmas night, 1596 : ” It was foul
weather on Christmasse day, and yet though it was foule
weather, we heard the foxes runne over our House, where-
with some of our men sayd, it was an ill signe ; and while
we sat disputing why it should be an ill signe, some of
our men made answer, that it was an ill signe because
wee could not take them to put into the Pot or roast them,
for that had been a very good signe for us.” Imagine
Juet giving expression to any such merry speeches !
Imagine it ! Robert Juet, who from the first had pre-
dicted that the action would “ prove bloody to some.”
A-t the first indications of the approach of spring, the
willow-ptarmigan, “ white as milk,” became scarce, its
place being taken by migratory water-fowl such as the
THE WINTERING
151
swan, the goose, and the duck, flying towards their
mcredibly renaote breeding haunts far in the North,
These birds came down only for a few hours before con-
tinuing their audible, undeviating flight across the frozen
bay, and were exceedingly hard to approach. “ Never
did I see such wild-fowl,” wrote Captain James, who
wintered in this same locality twenty years later ; “ they
could not endure to see anything move.” As the
season advanced, even those migratory birds were no
longer present. Then it was that the thoughts of these
men, twenty-one men and two boys, were troubled with
the most primitive of all lusts, the lust for food ! Time
and again it has been proved that the clamour raised by
the belly will more than anything else drive men to
extremities. A hungry human being is dangerous.
This it is, and nothing else, that causes revolutions.
When guts are empty, kings quake. The most omni-
vorous of all mammals cannot easily brook being without
food, and it is an exigency that he scents afar off. As
soon as ever he begins to suspect that there is likely to
be a shortage of the viands that support life, then,
civilized or uncivilized, he looks about him with a ferocity
primordial and unscrupulous. Hungry baboons ! Who
with the utmost civility can persuade them to remain in
barren fig-trees } When the roped intestines grow dry
the heart grows hard. How should it be otherwise ?
Does not some deep instinct, some imperative fore-
knowledge out of the long past, instruct us ?
In the reign of Henry VIII the expedition of Master
Hore in search of the North-West Passage caused many
a gentleman of the Inns of Court and of die Chancery to
find palatable the well-basted buttocks of their com-
panions. Lieutenant Greely, in his unfortunate adven-
ture, had Private Henry shot, for no better reason than
that the other men of the party feared him because he was
stronger than they and stole bacon ! Already Juet and
HENRY HUDSON
152
Greene and Wilson realized that there was danger of
starvation ; and we may be sure that not one of these
three men would be content to die whistling through his
fingers. Eat they must, but eat what ? The animals
were fleet of foot and the brant geese swift of wing.
They wandered into the woods, up over the hills, and
down into the valleys, searching like knavish foxes for
“ all things that had any show of substance in them, how
vile soever.” They ate moss, “ than the which,” writes
Prickett, “ the powder of a post be much better.” They
ate frogs, those grotesque bladder-bellied caricatures of
humanity, to the taste, “ in the time of their engendering,
as loathsome as a toad,” who, as the snow and ice melted
\ander the soft influence of the spring’s grace, had
emerged from their wintry quiescence to satisfy their
tincouth love-longmgs by the edge of pools and swamps.
For already, through the obscure vegetable arteries of
every tree and bush, the magical life-sap was moving ;
already in every direction “ the ice was being exhaled by
the sun and suckt full of holes, like honey comb.”
One day the mathematician brought back from the
woods the buds of a certain tree — of the tamarac, perhaps
— “ full of a turpentine substance ” ; and these, being
boiled by the Portsmouth surgeon, “yielded an oily
substance,” which was used not only as a salve, but also
to make up a decoction for drinking which proved an
excellent remedy for the men, “ whereby they were
cured of the scorbute, sciaticas, crampes, convulsions,
and other deseases, which the coldness of the climate
bred in them.”
Then, when the ice was beginning to melt in good
earnest, their sense of absolute and unrelieved solitude
was suddenly broken by the appearance of a native,
“ coming to the ship as it were to see and be seen.” This
unexpected event, in the time of their utmost destitution,
filled Hudson with hope. He made a great deal of the
THE WINTERING
153
savage, and tried to get from the crew certain knives and
hatchets for him to carry back as gifts to the place from
which he had come. John King and Prickett responded
to Hudson’s appeal, and the savage went away with a
knife, some buttons, and a looking-glass, making signs
to the effect that after he had slept he would come again.
There is something curiously provocative in the picture
of this wild man of the woods, with his matted and
coarse-fibred hair, like the mane of a horse, retreating
into the wilderness with a mirror in his hand that had
reflected with detailed accuracy so many times the
countenance of Sir Dudley Digges’ serving-man, and was
now to enable this Indian, this wandering Cree, to con-
template, far more clearly than he had ever done in forest
pool, his own extraordinary features.
When he returned, which he did shortly, he came
drawing behind him a sled, on which were two deer-
skins, two beaver-skins, and some meat. He was also
carrying a script under his arm, from out of which he
presentiy drew the things that Hudson had given him,
gravely laying the knife upon the beaver pelts, and the
mirror and buttons on the deer-skins, as tibough he did
not realize them to be presents, taking them rather to be
tokens of future benefits.
This simple honesty, and the fact that he had returned
as he had promised, so reassured Hudson, that he now
felt himself — his communications with the Indians being
assured — in a position to drive a good bargain. He
had limed the branch and the bird had come to settle.
When, therefore, the Indian offered to barter one of the
deer-skins for a hatchet, Hudson insisted that the imple-
ment was worth both the skins. The native consented
to the explorer’s exaction at the time, but evidently
formed a secret resolution never to come near him again.
One authority asserts that he was “ badly treated ” by
Hudson ; and although this is improbable, there can be
HENRY HUDSON
1 54
small doubt that he detected in the overbearing attitude
of the Englishman that latent avarice presently to have
so great an influence on the fortunes of his race, the same
avarice which caused that bold adventurer, Radisson, to
fix the price of beaver-skins once and for all by declaring
to the Indian spokesman that if he would not agree, he,
Radisson, would travel to his country and “ eat sagamite
out of his grandmother’s skull,” the very same spirit
that showed itself in the directions given by the Governors
of Hudson’s Bay Company to their factors in the early
days, when they foimd their huge profits were being
reduced by inter-tribal warfare. “ Tell them,” they
wrote, “ that it doth nothing advantage them to kill and
destroy one another, that thereby they may so weaken
themselves that the wild, ravenous beasts may grow
too numerous for them and destroy them that survive,”
directions that were soon replaced by others, instructing
the agents to refuse to supply the nation beginning the
next fight with powder and shot, “ which will expose
them to their enemies which will have the master of them,
and quite destroy them from the earth, them and their
wives, and children.”
As the native never returned, Hudson and his men
were once more thrown upon their own resources. James
Bay was now almost free of ice, and Hudson sent Greene,
Wilson, Perse, Thomas, Motter, Mathues, and Lodlo
out in the shallop to fish. Here were some brave fisher-
men to go casting nets in this Sea of Galilee ! The first
day their draught of fishes numbered five hundred, made
up of trout and some other kind “ as big as herring.”
Immediately they assumed that their anxiety on the score
of food was at an end. It was said afterwards that
Hudson, had he shown prudence, would have begun
salting down fish for the return voyage. Every one was
profoundly relieved. “ They were in some hope to have
our wants supplied and our commons mended.”
THE WINTERING
*55
Alack ! Their confidence was premature. Try as
they might after that day, their efforts were never re-
warded with the same plenty. Food once more became
scarce, and some of these fishermen began to contem-
plate leaving the ship, as rats leave a granary when they
see the corn sifting out of the last sack. For you may be
certain that the heads of Henry Greene and William
Wilson were not occupied with any nice theological
disputations, as they stood to let down their nets. The
plan devised by Wilson was “ to steal awaye ” the shallop,
which had recently been got ready by Staffe, and to escape
to some place where hungry mouths were less plentiful.
This they imdoubtedly would have done, had not Hudson,
before their plan could be put into execution, suddenly
announced that he himself intended to use the small
boat in an excursion of his own, towards the south-west,
where, because of the smoke that he saw, he knew there
must be natives.
Hudson, giving instructions to the men left behind in
the ship to occupy themselves by taking in water, wood,
and ballast, set out, carrying with him the fishing net and
a supply of victuals to last him eight or nine days. He
named no definite day for his return. He seems to
have rowed away with the conviction that he would be
able to get in touch with the Indians, who, living com-
paratively settled lives under their moose-hide tents,
would be in a position to supply him with flesh, and “ that
a great store.” We cannot but think that he acted
unwisely in removing himself from the “ Discovery,”
and so many of his men at so critical a juncture. It
gave the starved sailors the opportunity they wanted for
meditating evil.
Hudson’s expedition proved a complete failure. He
found it impossible to come up with the savages, who
evaded him at every turn, actually setting the woods on
fire in his very sight. After several days he returned to
HENRY HUDSON
156
the ship, utterly discouraged. For little or no reason,
save his own ill-humour, he seems at this time to have
committed the grave error of deposing Bylot from his
position as mate and placing John King, the quarter-
master, in his place. We can hardly doubt that in doing
this he was playing mto the hands of the malcontents.
With Bylot disaffected, those in favour of mutiny were
in a stronger position than ever. Certain words they
uttered as they got the ship ready for leaving its winter
haven have been preserved for us, words muttered by
ragged sailors holding to the lanyards or standing by the
capstan bars. John King was an ignorant man, who
could neither read nor write, and j^et it was he who was
now in Hudson’s confidence. With scant provisions on
board, they weighed anchor on June 12th, the ,, men with
many an oath declaring “ that the master and his ignorant
mate would carry the ship whither the master pleased.”
HUDSON STRAIT AND BAY.
This map illustrates Hudson’s fourth and last voyage. The red lettering
denotes names used by Hudson. In the preparation of this sheet
reference was made to Mr. Miller Christy’s map bound in the ^ Voyages
of Foxe and James ’ published by the Hakluyt Society, The ‘ Furious
Overfall * often mentioned is Lomles Inlet.
«
CHAPTER XXIII
THE MUTINY
EFORE sailing Hudson had taken
stock of the provisions that were left.
He collected what bread remained, and
divided it amongst the men with his
own hands ; and the share of each man
came to one pound, “ and hee wept
when hee gave it unto them.” He
also sent the boat out once more to see
what could be caught in the net ; but it came back,
after having been gone two days, with only four-score
small fish, “ a poore reliefe for so many hungry bellies.”
As soon as they sailed, the demand for food again
became pressing ; and this time, “ to stop a gap,” he
brought out what cheese remained, and divided it into
equal portions, which came to three and a half pounds for
seven days. The crew believed that there were more
cheeses in the storeroom than had been divided. Hudson
apportioned the cheeses all at one time, because he foxmd
they were not of one goodness, and in this way he thought
to insure to each man an equal share of the good and the
bad. The plan did not prove a success, because when
the food was once in the men’s possession, nothing could
restrain some of them from eating up their fortnight’s
ration in one or two days. Greene, for example, gave
his ration to one of his mates, to keep for him, but
presently demanded it of him again and devoured it.
William Wilson ate the whole of his allowance in a smgle
day, and “ laid in bed two or three days for his labour.”
167
HENRY HUDSON
158
It seems that Hudson, during this critical time, still
cherished his purpose of continuing the search for the
North-West Passage. They fell in with a wide sea,
“ agitated by mighty tides from the north west,” and
immediately he became obsessed by his old passion.
“ This circumstance,” writes one chronicler, “ inspired
Hudson with great hope of finding a passage, and his
ofiicers were quite ready to undertake a further search ;
but the crew, weary of the long voyage, and unwilling to
continue it, bethought themselves of Ihe want of victuals.”
And, in truth, the suspicion that extra supplies were being
held back was poisoning the men’s minds.
Hudson also seems to have believed that the men had
certain stores of food concealed in their cabins, and to
prove this suspicion he sent the ship’s boy, Nicholas
Syms, to search their sea-chests, and there were brought
to him as many as thirty cakes. With the temper of the
sailors so uncertain, it was extremely impolitic of Hudson
to take such a drastic step. We know how Juet had acted
when his pillow was stolen by the Red Indian, and we
can guess how little he relished having his private locker
looked over by a cabin boy.
The mutual distrust that now pervaded the ship was
not improved by the fact that Hudson had in the boat
certain favourites, amongst them the young surgeon,
whom he used to ask into his cabin, to enjoy, so the
hungry men imagined, ampler fare. Indeed, it seems
almost certain that Hudson did not act with complete
honesty over the distribution of the remaining stores.
Afterwards, in their evidence, the mutineers affirmed
that he had “ a scuttle ” between his cabin and the hold,
through which he could receive separate supplies “ to
serve his own turn.” The matter came to a head
through the simplicity of Philip Staffs, who, being
approached by Wilson to explain “why the master
should so favour to give meate to some of the companie.
THE MUTINY
159
and not to the rest,” answered in justification of Hudson’s
action that “ it was necessary that some of them should
be kepte upp.” We can guess the effect that those
innocent words had upon the consciousness of Wilson.
“ It was necessary that some should be kepte upp ! ”
So that was the idea, was it ! But if some were to be
“ kepte upp,” what was to happen to Robert Juet, Greene,
and the rest of them ? That was the question that
offered itself for consideration in out-of-the-way corners
of the deck, in the darkened gangways, and in ill-
ventilated bunks.
On Saturday night, June 23rd, while the “ Discovery ”
was moored in ice, Wilson and Greene entered Prickett’s
cabin. There, in the confined space of that dim cubicle,
with choked water of the great bay murmuring and lap-
ping on the other side of a few inches of sound English
oak, was conveyed to the intelligence of the serving-man
one of the foulest plots that has ever defiled the records
of exploration. In hushed voices the conspirators told
how they and their associates were determined to put
Hudson and the impotent men out of the ship into
the shallop, “ and let them shift for themselves.” The
two declared that they had not eaten for three days, and
at best there was not left more than a fortnight’s victuals
for all the company ; and as for themselves, ” they would
go through with it, or dye.”
Though Abacuk Prickett was weak in the legs, his
mind was as clear as ever. He expressed his astonish-
ment at what had been commimicated to him and appealed
to the two men, for the sake of their wives and children,
” not to commit so.foule a thing in the sight of God and
man as that would bee.” Bachelor Greene, after listen-
ing to this pious “ chat ” for a few minutes, told him to
hold his peace ; for that “ as the master was resolved to
overthrow all,” he knew it to be a matter of starving or
hanging, and of the two he preferred to risk the gallows.
i6o HENRY HUDSON
They then imparted to Prickett the comfortable news
that it had been decided by the ring-leaders that he
would be allowed to remain on the ship, at which Prickett
began to mutter something about not having come into
the ship for the purpose of mutiny. They countered him
by saying that if he felt like that about the matter, perhaps
it would be best for him after all to try his luck in the
shallop. To which the worthy Prickett answered,
“ The will of God be done.” Greene, at that pietisticai
utterance, lost his temper and flung out of the cabin,
swearing that he would cut the throat of any man who
double-crossed them. The boatswain remained, telling
Prickett “ that he intended to goe on with the action
whilst it was hot,” and explaining that it was too late
now to change their plans, seeing that if what they plotted
came to Hudson’s ears, they themselves might be served
with the same mischief they were devising for the
others.
In a little while, back came Greene, to enquire whether
Prickett had been won over. To whom Wilson answered,
“ He is in his old song, still patient.” Prickett again
attempted to reason with them, pleading with them to
delay the execution of their plan for three days, for two
days, for twelve hours, adding that if they would only
wait till the following Monday, he would then join with
them in insisting upon having the provisions of the ship
equally divided. He told them that he suspected that
“ it was some worse matter that they had in mind,”
seeing that they were impatient to carry through their
deed at such a time of night. Whereupon Henry Greene,
the professed freethinker, to prove that it was not “ bloud
and revenge hee sought,” took up the Bible that Prickett
ever kept near his bedside, and swore on his oath that
“ hee would doe no man harme, and what he did was for
the good of the voyage, and for nothing else.”
The other mutineers now came in and did likewise,
THE MUTINY
i6i
each swearing to keep a promise which itself was nothing
but a sanctimonious prevarication. There they stood
together, those secretive and bloody-minded mariners,
each vying with the other in assurances that there was no
evil in the murder they planned. The old man Juet,
whose skill and judgement they relied upon for their
return voyage, went so far as to assert that he, when he
reached England, would justify the deed. John Thomas
and Michael Perse took the false oath, and after them
Bennett Mathues and Adrian Motter. When these last
two appeared, Prickett asked them “ if they were well
advised what they had taken in hand,” and they answered
him that they were, “ and therefore came to take the oath.”
After all this, we can hardly be blamed for sharing the
opinion of that hearty cheerful Yorkshire captain, Luke
Foxe, or North-West Foxe, as he liked to call himself,
who had met Prickett face to face, and who ends his
observations with regard to him by saying, “ Well,
Prickett, I am in great doubt of thy fidelity to Master
Hudson ! ”
Prickett was now curious to know what other members
of the crew would presently appear in his cabin to take
his famous oath. But no one else came. The exact
words that Prickett had invented for the men to say
were : “ You shall sweare truth to God, your prince and
countrie : you shall doe nothing, but to the glory of
God and the good of the action in hand, and harme to
no man.”
Remembered long afterwards, in retrospect those
whispering midnight hours, so critical, nay, so fateful,
were able to impart even to Prickett’s graphic style a
new glamour. “ It was darke,” he writes, “ and they in
readinesse to put this deed of darknesse in execution.
. . . Now every man would go to his rest, but wicked-
nesse sleepeth not.”
They at first feared that John King, the new mate,
1
i6z
HENRY HUDSON
was with Hudson, but were reassured to learn that
he was talking with StafFe, who was sleeping “ on
the poope,” and immediately Bylot was sent to meet
him, as if by chance, so as to get him if possible
into his cabin. Henry Greene, meanwhile, kept com-
pany with Hudson, watching over him like a death-
house jailor, lest he, growing suspicious, should take
steps to prevent the villainy they had in hand. Only
once did he leave him, and then to bring to the mutineers
a piece of bread that the cabin boy had given him. Well
can we see him haunting the sleeping man, this dangerous
and depraved youth whose black lawless spirit knew
naught of pity.
And the dreamer, what dreamed he ? Did his mind
escape out of the coffined bunk ? Did his spirit, under
the dispensation of sleep, see before its unawakened eyes
the Golden Gates of the East, which had for so many
years haunted his imagination ? Did the disembodied
sprite of this slumbering seaman tread once more the
wooden wharfs of Amsterdam, or emerge from Peahen
Alley into Bishopsgate, or sail again in happy fancy up
the great river he had discovered, with the cool autumn
smells of the unmeasured hillside forests fresh in his
nostrils .?
The cabin arrangements of the “ Discovery ” were as
follows : In the ship’s kitchen lay the cook, Bennett
Mathues, with Silvanus Bond, the cooper, who was
crippled. Next to them were Wydowse and Syracke
Fanner, the one sick and the other lame ; next to them,
the surgeon and John Hudson ; next to them, Wilson and
Arnold Lodlo. In the gun-room lay Robert Juet and
John Thomas. On the larboard-side lay Michael Butt and
Adame Moore, and near to them Michael Perse and
Adrian Motter. Outside the gun-room lay John King
and^ Robert Bylot, and Prickett and Francis Clemens.
Amidships, between “ the capstone and the pumpes,”
THE MUTINY
163
slept Nicholas Syms, with the empty berth of Henry
Greene at his side.
And while the small tunnelled ship rocked to and fro
at anchor, on the perfect balance of her keel, the whisperers
with restless impatience awaited the coming of the dawn,
awaited the hour when their vigil would be over, and they
would be free to perpetrate their crime without further
fear of surprise. The death-watch beetle was silent ; no
scratch was heard from the tiny feet of the bugs, as, led
by an obscure instinct, with the utmost deliberation
they moved from one dark beam to another. No sound
was made by the deep-swimming fish, as they touched
with their blunt noses the slippery keelson far under
the ice-bearing water. All was stillness. Treachery and
slumber lying together had brought forth silence.
And then, as the first indications of sunrise appeared
over Charlton Island and over the cold stretches of water
that lay between the ship and the eastern shores of the
great bay, there was audible in each wan chamber the
cheerful familiar sound of Mathues, the cook, going out,
kettle in hand, to fetch water from the butts. This was
the signal. John King was beguiled' into entering the
hold, and the bolt of its door slipped fast upon him.
Greene and another went on deck, to divert the attention
of Philip Staffe “ with a talk ” ; for although they had
no intention of putting him out of the ship, they did not
feel at all certain as to how he might act in the face of
open rebellion.
Henry Hudson now came out of his cabin. Immedi-
ately the sound of a scuffle was heard. John Thomas
and the cook had leapt upon him, and before he had
time to resist, Wilson, from behind, had pinioned him
with a rope. The Portsmouth surgeon, hearing a noise,
looked out of his door. He shouted to Hudson, to ask
what was happening, and Hudson answered that they had
bound him. Immediately the mutineers turned upon
HENRY HUDSON
164
Wilson, and enquired of him if he was well ; and when
he answered that he was well, then they said to him,
with the sinister reticence of dangerous men, that “ yf
he were well he should keepe himself soe.” Hudson
now asked the men what they intended, and they
answered him that he would know “ when he was in the
shallop.”
The moment for swift action had come. The shallop
was hauled alongside the ship, and Hudson was put
into it, under the care of Bennett Mathues and John
Thomas. Many of the men were ignorant as to what
had been arranged. Bylot, who kept himself below
deck, afterwards declared that he was under the impres-
sion that they intended to hold Hudson in the shallop
only for as long a while as they would take to search the
vessel for food.
To the majority it was “ utterlye unknowen who
should goe or who should tarrye,” Greene, Wilson, and
Juet acting as “ affection or rage did guide them in that
furye.” Greene, for example, now that Mathues and
Thomas were in the shallop, had a mind that they should
stay there ; and he would have carried this double
treachery through, had not Silvanus Bond and Francis
Clemens, realizing what he was up to, had them back
“with much adoe,” and forced Arnold Lodlo and
Michael Butt to take their places, men who, only a few
moments before, had themselves been railing against
Hudson.
“ The authors and executors ” of the plot now seized
upon Wydowse, who had sufficient imagination to en-
visage what was in store for him, and went to his doom
“in the greatest distress,” calling out that they could
have his keys and share his goods, if only they would
allow him to remain on board. He was followed by
Adame Moore and Syracke Fanner, mariners too sick
to make trouble, and also by John Hudson.
THE MUTINY
165
While Greene, with oaths and curses, was super-
intending matters on deck, Robert Juet had gone
down to the hold to bring up John King, but the
old man had undertaken more than he could manage,
for no sooner had he slipped the bolt back than he
was attacked by the former quartermaster, who had
his sword with him, and held Juet at bay, and would
have killed him had not other mutineers come to his
rescue and helped him to get King on deck and out into
the shallop.
Meanwhile, Prickett had crawled from his cabin
and put his head above the hatch which, when the
mutineers saw, they told him “ to keep himself ” and
get back again to where he came from, neither suffering
him to speak to Hudson nor giving heed to his ejacula-
tions that besought them, “ for the love of God, to remem-
ber themselves, and to doe as they would be done unto.”
Prickett retreated, consoling his uneasy conscience by
repeating to himself a favourite text, “ There are many
devices in the heart of man, but the counsell of the Lord
shall stand,” From the familiar security of his bunk,
however, he did manage to call to Hudson in the shallop,
using the home (window) which gave light into my
“ cabbin,” to tell him that it was the villain Greene, and
not Juet, who was at the bottom of the business, and “ I
spake it,” he records with no little complacence, “ not
softly.”
The shallop had now been manned to the satisfaction
of the mutineers. But it was destined to hold yet one
other. Philip Staffe, the Ipswich carpenter, who seems
at first hardly to have understood, now delivered himself
of his simple commentary upon the proceedings that were
taking place. This honest man, from the banks of the
River Gipping, had not heard the bells of St. Mary-at-
Key “ knoll to church ” for nothmg. He knew what
was right, and what was wrong — ^no one better ; and he
HENRY HUDSON
1 66
was not a man who could be easily budged from the narrow
path. Rough and illiterate as he was, he became gradu-
ally aware that his own personal pride was in some way
involved by what was happening. It is true that he was
at liberty — at liberty, and yet at the same time bound by
a stouter and more inextricable sailor’s knot than could
ever have been contrived by the quick fingers of young
Master Greene. To his unsophisticated intelligence
there seemed no doubt as to his present duty. Suddenly,
deep down in the heart of this rude man, born and bred
in Suffolk clay, the celebrated categorical imperative of
Immanuel Kant became audible ; and he turned upon
the mutineers, and in the curious dialect of East Anglia,
told them plainly what was in his mind. “ As for him-
selfe, hee said, hee would not stay in the ship unlesse
they would force him.” Let him have his chest of
carpenter’s tools and be damned to them, for he chose
rather to commit himself to God’s mercy and “ for the
love of the Master go down into the shallop, than with
such villaines to accept of likelier hopes.” The muti-
neers could not dissuade him from his purpose, and down
he went into the doomed boat, with his chest, his musket,
some meal, and an iron pot.
And now, the shallop still being in tow, they stood out
of the ice ; and when they were nearly out of it, “ they
cut her head fast from the stern of the ship,” and with
top-sails up, steered away into an open sea, leaving their
captain and his son, with seven poor sailors, abandoned
and exposed, “ without food, drink, fire, clothing, or
other necessaries,” in the great unexplored bay. There
he sat in the tiny boat, dressed “ in a motley gown,” the
possessed sea-captain who had sailed to the North, and
sailed to the East, and sailed to the West in his endeavour
to find a passage through the ice-bound ramparts of
the planet itself. There he sat, this dreamer, in his
coat of many colours, until to the eyes of the mutineers,
THE MUTINY
167
who watched the shallop grow smaller and smaller in
the wake of their stolen vessel, he became a mote, a speck,
a nothing, lost to sight on the xxnrestmg waves of the
wharfless wilderness that had been by him, so resolutely,
so desperately discovered.
•
CHAPTER XXIV
CAPTAIN GREENE
OW that the deed was done, and the
mutineers were free to act as they
wished, a curious paroxysm of licence
seems to have passed over the ship,
the sailors behaving like robbers who
have slab the goodman of the house.
All was at their disposal. There
was not a square foot of that floating
hostel that was left unrummaged. The scuttle used by
Hudson was open to inspection by all. The chests of
the poor sely sailors, who had been herded into the boat
like so many bell-wethers, lame with foot-rot, were
broken into and rifled.
One of the mariners looked b upon Prickett — ^who
remabed in his bunk listening to the sound of heavy
boots going to and fro “as if the ship had been entered
hy force ” — and enquired of him “ what they should
do.” To which the affronted Bible-reader answered,
doubtless chafing at his enforced imprisonment, that “ hee
should make an end of what he had beg\m,” for he adds,
“ I saw him doe nothbg but sharke up and down.”
While this savage ramshackle pandemonium was in
progress, they took b their top-sails, and contented them-
selves with righted helm to “ lybg under the fore-sayle.”
In the hold they found more food than even they had
expected, food that had probably been kept back by
Hudson as a last store agabst his continued search for
the Passage. It consisted of one and a half vessels of
168
CAPTAIN GREENE
169
meal, two firkins of butter, twenty-seven pieces of pork,
and half a bushel of peas. When they entered Hudson’s
cabin, they discovered not only the scuttle “ made from
owte his cabin into the hold,” but also two htmdred
ship’s biscuits, and aqua-vitae, and as much as a butt of
beer.
While they were occupied in this empty cabin, which
still retained all the signs of having been so recently
tenanted by their master, a cry arose that the shallop
was in sight again ; and immediately, like the guilty
men that they were, “ they let fall the main-sayle, and
out with their top-sayles, and fly as from an enemy.”
It is possible that Hudson and the abandoned sailors did
for a short time endeavour to follow the ship north-
ward ; for, before getting into the shallop with his iron
pot, Staffe had managed to have a word with Prickett,
and the two men had arranged that if either of them
reached Digges Island, they would leave some token
there, “ neare to the place where the fowles bred.” If
Hudson did cling to this hope, it was only for a little
time ; for Bylot definitely declared, in his testimony
before the High Court of Admiralty, that he last saw the
shallop heading “ to the southward.”
This man, Robert Bylot, who, it is interesting to note,
never accused Hudson of deliberate wrong-doing, now
had charge of the “ Discovery.” It had been the opinion
of Hudson “ that there was not one in all the ship that
could tell how to carry her home ” ; and this remained
to be proved. Prickett still tried to reason with the men ;
but William Wilson, more than any other, would not
hear of taking up the abandoned sailors. If the “ Dis-
covery ” could not reach England, he, and Greene, and
Thomas, had a mind to run up the black flag and turn
pirate.
And so the good ship “ Discovery ” sailed northward,
along the east coast of the bay, past the Baker’s Dozens,
HENRY HUDSON
170
past the Sleepers and the Belchers, manned by a crew
dressed in the tattered clothes of their deserted mates.
Presently they came to an island, where they tried to
fish, but could not, because of “ rocks and great stones.”
There Michael Perse killed two birds ; and they also
gathered an abtmdance of a certain green herb which in
their wintering place they had called “ cockle-grasse,”
and which was a cochledria, or kind of rock-weed, which
grows in mud near the seashore. They remained
anchored there for a night and half a day, but saw no
more of the shallop.
Henry Greene then went to Prickett and told him to
take charge of Hudson’s cabin, giving him the keys of
Hudson’s chest, and instructing him, not only to deal
out what provisions remained, but also to have under his
care Hudson’s journal and charts. Greene had put
Hudson’s best things aside for himself, to use, as he told
Prickett, “ when time did serve.” Prickett thought it
would have been more fitting that Juet should have taken
upon himself this unenviable position ; but Greene
answered that Juet should not enter Hudson’s cabin,
“ nor meddle with the master’s card or journals.”
Indeed, the mutineers had spared Prickett’s life for no
other reason than that they felt confidence in his power
of presenting the authorities with a plausible and well-
contrived story when they should reach England. Their
confidence was not misplaced, for his “ larger discourse,”
which eventually fell into the hands of Purchas, through
Prickett’s master, is, as an apologetical essay, extremely
clever. Probably we owe the destruction of the greater
part of Hudson’s own journal to Prickett’s foresight.
In all likelihood he acted the part of a kind of head censor
of the written material that was allowed to return in the
ship to England ; all that was overlooked being a scrap
of paper that probably, owing to the illiterate ignorance
of the ransackers, had remained unnoticed in the writing-
CAPTAIN GREENE 171
desk of the mathematician — a scrap of paper that, though
not exactly incriminating, has yet given to the historian
many a clue to those seeds of dissension that were eventu-
ally to bring to birth such calamitous fruit.
^ They now once more weighed anchor, and, under the
direction of Bylot, sailed north-east. This was con-
trary to Juet’s judgement, who held that their correct
course should be more to the north-west. As far as it
was possible to do so, they kept the eastern shore in sight,
but presently ran into more ice. “ We ranne from thin
to thicke, till we could goe no further for ice, which lay
so thicke ahead of us (and the wind brought it after us
asterne) that we could not stirre backward or forward.”
There they lay “ embayed ” for a fortnight, with ice
“ that continued miles and half-miles about them.”
Meanwhile the dispute went on as to their best sailing
direction, Juet still asserting that they should steer to
the north-west, while Bylot remained confident that they
ought to keep on towards the north-east. And this they
did when they got free of the ice. Presently they came
to four islands, perhaps not far from Portland Pro-
montory ; and i^ain a party went on shore, only to be
rewarded, however, with more cockle-grass.
Prickett was already discovering that the task which
had been imposed upon him was likely to bring him into
trouble. Henry Greene seems more and more to have
dominated the company ; and Prickett presently learnt
that he had been “ kept in the ship against Henry
Greene’s mind,” a revelation that he found far from
reassuring, especially as the young scapegrace, whom the
sailors now called “ Captain,” began “ very subtly to
try to involve him in a search “ for those things which
he himself had stolen,” and to undo him with the change
of dishonesty, particularly with regard to “ thirty cakes ”
that had mysteriously disappeared.
Bylot from this time began to keep his own log-book.
HENRY HUDSON
172
a copy of which is still preserved at Trinity House.
Perhaps it was this regular and orthodox proceeding that
alarmed Greene, and made him swear that the “ Dis-
covery ” “ should not come into any place (but keep to the
sea still) till he had the kings majesties hand and seale
to show for his safetie.” They next sighted, off the
mouth of Mosquito Bay, the islands that Hudson had
named after Rebecca, Lady Rumney, who had been one
of the promoters of his venture. They were still skirting
the east shore, and presently ran on a rock. However,
as far as could be seen, no great harm was done. A little
later they sighted land that seemed to stretch out ahead
of them to the north ; and some of the mutineers im-
mediately concluded that they had passed the two capes
they were seeking. Bylot, however, still insisted that their
course was correct, declaring that “he hoped in God, to find
somewhat to relief them that way as soone as to the south.”
It is evident that throughout this voyage most of the
men were completely at a loss as to where they were.
Their only hope was that they might suddenly sight those
two lofty bird-haunted cliffs, whose features they remem-
bered, and which, they knew, guarded the entrance of
the great inland sea where they were now so hopelessly
lost. The suspicion that they had already passed those
two proud promontories added still more confusion to
their already confused conjectures as to their exact posi-
tion. Juet swore that it was impossible that they could
have come this way “ unlesse the master had brought
the ship over land, and advised them to look more closely
into Hudson’s chart.”
Prickett and Bylot alone seem to have had some idea
as to their true bearings, the latter declaring that the land
they saw was “ the mayne of Worsenhome Cape,” because
he recognized “ that the shallow rockie ground was the
same that the master went downe by, when they went
into the great bay.” The Master ! They had no
CAPTAIN GREENE
173
Master ! Worse off than they had ever been, they beat
along the coast in an evil plight. Twice they sent the
boat ashore ; and, behold, those bloody carnivorous
men were fain to fill their bellies with cockle-grass I
Except for a great narwhal’s hom they foxmd nothing
but this grass ; and if such vegetable nourishment had
been lacking, they would scarcely have reached the
Capes alive.
At last, to their infinite joy, they saw them — Cape
Digges and Cape Wolstenholme, dim at first, but growing
every moment clearer and clearer, as the lost ship drove
its way through the waters of the forlorn sea. There they
stood, those two magnificent monuments, guarding the
southern entrance to the Bay, with the wild-fowl, just as
the year before, circling about them, their white wings
flashing in the sunlight, as with a turn of the head and an
effortless motion they rose from their nests, to poise
their buoyant bodies in the bright sea air, high above
the square wind-driven wave furrows, that hour after
hour, day after day, formed and vanished and formed
again.
As they were coming through “ the little straight,”
late in the evening, they ran on a rock, and remamed
stranded on it till four o’clock the following morning,
when a “ flood ” came from the westward and set them
afloat again. They made a great deal of this adventure,
on their return, “ as a very probable argument of an open
passage into the South Sea.” Indeed, Sir Dudley
Digges alluded to this “ flood ” in his book with all the
pride of an owner. “ Our straights,” he writes, “ showed
a great and hollow billow and brought a flood that rose
5 faddome.”
That morning, July 27th, they sent the boat out, ^d
the men who manned it managed to kill some thirty
birds ; though, as the ship, for fear of the rocks, was
riding at anchor far from the shore, much of their time
HENRY HUDSON
174
was occupied in the mere labour of rowing. The next
day, therefore, they sailed to the north of the strait and
brought the “ Discovery ” nearer in, hoping to locate
the exact place where before they had noticed the birds
breeding. This they did, and the following day sent the
boat to the shore. But before it had touched land,
suddenly roTind a point to the eastward appeared several
native canoes, manned by fifty or sixty savages. The
wandering Eskimos seem to have been just as excited
and surprised as were the mutineers. They immedi-
ately drew together, taking their little canoes into their
big canoes, and then paddled towards the English,
“ making signs to the west.”
At first the sailors were suspicious. But after the
savages had stood by them for a little, and had made
gestures of friendly communication, they became re-
assured, and actually allowed one of their number to be
rowed to the Eskimo tents which stood in a cove nearby.
In exchange for this hostage the sailors took into their
boat a savage, who presently, when they had landed at
the place where the wild-fowl built, showed them how
it was possible to catch the birds when they were sitting
on their eggs, by means of a long pole with a noose
attached to one end of it. Not to be outdone, the sailors
must needs let off one of their muskets, and with a single
shot killed seven or eight gulls, so easy was it for them
to demonstrate the superiority of their invention — of
that invention destined to have so far-reaching an influ-
ence on the history of every continent, upsetting the
natural balance of power, and proving again and again
that it is hopeless to pit moral qualities against the mon-
strous regime of machinery. For this combustible in-
gredient of matter, invented by the Chinese, by the Friar
of the Fosse Way near Ilchester — ^who is able to predict
an end to its illicit and appalling power ?
After they had got what birds they wanted, they went
CAPTAIN GREENE
175
to the cove to pick up their mate ; and the natives came
out of their tents, making the liveliest demonstrations of
affection, “ dancing and leaping and stroking their
breasts,” and offering presents to the sailors, of skins
and furs and walrus teeth. In appearance they were
described as being “ bigge-boned, broad-faced, flat-
nosed, and small-footed, like the Tartars.”
That evening the mutineers were in the highest
spirits. In vain Hudson had tried to get in touch with
the inhabitants of those wild lands, and yet here, by an
accident, by a very chance, they had met with “ the most
simple and kind people in the world.”
CHAPTER XXV
DIGGES ISLAND
OBODY was more elated by this for-
tunate contingency than was Henry
Greene, who imagined, because of the
friendliness of the natives, that their
troubles with regard to food were now
at an end.
The next morning they brought the
ship still closer into land, and made
what haste they could to get to shore in their small
boat. Prickett, lame as he was, went with them,
having had instructions to take from Hudson’s cabin
certain articles for barter. With many an oath they
at last got away from the ship, Prickett, Henry
Greene, William Wilson, John Thomas, Michael Perse,
and Adrian Motter. They rowed to the cove where the
natives were camped, and made the boat fast to a great
stone near some rocks on its east side. Down to Siem
came the savages, “ leaping and dancing,” as they had
done the day before. Each sailor had in his hand some-
thing or another to exchange with them ; but Greene
forbade them to part with anything until the venison
that had been promised by signs the day before should
be produced. The Eskimos answered his demands by
pointing to the mountain behind, and calling to their
dogs, perhaps of that same exceptional breed that had
been remarked by Captam Davis, “ mongrels as bigge
as hounds,” but furnished with “ pizzles of stone.”
All the men, except Prickett, were now out of the
DIGGES ISLAND 177
boat. Greene, Wilson, and Thomas stood nearby,
holding communication with the natives, while Perse
and Motter clambered up the rocks gathering sorrel.
Except for Greene, who had a broken pike in his hand,
they were unarmed. No treachery was suspected.
Wilson and Greene, like hucksters at a country fair, were
occupied in displaying their trifles — ^looking-glasses, Jews’
harps, and bells. Meanwhile, one of the Eskimos, dis-
engaging himself from the group, stepped into the water
and approached Prickett as though to show him some-
thing. Prickett, who because of his lameness had been
left to look after the boat, made signs to him to go back
to the shore. The savage, however, still advanced,
pretending that he did not understand. Prickett then
stood up in the boat, “ in his long ^owne,” and pointed
at him to go back to the land, which he did. At the
same time a second Eskimo had stolen into the water
from the other side. Prickett had no sooner settled
himself down at the bottom of the boat, with the lazy
self-indulgence of a sick man, than he suddenly caught
sight of the foot and leg of a human being already over
the gunwale behind him. This unexpected vision
roused him from his reverie ; and at the same instant he
realized that the intruder was reaching over his head to
stab him with a knife. With an instinctive motion of
self-protection, Prickett threw up his right arm, and was
just in time to divert the blow, which merely grazed his
chest, “ under my right pappe.” Foiled in his first
attempt, the native struck twice more. The third blow
wounded Prickett’s thigh and almost severed his little
finger from his left hand.
By this time, however, the powerful lame landsman
was able to close with his assailant ; and winding the string
of his knife rotmd his own hand, he began pushing the
Eskimo away, whom he found “ weake in the gripe
(God enabling me).” So weak, indeed, was the savage,
M
HENRY HUDSON
178
that the muscular servant found it possible to get his right
hand free, and with this advantage began looking about
for some weapon, with which, in his turn, to strike his
opponent, the savage’s left side, as he held him down in the
boat, being unprotected. Suddenly he remembered the
small Scotch dirk that he wore on his hip ; and snatching
it out of its sheath, he drove it into the man’s throat.
While this scuffle was taking place, the men on land
were also being attacked. Those little people of the
North knew well, from their experience in hunting seals,
that no part of the body is more vulnerable than the
belly ; so that John Thomas and William Wilson both
had “ their bowels cut out.” Michael Perse and
Henry Greene were also wounded, and came tumbling
into the boat as best they could. Meanwhile, Adrian
Motter, who was still searching for sorrel, seeing what
was taking place, rushed down over the rocks and leaped
into the sea, wading and swimming, till he had hold of
the stern of the boat, where Michael Perse, hatchet in
hand, was covering the retreat.
Still the savages pressed upon them. Greene cried,
“ Coragio,” and, wounded though he was, laid about
him with his pike-staff. Perse sent one native sprawling
into the water with a blow from his hatchet. All was
confusion. Prickett kept calling to get the boat roimd ;
Adrian Motter kept crying to be taken in. Eventually
they got Motter out of the water, and, with the help of
Perse, Prickett managed to turn the head of the boat
and get her clear of the shore. The natives now had
resort to their bows. The first flight of arrows killed
Greene, wounded Perse, and transfixed Prickett with
“ a cruel wound in my back.” Once the prow of the
boat was round, Motter and Perse seized the oars and
began rowing away as fast as they could. The natives
now ran to their boats, and it looked to Prickett as if they
intended to launch them. As ill luck would have it.
DIGGES ISLAND
179
the rocky cove could not be seen from the “ Discovery,”
so that they might have been overtaken, capsized, and
murdered, without Bylot or Juet knowing anything about
it. Away they rowed ; but they had no sooner got in
sight of the ship, than Michael Perse fainted. Adrian
Motter now stood up in the boat and waved, but for some
time no notice was taken of his signals. “ But in the
end they stood for us, and tooke us up.”
Here was a day’s work. In the place of a boatful of
venison, Bylot, Juet, the ship’s cook, and the rest of them,
had to receive on board a cargo of men, dying and
wounded. Greene’s corpse, limp and senseless in death,
was not even taken into the “ Discovery.” They threw
it into the sea from the boat, where it was left to be
pecked at by screaming gulls and examined at the bottom
of Hudson Bay by the inhuman inquisitive eyes of
unfastidious lobsters. As Prickett characteristically re-
marked, “ he made reckoning to receive great matters
from these people, he received more than he looked for,
and that suddenly.”
The savage who had been stabbed by Prickett was
still alive, though unconscious. The sailors looked at
the knife he had used with interest, and concluded that
it was of the same make as those used in Java. He and
John Thomas died that day, as did also William Wilson,
“ swearing and cursing in a most fearful manner.”
Michael Perse followed them two days later.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE RETURN OF THE
MUTINEERS
HEY were now in a worse case than
ever. Only nine out of the original
crew remained alive — Bylot, Prickett,
Edward Wilson, Juet, Clemens,
Mathues, Bond, Motter, and the boy
Nicholas Syms, and these were sick
and half-starved. Obviously it was
necessary for them to land somewhere
else on Digges Island, in order to get what birds they
could for the replenishment of their stores, against their
voyage across the Atlantic.
With great danger to the ship from rocks, they stood
close in to the island, while the boat made two journeys
to land. By this means they managed to procure three
hxmdred birds ; and with these provisions, salted down,
they set sail through the strait, keeping as near as possible
to the northern shore. On August 7th they passed a
whale playing, and two days later they made the Saddle-
back Islands, which Hudson had named the “ Islands
of God's Mercie.” The strait, as is usually the case
in the month of August, was practically free of ice ; and
within a fortnight they had effected the passage, which
on the outward voyage had taken them five weeks. On
August 1 6th they came upon an island, somewhere
between Cape Hatton and Cape Chidley, “ till we were
readie to runne 01m bowsprite against the rockes in a
fogge.” From this island, which was perhaps Button
THE RETURN OF THE MUTINEERS i8i
Island, they sailed to the south-east coast of Greenland,
and from there steered for Ireland.
Presently they met with contrary winds ; and Robert
Juet would have had them direct their course to New-
foundland, assuring the crew that they would find relief
for their distress through the fishermen who frequented
that land, either from the men themselves or, if they were
not there, from the provisions of bread and fish that they
would have left behind them. Prickett, however, coim-
selled Bylot to continue sailing as best he could towards
the coast of Ireland, where “ we knew come grew.” So
on they went in their brig, too exhausted to wash the blood
from the deck or from the dead men’s bedding, eight
men and a boy starved and derelict I Perhaps it was
reading the account of this appalling “ middle passage ”
that, nearly two hundred years later, helped to stir the
imagination of Coleridge when he wrote The Rime 0/ the
Ancient Manner.
Before they left the strait, they were rationed to half a
bird a day, with a little meal. The birds they skinned
with knives because they would not “ pull ” ; and Juet
discovered that by burning the feathers of the discarded
skins, it was still possible to get from them a little putre-
fying sustenance, and this became “ a great dish of
meate,” not even the garbage being neglected.
But worse was to follow ! They finished the meal,
and Bennett Mathues went about collecting the bones
of the birds, “to fry them with candle greese till they were
crisp, when with vinegar put to them they made a good
dish.” A pound of candles and a portion of vinegar
were now delivered to each man to last him a week.
Juet soon began to declare that they were nearing^Ireland,
though in actual fact they were still far oflF. The men
were so weak that they could not stand at the helm, “ but
were fain to sit.” And still they sailed eastward, and yet
no land appeared ; and then the men, disheartened and
iSz
HENRY HUDSON
desperate, began to swear that they had passed Ireland.
They lay about on the deck, watching “ the fore-sayle or
mayne-sayle fly up to the tops, the sheets being either
flowne or broken,” too listless to try to mend matters, or
even to call to others to do so. Robert Bylot “ was driven
to look to their labour as well as his own.” Then Juet
died “ for mere want ” and they ate seaweed, and yet
there was no sign of land. Carried forward by sails
that hung on the spars like “ brown skeletons of leaves,”
they advanced from horizon to horizon over the limitless
wastes of the Atlantic, the wretched men no longer
caring “ which end went forward.”
Then suddenly there they were in the far distance, the
green fields of Galway ! Slowly they beat up towards
them. A fishing-boat appeared, and they hailed her.
John Waymouth, a fisherman from Fowey in Corn-
wall, was her master ; and this man brought them into
Berehaven in Bantry Bay, on September 6th. But even
then their difficulties were not at an end ; for the people
were poor, and were in no mood to supply those outcast
mariners with food for charity. Bylot was compelled to
pawn the ship’s cable to John Waymouth, and with the
money he received for it bought bread, beer, and beef.
It was now that a Captain Taylor came to their assist-
ance, threatening to “ presse ” or “ hang ” certain sailors
who had refused to help them get back to England.
“ In conclusion, wee agreed for three pounds ten shillings
a man to bring our ship to Plimouth or Dartmouth ;
and to give the pilot five pound ; but if the winde did not
serve, but they were driven to put into Bristow, they
were to have foure pound ten shillings a man and the
pilot sixe pound.” As it turned out, they were brought
into Plymouth, and from there, “ with faire winde and
weather without stop or stay,” they came to the
Thames.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE ACQUITTAL
iEN once they had safely come into
dock, Robert Bylot, taking Prickett
with him, went to report their return
to Sir Thomas Smith. It would be
natural to suppose that a sharp enquiry
would have been immediately insti-
gated against the mutineers ; and it is
true that on October 24th, a little over
a month after their arrival, they were examined by the
Masters of Trini^ House, who are reported to have
given it as their opinion “ that they deserved to be hanged
for the same.” Also, Edward Wilson, the surgeon,
seems to have appeared before the High Court of Ad-
miralty in January of the following year.
The whole issue, however, was confused by Bylot’s
and Prickett’s representations that the North-West
Passage had, for all practical purposes, been discovered.
They produced Hudson’s “ card,” the very same card
which afterwards foimd its way into the hands of Plancius,
and which was published by Hessel Gerritz, in 1612,
with a short explanation in Dutch on its back. This
chart, except for an imaginary peninsula, which was
made to run up into James Bay from the south (formed
presumably by Charlton Island, the Twins, and Bear
Island) was by far the most accurate survey of those
northern regions that had appeared up till that time.
It contained, however, no configuration of the western
coast of the bay ; and it was on this uncharted quarter
HENRY HUDSON
184
of the newly-discovered sea that the hopes of the mer-
chants now centred with the most lively enthusiasm, an
enthusiasm that was increased to a pitch of high excite-
ment by the large talk that the returned sailors made
about “ the great flood or billow from the west,” which
on their way home had floated them off the rock near
Digges Island. So high, in truth, did the expectations
of the merchants rise, that instead of finding the names
of Bylot and Prickett and Wilson amongst the state
prisoners, we come upon them duly enrolled amongst
the two hundred and eighty-eight members of a new
company, called The Discoverers of the North-West
Passage. This company procured a charter from King
James to send out two ships, the “ Resolution ” and the
“ Discovery,” that “ good and luckie ship,” as Purchas
calls her, under the command of Captain Thomas Button,
“ to search and find out a passage by the north-west of
America to the Sea Sur, commonly called the South Sea.”
The new expedition set sail in the following month of
May, with Bylot and Prickett as members of its crew, and
with its commander asserting that he believed as confi-
dently in the existence of the passage “ as I do there is,
either between Calais and Dover, or between Holyhead
and Ireland,” a conviction that was also shared by Hud-
son’s old friends in Holland, who looked soon to hear
news of “ our abandoned ones,” when the ships should
return to England, “ either by way of the East Indies, or
after having transacted their business with the Chinese
and Japanese, by the same way.” Even when Button’s
expedition returned unsuccessful the next year, having
lost five men on Digges Island, and having spent the
winter on the western shore of Hudson Bay, the ardour
of the merchants remained imabated. They sent out
ship after ship in yearly succession. The little “ Dis-
covery ” made no less than six recorded voyages into the
Arctic seas.
THE AC^JUITTAL 185
It would appear, however, that the authorities had
not forgotten about the mutiny, and only awaited a suit-
able occasion for bringing the men to trial. On
February 7th, a little over a month before he set sail on
his second celebrated voyage of discovery in 1616, By lot
was summoned with Prickett to give evidence before the
High Court of Admiralty. During the years 1617 and
1618 no expedition was fitted out, perhaps because of
William Baffin’s confident statement, on his return from
this voyage with Bylot, that there was “ no passage nor
no hope of a passage.”
During the month of May in 1 6 1 7 yet another enquiry
was made by the High Court of Admiralty. The fact that
no definite verdict had ever been found for or against
the mutineers, after so many preliminary investigations,
has always seemed extremely unsatisfactory to historians.
Dr. Asher surmised, correctly enough, that they got
off with little punishment. Janvier writes, “ What
penalty, or that any penalty, was exacted of those who
survived to be tried for Hudson’s murder remains
unknown. Their ignoble fate is hidden in a sordid
darkness : fitly in contrast with his noble fate — ^that
lies retired within a glorious mystery.” “ What the
result of that enquiry was is not known,” writes
Edgar Mayhew Bacon.
In investigations that have recently been made at the
Public Record Office in London, there has been found,
in a bundle of papers referring to transactions of the
Admiralty Court (Oyer and Terminer), a document,
torn and in very bad condition, which in old law-Latin,
once and for all, clears up this doubtful point. The
secret that has lain for so long hidden, is divulged at last
by this old Jacobean parchment with due pomp and
majesty. “On which day (July Ci4th, i6i8, exactly
seven years after the exposing of Hudson) the triple
proclamation as is customary having been made that all
i86
HENRY HUDSON
men rest in silence, for the reason that the Lord Justi-
ciaries be about to deal with pleas of the crown, Letters
of commission, sealed with the great seal of England,
were read throughout with a loud voice. Then, on
the Sheriff of the county of Surrey being called forth,
there appeared Robert Bellyn, deputy of John Middle-
ton, Esquire, the sheriff aforesaid, and introduced an
order to him directed to cause to come forth 24 honest
and lawful men of the said County of Surrey to inquire
on behalf of our said Lord the King, etc., with a list of
those summoned, from whom the following were chosen
and sworn, etc.”
Abacuk Prickett, Edward Wilson, Bennett Mathues,
and Francis Clemens then appeared in the dock, together
with certain pirates. They were charged, firstly, with
“ The ejection of Henry Hudson and John Hudson and
others from the ship ‘Discovery,’ in a boat called a
shallop without food or drink and other necessaries and
the murder of the same,” and, secondly, with “ fleeing
from justice.” The mutineers declared themselves “ not
guilty ” to both accusations, and put themselves “ upon
the country.” The twelve selected honest and lawful
men from the county of Sxxrrey forthwith gave in their
verdict of “ Not Guilty ” to both counts. “ There are
many devices in the heart of man, but the counsel of the
Lord shall stand.”
For the satisfaction of those readers who are interested
in ancient docrxments, I have caused the essential leaf of
this one to be reproduced in facsimile at the back of the
book, together with a translation as far as it has been
possible, of all five leaves of the tattered memorandum.
Now let us turn to the history of Hudson’s own family.
We learn that his wife, Katherine Hudson, was left
“ very poor.” One cannot help feeling the greatest
sympathy for the wives of those sturdy explorers, who,
like Mistress Hudson and Mistress Baffin, “ that trouble-
THE ACQUITTAL 187
some and impatient woman,” sought to extract com-
pensation from the preoccupied merchants who, sitting
at ease at home, had derived profits out of the experience
and gallantry of these women’s husbands.
Three years after Hudson’s disappearance. Mistress
Hudson applied to the Directors of the East India Com-
pany to do something for her youngest son, Richard.
The Directors, recognizing their obligation to the memory
of the man “ who had lost his life in the service of the
Commonwealth,” entered the boy’s name on a ship called
the “ Samaritan,” and at the same time voted the sum of
five pounds to be laid out upon “ his apparel and neces-
saries.” The boy travelled to Bantam, and afterwards to
Japan, acting in the capacity of factor for the Company.
He rose high in the service ; and after a varied and
somewhat ambiguous career, which, at one time brought
him into confinement in the ” poultry compter ” in
London, he became the chief representative of the Com-
pany in the Bay of Bengal, with a residence at Balasor.
He died in 1 644, leaving several children, some of whom
emigrated to America.
Meanwhile, the good mother, not content with the
advantageous opening she had won for her boy, saw no
sufficient reason why she herself should not be “ as lucky
as a calling duck,” in the trading ventures that her
husband had spent his life in trying to increase. A
provocative entry in the East India Company’s books
reads, “ Mrs. Hudson and her indigo ” ; and, extra-
ordinary as it may seem, this strong-minded housekeeper
actually travelled to India, and insisted at Ahmadabad in
engaging herself, with special privileges, in the remtmera-
tive trade of her late husband’s employers, wrangling
with the powerful Company as to certain charges on the
freightage of her “ 5 churles of indigo, her quilts, her
37 chuckeryes, and her 46 peeces of Simianaes,” with
the result that the Company’s entries concerning her
i88
HENRY HUDSON
terminate significantly enough with the words “ end of
Mrs. Hudson’s tiresome suit.” The worthy woman died
in 1624, and was buried at St. Botolph, Aldgate, on
September iith of that year. In her will, witnessed
by Robert Thomas, Margaret Price, and Dorothy Shawe,
“ shee gave and bequeathed all her goods and chattels
whatsoever to her two sonnes, Oliver Hudson and
Richard Hudson equallie to be divided betweene them,
but in case the said Richard should not retorne from the
East India, that then her sonne Oliver should have all.”
From time to time during the century, certain rumours
reached England from Hudson Bay. It is recorded, in
a memorial of the Hudson’s Bay Company, that Captain
Zachariah Gillam, the master of the “ Nonsuch ” ketch,
constructed the Company’s first factory. Fort Charles,
“ upon the ruins of a house which had been built there
above 60 years before by the English.” That the ruins
of Staffe’s house did actually survive for many years is
again proved by this entry in the “ diary ” of the fur-
hunter, Pierre Esprit Radisson, who writes, “ We came to
the seaside where we finde an olde howse all demolished
and battered with boulletts.” But more interesting still
is the fact that Captmn James, who wintered on Charlton
Island during the year 1631-1632, actually discovered,
driven into the groxmd to the depth of a foot and a half,
above the white sandy shore of Danby Island, a row of
stakes that had obviously been sharpened by a European
axe, and of about the thickness of a man’s arm.
Those stakes almost certainly owed their position and
shape to the handiwork of the lusty ship’s carpenter from
Suffolk, and go to prove that the forsaken men did manage
at least to regain land, and that therefore the bones of
the navigator found a final resting-place upon some
honoured parcel of Canadian ground, and were not, as
has often been supposed, left to wash backwards and
forwards below the ice, below the dim white abdomens
THE ACQUITTAL 189
of cod and halibut, on the floor of “ greene ose and
grose gravell ” of that lorn mediterranean, which, for as
long as mortal men remain articulate, or understand the
cimning craft of letters, will recall the name of the
Captain of the “ Hopewell,” of the “ Half Moon,”
and of the “ Discovery.”
APPENDIX
TRANSCRIPTION OF THE ORIGINAL DOCU-
MENT OF THE VERDICT PASSED UPON THE
MUTINEERS.
H.C.A. J (2^-6) Admiralty Court, Oyer and Terminer.
Photostat No. i. (Torn and in very bad condition.
Membrane 6. Head of document torn away.)
Quo die, facta trina proclamatione, prout moris est, ut omnes
silenter acquiescerent eo quod domini Justiciarii placita corone
tractaturi sint, Litere Commissionales magno sigillo Anglie sigil-
late alta voce perlecte fuerunt.
Tunc evocato vicecomite Comitatus Surreie, comparuit Robertus
Bellyn, deputatus Johannis Midleton armigeri vicecomitis ante-
dicti, et introduxit mandatum sibi directum ad venire feciendum
viginti quatuor probos et legales homines de dicto comitatu Surrie
ad inquirendum pro dicto domino nostro Rege, etc., cum catalog©
summonitorum. Ex quibus sequentes selecti et jurati fuere.
Videlicet
Michael Nicholson
Jur(atus)
Johannes Hayman
Georgius Dalton
Edwardus Jones
Willelmus Brookes
Jur(ati)
Johannes Wright
Daniel Brooke
Thomas Series
Henricus Hawkes
Jur(ati)
Edwardus Coker
Willelmus Sands
Osmundus Uncles
Jur(ati)
Simon Adams
Henricus Series
Johannes Tiers
Jur(ati)
Johannes Gunnary Edwardus Walker
Qui Jurati fuere et habent (diem) ad reddendum veredictum suum
die Veneris. XXIIII July 1618.
190
APPENDIX
191
Photostat No. 2. (Dorso of leaf. A fragment of
the heading only remains.)
Tunc evocato Milite Marescallo Hospitii Regii seu Mares-
callie comparuit Willelmus Richardson deputatus dicti Marescalli
et introduxit mandatum sibi directum ad adducendum omnes
piratas et prisones pro Admiralitate sibi commissos una cum cata-
logs piratarum eosque presentavitj videlicet
Robertum Walsinghaml pro spolio navis vocate the “ Susan Constance ”
Johannem Lucum J portus London.
Willelmum Mortimer pro captura et spolio navis the “ Angell de
Willelmum Austen J Norway.”
Richardus Fox "j pro captura et spolio navis the “ Herringe Mayde ”
Richardus Arloby Vde Enchasen et interfectione Petri Hanckes Magistri
Nicholas Scott ) eiusdem.
Mustafa Turcus
Quo facto prisones sub cautione ad comparendum his die et loco
Jurati fuere et eorum fide iussores.
Obacuck Prickett comparuit et triatus erat.
Benettus Mathewe comparuit Franciscus Ashley (Clemens ?) eius
fideiussor (four remaining lines illegible).
Photostat No. 3. (Top of leaf torn off and names of many
of the jury consequently missing. They may be supplied
from Photostat. No. i.)
Georgius Dalton
Edwardus Jones
Willelmus Brookes
Edwardus Coker
Willelmus Sands
Osmundus Uncles
Johannes Wright
Daniel Brooke
Thomas Series
Henricus Hawkes
Simon Adams
Henricus Series
Johannes Tiers
Edwardus Walker
Qui reddiderunt veredictum suum in septem billis suis indicta-
mentis contentum et sic dimissi fuere. Quo facto prisones ad
barras evocati fuere et interrogati utrum culpabiles erant de seperatis
spoliis subsequentibus super quibus indictati fuere primo dicto :
192
HENRY HUDSON
( pro eiectione Henrici Hudson et alioram e nave the
“ Discovery in cimbam vocatam “ a shallop ”
absque cibo, potu, aut aliis necessariis et murdro
eorum.
Robertus Walsingham^^^^^P^^^
“ Susan Constance ” portus
Richardus Fox
Richardus Arloby
Nicholaus Scott
pro spolio et abductione navis the Herringe Mayde ”
et Murdro Petri Hanckes Magistri.
Willelmus Mortimerl
Willelmus Austen Ipro spolio navis the “ Angell de Norway.”
Thomas Cotgrave )
Willelmus Austen
Thomas Cotgrave
|pro spolio
navis incognito de Salcom.
Qui omnes respective interrogati utrum culpabiles fueredeseperatis
spoliis predictis responderunt seriatim se non culpabiles esse de
spoliis predictis et posuerunt se super patriam.
Tunc evocato vicecomite Surrie Robertus Bellyn dep (utatus)
dicti vicecomitis introduxit (rest of the line illegible. The re-
mainder of the leaf has been cut away or lost.)
Photostat No. 4 . (A fragment of the three lines of the
heading only remains.)
Abacuck Prickett murdro Henrici Hudson, Johannis Hudson
Edwardum Wilson 1 aliorum dixerunt eos non esse culpabiles nec
l^aufugerunt.
Robertum Walsingtam (P^o spoKo navis Ae“ Sum Constance” dixerunt
® teum esse culpabilem nulla vero bona habuisse.
Richardum Fox
Richardum Arloby
Nicholaum Scott
pro spolio navis the “ Herringe Mayde ” et
murdro Petri Humber (Hanckes ?) dixerunt
eos esse culpabiles de piratura non de murdro
^nuUa bona vero habuisse.
Willelmum Mortimer
Willelmum Austen
Thomas Cotgrave
^pro spolio navis the “Angell de Norway”
dixerunt dictum Mortimer esse culpabilem
Willelmum Austen et Thomam Cotgrave
dixerunt non esse culpabiles.
Willelmum Austen f pro spolio et abductione navis de Salcom dixe-
Thomam Cotgrave Irunt eos non esse culpabiles.
APPENDIX
193
Tunc dicti Robertus Walsingham, Willelmus Mortimer, Richardus
Fox, Richardus Arloby, et Nicholaus Scott ut prefertur, culpabiles
invent! ad barras evocati fuere, et interrogati quid producere pos-
sent quare sententiam mortis contra eos pronuntiare non debent,
ac nullo impedimento omnes justiciarii sententiam contra eos
pronuntiaverunt, viz, : — quod ad prisoniam . . . educerentur in
ilium ad tenementum consuetum dictum Wapping ac ibidem
suspenderentur usque ad mortem. (The rest of the page illegible.)
Photostat No. 5 of an English Document.
Pirattes arraigned in Southwarck on Friday the XXIIII of
July 1618.
(Non culp: neque aufugit.^
Non culp. po. se.^ For feloniously pinnioninge and puttinge
Abacuck Prickett of Henry Hudson, master of the “ Dis-
non cul. po. se. Non Culp, covery ” out of the same shipp with
VIII more of his company into a
Edward Wilson shallopp in the Isl in lie partes of
Francis dementi America without meate, drink, clothes
^or other provision whereby they died.
Non cul. po. se. Cul. ca, nul.^
Robert Walsingham
(and a name obliterated)
Confessed by themselves and proved by
the depositions of Emanuel Butte, Henry
Rochester, John Lee, Christopher Cut-
bourne, Mathew Ewer, and others.
Confessed by himself. (Name erased)
Confessed by himself. (Name erased)
Non cul. po. se. Cul. ca. nul.
Confessed by themselves. William Mortimer.
Non. cul. po. se. Non cul.
William Austen
Non cul. po. se. Non cul.
Thomas Cotgrave
For taking and spoiling of
the “ Susan Constance ” of
London of cloth, leather, calf-
skins and other goods of mer-
chants of London and Bristol.
I For robbinge a Flemish pinck
iof bred, butter and other
(things.
{ For takinge and carringe a
supply boat of Newcastle and
her lading.
For taking and carringe
away the “ Angell of
Norway.’*
Non culpabilis ponit se (super patriam).
* Non culpabilis : neque aufugit.
' Culpabiles caritas nulla.
194
HENRY HUDSON
Confessed by themselves.
Non cuL po. se. Non cul.
William Austen
Non cul. po. se. Non cul.
Thomas Cotgrave
For takinge and carringe
■away a shipp of Salcom in
Devonshire.
Confessed by themselves and proved by the oath of Peter Johnson v^ho is
to give evidence.
Non cul. po. se.
Non cul. po. se.
Non cul. po. se.
Cul.
Cul.
Cul.
Richard Fox
Richard Arloby
Nicholas Scott
For takinge and carringe
away the “ Herringe
.Mayde ” ofEnchasen and
killing of Peter Hanckes
master thereof.
TRANSLATION OF THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENT
OF THE VERDICT PASSED UPON THE
MUTINEERS
On which day (July 24th5 i 6 i 8 ) the triple proclamation as is
customary having been made that all men rest in silence, for the
reason that the Lord Justiciaries be about to deal with pleas of the
crown, letters of commission sealed with the great seal of England,
were read throughout with a loud voice.
Then, on the SherijfF of the County of Surrey being called forth,
there appeared Robert Bellyn, deputy of John Midleton, Esq., the
Sherijff aforesaid, and introduced an order to him directed to cause
to come twenty-four honest and lawful men of the said County of
Surrey to enquire on behalf of our said lord the King, etc, with a
list (panel) of those summoned, from whom the following were
chosen and sworn, viz. :
Michael Nicholson
John Hayman
George Dalton
Edward Jones
Willian?: Brookes
John Wright
Daniel Brooke
Thomas Serla
Henry Hawkes
APPENDIX
195
Edward Coker Simon Adams
William Sands Henry Series
Osmund Uncles JoEn Tiers
John Gunnary Edward Walker
who were sworn and have (a day assigned) to return their verdict,
viz., on Friday, July 24th, 1618.
Then on the Knight Marshal of the Royal Hospital or Marshal-
sea having been called forth, there appeared William Richardson,
deputy of the said Marshal, and introduced an order to him
directed to bring all pirates and prisoners committed to him by the
Admiralty, together with a list of pirates, and presented them,
viz. :
Robert Walsingham TFor spoliation of a ship called the “ Susan Con-
John Lucum Istance ” of the port of London.^
William Mortimer /For capture and spoliation of a ship the “ Angel of
William Austen \Norway.’’
Richard Fox [ For capture and spoliation of a ship the “ Herring
Richard Arloby a Maid ” of Enckhuysen, and slaughter of Peter
Nicholas *Scott t Humber (Hanckes ?), master of the same.
Mustafa Turcus
When this had been done, the prisoners were called under a
caution to appear on this day and at this place, and their sureties.
Abacuk Prickett appeared and was tried.
Bennett Mathues and Francis Ashley (Clemens ?) also appeared.
They were tried before the following jurymen :
George Dalton John Wright
Edward Jones Daniel Brooke
William Brookes Thomas Series
Edward Coker Henry Hawkes
William Sands Simon Adams
Osmund Uncles Henry Series
John Tiers
Edward Walker
who gave in their verdict contained in their seven bills of indict-
ment and thus were dismissed. When this had been done the
1 It is interesting to note that the « Susan Constance ” here mentioned was pro-
bably the flagship “ Susan Constant” of the Virginia Expedition of December 1606.
HENRY HUDSON
196
prisoners were called forth to the bar and interrogated whether
they were guilty of the separate following spoliations upon which
they were originally indicted :
Abacuk Prickett
Edward Wilson
Robert Walsingham
'For the ejection of Henry Hudson and others from
the ship the “ Discoveiy ” in a boat called a shallop,
without food or drink and other necessaries, and the
^murder of the same.
fFor spoliation of a ship called the Susan Con-
\stance ” of the port of London.
Richard Fox [For capture and spoliation of a ship the “ Herring
Richard Arloby i Maid ” of Enckhuysen, and slaughter of Peter
Nicholas Scott [Hanckes, Master of the same.
William Mortimer 1
William Austen VFor spoliation of a ship the “ Angel of Norway.”
Thomas Cotgrave J
Th^S Cotgrave spoliation of an unknown ship from Salcombe.
All of whom were asked respectively whether they were guilty of
the separate aforesaid spoliations, and they answered in turn that
they were not guilty of the said spoliations and chose to be tried by
jury (threw themselves on their country). Then on the Sheriff
of the County of Surrey being called forth, Robert Bellyn, deputy
of the said Sheriff, introduced an order. (The remainder of this
page of the document has been cut away or lost, and only a fragment
of the heading of the next remains.)
Abacuk Prickett /For the murder of Henry Hudson and others,
Edward Wilson \The 7 said they were not guilty nor have they fled.
Robert Walsingham -j
Richard Fox
Richard Arloby
Nicholas Scott
For the spoliation of the ship “ Susan Constance.”
They said he was guilty, but he had none of the
goods.
Tor the spoliation of the ship “ Herring Maid ”
and for the murder of Peter Humber (Hanckes ?)
They said that they were guilty of piracy, but not
of murder, and said they had none of the goods.
William Mortimer
William Austen
Thomas Cotgrave
Tor the spoliation of the ship the Angel of Nor-
way.” They said that the said Mortimer was
guilty, but that William Austen and Thomas
Cotgrave were not guilty.
APPENDIX
197
William Austen (For the spoliation and removal of the ship from
Thomas Cotgrave (Salcombe. They said that they were not guilty.
Then the said Robert Walsingham, William Mortimer, Richard
Fox, Richard Arloby, and Nicholas Scott, having been found guilty,
were called to the bars and were asked what they could show why
they should not pronounce the sentence of death upon them, and
no objection being raised all the Justices pronounced the sentence
upon them that (they were to be taken back) to prison and thence
to be led out to their accustomed abode, namely, Wapping, and
there (they were) to be hanged by the neck until they were dead.
Translation into Modern English of Photostat,
No. 5.
Pirates tried in Southwark on Friday, July 24th, i6i8,
(It will be noticed that the verdict is given first, that is, before
the name of the prisoner and the charge on which he is tried.)
Pleads Not Guilty.
Abacuk Prickett
Plead Not Guilty.
Edward Wilson
Francis Clemens
Verdict. Not Guilty nor did he flee.
For feloniously pinioning
and putting Henry Hudson,
Verdict. master of the Discovery,”
Not Guilty out of the same ship with
eight more of his company
into a shallop in the Isle in
(the parts of) America with-
out meat, drink, clothes or
other provision, whereby
they died.
Plead Not Guilty. Verdict. Guilty.
Confessed by themselves Robert Walsing-
and proved by the depo- ham and another
sitions of Emmanuel (name erased)
Butte, Henry Rochester,
John Lee, Christopher
Cutbourne, Mathew
Ewer, and others.
No Mercy.
For taking and spoiling the
“ Susan Constance ” of
London of cloth, leather,
calfskins, and other goods
of merchants of London
and Bristol,
Confessed by himself. (name erased) For robbing a Flemish boat
of bread, butter, and other
things.
198 HENRY HUDSON
Confessed by himself. (name erased) For taking and carrying
away a supply boat of New-
castle and her cargo.
Pleads Not Guilty. Verdict. Guilty. No Mercy.
Confessed by themselves. William Mortimer For taking and carrying
Pleads Not Guilty. Verdict. Not Guilty, away the “ Angel of Nor-
William Austen. way.”
Pleads Not Guilty. Verdict. Not Guilty.
Thomas Cotgrave.
Pleads Not Guilty. Verdict. Not Guilty. For taking and carrying
Confessed by themselves. William Austen, away a ship of Salcombe in
Pleads Not Guilty. Verdict. Not Guilty. Devonshire.
Thomas Cotgrave.
Confessed by Pleads Not Guilty. Verdict. Guilty. For taking and
themselves and Richard Fox. carrying away the
proved by the Pleads Not Guilty. Verdict. Guilty. “ Herring Maid ”
oath of Peter Richard Arloby. of Enckhuysen,
Johnson who Pleads Not Guilty. Verdict Guilty, and killing Peter
is to give evi- Nicholas Scott. Hanckes the mas-
dence, ter thereof.
I’ACSIMILE OF FIFTH PAGE OF ORIGINAL DOCUMENT
CONTAINING THE VERDICT PASSED ON THE MUTINEERS.
I'7 0 iti H.C.A. ( 2-6) AdDiivalty Cowt^ Oyev
et Terminer, in the Public Record Office.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alexander, Philip F., Editor. The North-West and North-East
Passages. Cambridge ; at the University Press, 1915.
Ashes, G. M. Henry Hudson the Navigator. The original Docu-
ments in which his career is recorded, collected, partly translated and
annotated, with an introduction. Hakluyt Society, 1 860.
Bacon, Edgar Mayhew. Henry Hudson, His Times and his Voyages.
G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1907.
The Hudson River. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902.
Bardsen, Ivar. Sailing directions of Henry Hudson prepared for his
use in 1608, from the old Danish of Ivar Bardsen, with an Introduc-
tion and Notes, also a dissertation on the Discovery of the Hudson
River by the Rev. B. F. de Costa. Joel Mansell, Albany, 1869.
Barrow, John, F.R.S. A Chronological History of Voyages into the
Arctic Regions. John Murray, 1818.
Bea2Xey, C. R. John and Sebastian Cabot T. Fisher Unwin, 1889.
Benjamin, Marcus. Henry Hudson. A sketch of his career. New
York State. Addresses . . . and Year-Book for 1908-1909.
Brodhead, John Romeyn. History of the State of New York. First
period, 1609-1664. 2 vols. New York, 1853, 1871.
Burpee, Lawrence J. The Search for the Western Sea. Alston Rivers,
Ltd., 1908.
Bryce, George, M.A., LL.D. The Remarkable History of the Hudson’s
Bay Co. Sampson Low, Marston and Co., 1900,
Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1600-1620.
Catalogues, Collection. Hudson-Fulton Celebration. Hudson-Fulton
Celebration Commission. Tribune Building, New York, 1910.
Chamberlain, Frank. Hudson Tercentenary ; an historical retrospect
regarding the object and quest of an all-water route from Europe to
India ; the obstacles in the way j and also Hudson’s Voyage to
Ameria in 1609 and some of its results. Albany, J. B. Lyon Co.,
1909.
199
200
HENRY HUDSON
Christy, Miller, F.L.S. The voyages of Captain Luke Foie of Hull
and Captain Thomas James of Bristol in search of a North-West
Passage. Edited with notes and an introduction by Miller Christy,
F.L.S. Vols. I. and ii. printed for the Hakluyt Society. London,
1894.
Cleveland, Henry R. Life of Henry Hudson, contained in Lives of
Eminent Men. The American Library Series, Vol. ii. Marsh,
Caper, Lyon and Webb, Boston, 1839.
Coats, Captain W. The Geography of Hudson’s Bay, being the re-
marks of Captain W. Coats. Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1852.
Conway, Sir Martin, F.S.A. Early Dutch and English Voyages to
Spitsbergen. Edited with Introduction and Notes by Sir Martin
Conway. Printed for the Hakluyt Society.
No Man’s Land. University Press, 1906.
Ducarel’s History and Antiquities of the Hospital of St, Katharine
near the Tower, contained in Antiquities in Middlesex and Surrey.
Vol. II. of the Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica. Printed by and
for J. Nichols, 1790.
Fiske, John. The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America. Vol. i.
Macmillan Co., 1899.
Foote, Anna E., and Avery W. Skinner. Explorers and Founders of
America. New York, Cincinnati, Chicago, American Book Co.,
1907.
Forster, John Reinhold. History of the Voyages and Discoveries
made in the North. Translated from the German of John Reinhold
Forster, LV.D. Printed for G. and J. Robinson, Pater-Noster Row,
1786.
Foster, Sir William. The East India House 5 its History and Associa-
tion. London, 1924.
Gerritsz, Hessel. The Arctic North-East and West Passage. Dctectio
Freti Hudson!, or Hessel Gerritsz’s collection of Tracts fay himself,
Massa and De Quir on the North-East and West Passage, Siberia
and Australia. Amsterdam, Frederick Muller and Co., 1878.
Gilliat, Edward. Heroes of the Elizabethan Age. London, Seeley
and Co., Ltd., 1911.
Giuseppi’s Guide to Public Records. A Guide to the Manuscripts
preserved in the Public Record Office by M. S. Giuseppi. His
Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1923-1924.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 201
Greely, Adolphus W, True Tales of Arctic Heroism in the New
World. New York, Scribner, 19x2.
Hakluyt, Richard. The Principal Navigators Voyages Traffiques and
Discoveries of the English Nation. James MacLehose and Sons,
Glasgow, 1903.
Voyages . , . Hakluyt Society, London, 1850,
Hall, Edward H. Henry Hudson and the Discovery of the Hudson
River. In American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, Fif-
teenth Annual Report, 1910. Albany, 1910.
Hamel, Dr. Jost Christianovich- England and Russia. Translated by
John Studdy Leigh, F.R.G.S. Richard Bentley, New Burlington
St., 1854.
Harrisse, Henry. John Cabot and Sebastian his Son. Benjamin
Franklin Stevens, 1896.
Heawood, Edward, M.A. A History of Geographical Discovery in
the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Cambridge; at the
University Press, 1912.
Higginson, Thomas W. Young Folk’s Book of American Explorers.
New York, Longmans, Green and Co., 1898.
Hudson’s Bay Company. The Governor and Company of Adventurers
of England Trading into Hudson’s Bay during Two Hundred and
Fifty Years, 1670-1920. The Hudson’s Bay Company, 1920.
Hudson, Henry. The Adventures of Henry Hudson, by the author of
Uncle Philip’s Conversations. D. Appleton and Co., 1842.
Hudson, Millard F. Henry Hudson and his Family. (In manuscript.)
Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands. An Historical Account.
Harper and Brothers, New York, 1844.
Janvier, Thomas A. Henry Hudson. Harper and Brothers, 1909.
Jenkinson, Anthony. Early Voyages and Travels to Russia and Persia,
Edited by E. Delmar Morgan and C. H. Coote. 2 vols., printed for
the Hakluyt Society, 1886.
Johnson, William H. The World’s Discoverers. Boston, Little,
Brown and Co.
Johnston, Charles H. L. Famous Discoveries and Explorers of America,
their voyages, battles, and hardships in traversing and conquering the
unknown territories of a new world. Boston, The Page Co., 1917.
202
HENRY HUDSON
Linschoten, John Huygen van. The Voyage of John Huygen van
Linschoten to the East Indies, from the Old English Translation of
1598, in two volumes. Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1885, the
first volume edited by Arthur Coke Burnell, Ph.D., C.I.E., the second
volume by Mr. P. A. Tiele.
Low, A. P. Geological and Natural History Survey of Canada. Pre-
liminary Report on an exploration of country between Lake Winnipeg
and Hudson Bay. Dawson Brothers, 1887.
Marco Polo’s Travels. Edited by Thomas Wright, M.A., F.S.A,
George Bell and Sons, 1 899.
Markham, Sir Clement R., K.C.B., F.R.S. The Lands of Silence.
Cambridge : at the University Press, 1921.
A life of John Davis, the Navigator, 1550-1605, Discoverer of
Davis Strait. Dodd, Mead and Co., 1880. (Great Explorers
Series.)
The Sea Fathers. Cassell and Co., Ltd., 1884.
The Voyages of William Baffin. Printed for the Hakluyt Society,
1881.
Morris, Charles. Heroes of Discovery in America. 2nd ed., rev. and
enl. Philadelphia and London, J. B. Lippincott Co., 1919.
Motley, John Lothrop. The Rise of the Dutch Republic. A new
edition in three volumes, with a biographical introduction by Mon-
cure D. Conway. George Bell and Sons, 1900.
History of the United Netherlands. In four volumes. John
Murray, London.
Moulton, Joseph W, (See Yates.)
Murphy, Henry C, Henry Hudson in Holland. The Hague, Mar*
tinus NijhofF, 1909.
Nansen, F ridtjof. Farthest North. With Appendix by Otto Sverdrup.
In two volumes. Archibald Constable and Co., 1897.
O’Callaghan, E. B. History of New Netherlands or New York under
the Dutch. D. Appleton and Co., 1845.
Parry, Captain William Ed warp. Narrative of an attempt to reach
the North Pole in the year 1827, under the command of Captain
William Edward Parry, R.N., F.R.S. John Murray, 1828.
BIBLIOGRAPHY ^03
PuRCHAs, Samuel. His Pilgrimages, in four folio volumes, 1625.
Revised edition, in twenty octavo volumes, 1905. Printed for the
Hakluyt Society.
Raleigh, alter. Xhe English Voyages of the Sixteenth Century.
Contained in R. Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations, Vol. xii. James
MacLehose and Sons, 1905.
Read, John Meredith, Jr. A Historical Inquiry concerning Henry
Hudson. Joel Mansell, 1 866.
Rogers, James E. Thorold. Holland. History of the Nations Series.
Fisher Unwin, 1888.
Shaw, Edward R. Discoverers and Explorers. New York, Cincinnati,
Chicago, American Book Co., 1900.
Smith, Herbert G., and others. Historic Deeds of Danger and Daring.
New York Christian Herald,” 1906.
Somerset House. Lists of Wills contained in the Commissary Court,
i6ii-i6i 5» and in the Prerogative Court. Canterbury, 1603-1619.
Stefansson, Vilhjalmur. Hunters of the Great North. George
Harrap and Co., Ltd., 1923.
Sweet, Harry M. Where Hudson’s Voyage ended, an Inquiry.
Albany, J. B. Lyon Co., 1709.
Veer, Gerrit de. The Three Voyages of William Barents to the
Arctic Regions. Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1876.
Waldman, Milton. Americana. Dulau and Co., London, r926.
Wilder, Maud. Dutch and English on the Hudson. Yale University
Press. The Chronicles of America, vol. vii., 1919.
Wilson, Beckles. The Great Company, 1667-1871. Vol. i. Smith,
Elder and Co., London, 1900.
Wilson, James Grant, Editor. The Memorial History of the City of
New York. Vol. i. New York History Co., 1892.
WiNSHiP, George P., Editor. Sailors’ Narratives of Voyages along the
New England Coast, 1 524-1624. Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1905.
WiNSOR, Justin. Geographical Discovery in the Interior of North
America in its Historic^ Relationship. Sampson Low, Marston and
Co., Ltd., 1894.
Narrative and Critical History of America, edited by Justin Winsor.
Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin and Co. The River-
side Press, Cambridge, Copyright, 1884. (Vols. iii. and iv.)
HENRY HUDSON
204
Yate?, John V. N., and Joseph W. Moulton. History of the State of
New York, including its Aboriginal and Colonial Annals. Vol. i..
Part I. A. T, Goodrich, New York, 1824.
ZiMMERN, Helen. The Hansa Towns. Story of the Nations Series,
Fisher Unwin, 1889.
DUTCH BOOKS AND ARTICLES
Dinse, Paul. Die Anfange der Nordpolarforschung und die Eismeer-
fahrten Henry Hudsons. Meereskunde (published by the Institut
fur Meereskunde 2u Berlin), 2ter Jahrgang, 2tes Heft. 28pp. (Berlin,
Friedrich'Wilhelms Universitat.)
Ijzerman, J. W. Over de belegering van het fort Jacatra. Bijdragen
tot de TaaJ-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indie. VoL
73, 1917, pp. 558-679. (The Hague, Koninklijk Instituut voor de
Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde.)
JuET, R. H. H.’s Reize. Van Amsterdam naar Nova Zembla,
1609, etc. 1921, (Werken uitgegeven door de Linschoten-Vereeni-
ging. No. 19.)
Kuyper, H, S. S. Hendrick Hudson in Hollands Dienst. Graven-
hage, 1909. D. A. Daamen.
Leupe, P. a. Henry Hudson in Holland, 1608-1609. Tijdschrift van
het Aardrijkskuni g Genootschap gevestigd te Amsterdam. Series i,
Vol. 2, 1877, pp. 171-173. (Amsterdam, Nederlandsch Aardrijks-
kundig Genootschap.)
Naber, S. P. L’Honore. Henry Hudson’s Reize onder Nederlandsche
Vlag van Amsterdam naar Nova Zembla, Amerika en terug naar
Dartmouth in Engeland, 1609, volgens het journaal van Robert Juet
uitgegeven door S. P. L’Honor6 Naber. ’$ Gravenhage, 1921.
Martinus^ NijhofF. (Werken uitgegeven door de Linschoten-
Vereeniging. No. 19.)
WiEDER, F. C. Onderzoek naar de oudste kaarten van de omgeving van
New York. Tijdschrift van het koninklijk Nederlandsch Aardrijks-
kundig Genootschap. Series ii, Vol. 35, 1918, pp. 235-260.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
205
MAGAZINES
Bridgman, ^ H. L. Hudson, Fulton— the Men and the River. Travel
Magazine, October, 1909.
Conway, Martin. Henry Hudson’s Voyages to Spitsbergen. Geo-
graphical Journal, Vol. 1 5.
Ferriss, Mary L. D. Henry Hudson the Navigator. Magazine of
American History, Vol. 30.
Guthrie, J. W. Tercentennial of Henry Hudson. Munsey, Vol. 30,
February, 1904.
Hart, A. B. Story of the Hudson. The Mentor, Vol. 5, August i,
1917.
Hastings, H. In Justice to Henry Hudson. Harper’s Weekly, Vol. 50,
July 28, 1906.
Hudson and his Exploration of the Hudson River. Scientific American,
September 25, 1909.
Hudson’s Arctic Expedition. Living Age, Vol. 15.
Hudson’s Four Recorded Voyages. Harper’s Weekly, September 25,
1909.
Hudson-Fulton Anniversaries. Review of Reviews, Vol. 40, October
1909.
Hudson-Fulton Celebration, Educational Value of. Scientific American,
October 16, 1909.
Hudson, Henry, or Hendrick. Scientific American, Vol. 95, September
15, 1906.
Janvier, T. A. New data concerning Henry Hudson. Harper’s Weekly,
Vol. 53, September 25, 1909.
Johnson, G. Great Men of the North. Canadian Magazine, April
1902.
Lewis, A. H, Hudson’s Farthest West. Cosmopolitan, Vol. 47,
November 1909.
Mabie, H. W. Finding the Hudson. Outlook, Vol. 93, September 2 5,
1909.
Reeve, A. B. Three Hundred Years on the Hudson. The Outing,
Vol. 54, September 1909.
2o6
HENRY HUDSON
Sage. Hudson and his Ship, the “ Halve Maene.” Collier’s, Vol. 44,
September 25, 1909.
Van Vorst, M. History and description of the Hudson River. Harper’s
Monthly Magazine, March 1905.
Wilson,']. G. Voyage of Henry Hudson and Its Results. National
Magazine, Vol. 15.
INDEX
Accomac, Peninsula, 8o.
Adirondack Mountains, io8, 109.
Adrey, John, 45.
Aerssens, Francis, 72.
Agoomska (Akimiski) Island, 142.
Akpatok Island (Desire Provoketh),
137 -
Albany, 108, 109, no.
Algonquin (Algonkin), 109.
Amsterdam, 20, 61, 65, 70, 72, 73,
74, 76,87, 119, 162.
Anian, Straits of, 61, 82.
Antwerp, 62, 64, 65, 68, 70.
Archangel, 24.
Arminius, Jacobus (Hermann, Jakobs),
73*
Asher, Dr. George M., 51, 185.
Baccalaos, waters of, 90.
Bacon, Edgar Mayhew, 185.
Baffin Bay, 28.
Baffin, William, 73, 185.
Bagle, Francis, 61,
Bantam, 137, *87.
Bantry Bay, 182,
Barents, William (Barentson, or
Willem Bai'cndszoon), 18, 20-24,
3*> 3S> 3^> 42» 49> 73>
150.
Battery, the, 97, 98.
Baxter, Thomas, 27.
Bear Island, 21, 32, 38, 39.
Bears, polar, 48, 136.
Beavers, 92, 120, 149, 150.
Bedwcll, Rev. William, 2.
Bennet, Stephen, 38,
Berchaven, 1S2.
Bermudas, 89,
Beubery, James, 27.
Bewindhcbber, matiagcrs of the new
ships, 67, 77.
Bishopsgate Street, 3, 162.
Blom, Dominie, of Kingston, 121.
Blubbertown (see Smeerenberg).
Bond, Silvanus, 124, 162, 164, 180*
Boty, Iver (Bartsen), 79, 131.
Braunch, John, 45.
Breidi Fiord, 127.
Briggs, Henry, 82.
Bristol, 6, 182.
Bruegel, Pieter, 64,
Brunei (Brownel), Oliver, 18, 19,
Burroughs, Stephen, 10, 12, 15,
Busse (Bus) Island, 14, 88.
Butt, Michael, 124, 125, 144, 162,
164.
Button, Admiral Sir Thomas, 184.
Bylot (Billet, Billets, Byleth, Bileth),
Robert, 124, 140, 141, 143, 148,
150, 156, 162, 164, 169, 171, 172,
179, 180, 182, 183, 184, 185.
Cabot, John, 2, 4, 5, 6, 90.
Cabot, Sebastian, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, ii,
12, 27, 90, 130, 134, 135.
Cape Charles (Dry Cape), 9 5.
Cape Chelyuskin, 56.
Cape Cod (New Holland), 93.
Cape DiggCN, 139, 146, 173.
Cape Dufferin, 142.
Cape Farewell, 28.
Cape Hatteras, 94,
Cape Henrietta Maria, 143.
Cape Hold with Hope, 135.
Cape Jones, 142.
Cape Kattaktok, 135.
Cape May, 95.
Cape Mitre (Collins Cape), 33, 34.
Cape Smith, 14X.
Cape of Tartaria (see Tabin Pro-
montory).
Cape Wcggs (King James Cape), 136.
507
2o8
HENRY HUDSON
Cape Wolstcnholme (Worsenhome),
i39» i72> 173*
Carlsen, .Captain Elling, 23.
Castleton, 106.
Cathay, 5, 9, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19,
46, 84, 130.
Catskill Landing, 114.
Catskill Mountains, 105, 107.
Cavendish, Thomas, of Corpus Christi
College Cambridge, 79, 137.
Champlain, Samuel de, 108, 109.
Chancellor, Richard, 12, 15.
Charles v,, Emperor, 7, 62, 63.
Charles Island (Queen Anne’s Fore-
land), 136.
Charlton Island, 163, 183, 188.
CheiTy, Sir Francis, 19.
Cherry Island {see Bear Island).
Chesapeake Bay, 80, 95.
Chilham Castle, 122, 137.
Chin, the sea of, i8, 27.
Clemens, Francis, 124, 143, 148, 162,
164, 180, 186, 191, 193, 195, 197.
Cohohatalea River {see Hudson
River).
Coleburne (Colbert or Coolbrand),
Master, 125,
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, i8i.
Collines or Collins, William, 27, 32,
33*
Collins Cape {see Cape Mitre).
Colman, John, 33, 84, 99, 100, loi.
Colman*s Point (Sandy Hook), 100.
Columbus, Christopher, 5, 6, 27, 131.
Coney Island, 98.
Contract between Henry Hudson and
directors of East India Company,
77, 78.
Conway, Sir Martin, 32, 33? 35> 37*
Cooke, John, 27, 45, 50.
Coryat, Tom, 46, 123.
Costin Shar (Costing Sarch) Sound in
Novaya Zemlya, 53, 56.
Daniel, Samuel, 43.
Dartmouth, 117, 118.
Davis, Captain John, 27, 36, 58, 73,
92, 117, 123, 130, 131, 134, i7<5.
Davis Strait, 6, 28, 36, 83.
Day, Richard, 27,
De Laet, John, 106,
Delaware Bay, 9 5.
Delft, 63, 76.
Desolation (southern extremity of
Greenland), 134.
De Veer, Gerrit, 21, 23, 42.
Digges, Sir Dudley, 87, 122, 125, 153,
173*
Digges Island, 140, 169, 176, 180,
184.
“ Discovery,” the, 122, 123, 124, 125,
141, 143, 145, 155, 159, 162, 169,
172, 174, 179, 184, 186, 189, 192,
196, 197.
Dobbs, Jeremiah, 105.
« Dolphin,” the, 96.
Dorset, 57.
Doughty, Captain Thomas, 137.
Drake, Sir Francis, 79, 137.
Drayton, Michael, 35.
Dry Cape (see Cape Charles).
Dun Islands' (Lammas Islands?), 37.
Dutch East India Company, 6i, 68,
hr 72» 74» 75> 77-
Dutch West India Company, xo6,
120 .
Eagle Rock, 104.
East India Company, 81, 122, 187,
East India traffic, 66.
East Indies, 65, 66, 70, 71, 77, 85,
1x9, 137, 184.
Eden, Richard, ii.
Edward VI, 8, 9.
Elizabeth, Queen, relations with Ivan
the Terrible, 135 24, 7 r .
Ellis Island (Kioshk Island or Gull
Island), X02,
Enckhuysen or Enchuysen, 19, 20,
76.
Engroneland (see Greenland).
Ericsson, Leii, 132.
Eskimos (Skraelings), 9, 28, 29, 92,
X33» i35» 3t77-
Fanner, Syracfcc, 124, *25, 162,
164.
Faroe (Fiiroer, Faroe) Islands, 27, 38,
87, 126.
Flamborough Head, 126.
Florida, 7.
Fothcrby, Captain Robert, 34,
INDEX
209
Foxe, Captain Luke (or North-West
Foxe), 81, T31, 141, 161.
Frobisher, Sir Martin, 27, loi, 130,
134.
Frome, river, 57.
‘‘Furious Overfall," John Davis’
(Lumle^s Inlet or Mouth of Hud-
son Strait), 57, 58, 83, 87, 1 19, 121,
iso-
Galway, green fields of, 182.
Gansevoort Market, 102.
Gerritz or Gerrard, Hessel, 119, 183.
Gibraltar, 71, 72.
Gilby, Humfrey, 45.
Gillam, Captain Zachariah, 188.
Gomez, Estevan, 80, 97, toi.
Goose Land, 14, 52, 85.
Gosnold, Captain Bartholomew, 93.
Grampuses, 30.
Greely, Lieutenant A. W., 151.
Greene, Henry, 125, 126, 128, 129,
140, 141, 147, 148, 150, 152, 154,
ISS» 157, i59» 1^2, 163, 164, 165,
166, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 176,
177, 178, 179.
Greenland (Engronland, Groncland,
Greenland), 9, 27, 28, 29, 30,36, 39,
49, 129, 131, 132, i33> i34i
Gresham, Sir Thomas, 8, 9.
Gull Island {see Ellis Island).
Hague, the, 65, 70, 72, 76.
Hakluyt, Richard, Archdeacon of
Westminster, 19, 34, 35i ^0, 92,
Hakluyt’s Headland, 34, 40.
“Half Moon," the, 84, 85, 91, 93,
94, 96, 98, xoo, xoj, 104, 105, 108,
109, 115, 118, 119, 189.
Hannah Bay (Michaelmas Bay), 144.
Hanseatic Confederacy, 5, 8, 133.
Harbour Hill, 95.
Harriot, Thomas, 86.
Hastings, Mary, Countess ot Hunt-
ingdon, 13.
Hawkins, Sir John, x.
Heemskerk or Heemskerke, Jacob van,
20, 2x, 22, 23, 71, 72, 73*
Henty VIII of England, 7, 25, 15X.
Henry IV of France and Navarre, 71,
72> 74, 75» *27.
Henry, Prince, 123, 126.
Hilles, Thomas, 45, 47.
Hoboken, 116.
Hold-with-Hope, Land of, 29, 39.
Holland {see United Provinces).
Hondius, Jodicus, 31, 37> 5^? 77» 7^,
79j 92-
Hook Mountain (Verdrietig Hoek or
Tedious Hook), 105.
“Hopewell," the, 24, 34, 42, 4S» 4^,
SO, 52, 54, 55, 57, 99,
Hore, Master, 151.
Houtman, Cornelius, 67.
Hudson, Alice, 61, 78.
Hudson Bay, 58, 130,143, 173, 179,
184.
Hudson City, 106.
Hudson, Captain Henry, birth and
family, i, 78, 186, 1875 first sailing,
24-44 j inauguration of the whaling
industry, 39-44,- Spitsbergen, 31-
385 second sailing, 45-59 5 Novaya
Zemlya, 50-59,- Dutch negotia-
tions, 60-835 Dutch contract, 77-
8 3 5 third sailing, 84- x 2 1 5 discovery
of the Hudson River, 96-1165 de-
scription of Red Indians, 106 5 fourth
sailing, 123-1675 wintering, 146-
1565 mutiny, 157-1675 ultimate
fate, 188, 189.
Hudson, John, i, 27, 45, 54, 78, 124,
162, 164, 166, 192, 193.
Hudson, Katherine, i, 78, 186, 187,
188.
Hudson, Millard F., vii-viii.
Hudson, Oliver, x, 61, 78, x88.
Hudson, Richard, i, 78, 187, 188.
Hudson River (River Cohohatalea,
St. Antonio River, North River),
81, 84, 96, 97, 98, 108, 113, 114,
117.
Hudson’s Bay Company, 3, 135, 149,
150, 154, x88.
Hudson Strait, 6, 5$, 62, 130, 180,
Hudson’s Tutches or Touches {see
Jan Mayen Island).
Ice Cape or Ice Point, 20, 21, 23, 72.
Iceland or Islandt, 5, 9, 27, 88, 127.
lie de Richelieu {see Jan Mayen
Island).
O
210
HENRY HUDSON
Indians (see Red Indians).
Ireland, 117, 181, 182, 184.
Iroquois, 121.
Ivan the Terrible (Ivan Vasilivitch,
Duke of Muscovy), 12, 18.
Jackman, Charles, 16, 22, 49.
James Bay, 142, 143, 144, 146, 154,
183,
James I, 24, 43> 7i> 122, 184.
James, Captain Thomas, 151, 188.
Jamestown, Virginia, 80, 94.
Jan Mayen Island (Hudson’s Tutches
or Touches, He de Richelieu,
Trinity Island), 38, 43, 44.
Janvier, Thomas A., 185.
Java, 142, 179.
Jeannin, Pierre, President of the
Parliament of Burgundy, 71, 75, 76,
Juet, Robert, 45, 50, 55, 84, 86, 90,
94-, 95 j 9^j 99j ^06, no, 114,
115, 116, 124, i29> 137, I 43 »
150, 151? ^59>
165, 170, 171, 172, 179, 180, i8r,
182.
Kara Bay, 20, 55.
Kara Sea, 15, i6, 49, 66.
King, John, 125, 143, 153, 156, 161,
163, 165.
King Oscar’s Fiord, 28,
King’s Bay (see Whales Bay).
Kingstown, 105, 121.
Kioshk Island (see Ellis Island).
Knight, James, 27.
Knight, John, 131.
KublaKahn, 12, 14.
Labrador, 7, n, 58, 131, 135, 139,
149.
Lammas Island, 37.
Lapland, 14.
La Plata River or Rio de la Plata, 7.
Le Maire, Isaac, 69, 74.
Le Maire, Jacob, 75,
Limehouse, 48, 86.
Linschoten, John Huygen van, 66.
Lodlo, Arnold (Ladley, Ludlow,
Ladlo, or A mall Ludlowe), 45, 46,
50, 51, 56, 124, 142, 154, 162, 164.
Lofoten Islands, 46, 57, 87.
Lok, Dr. Michael, 80,
Long Island, 95.
Lumley’s Inlet (see ‘‘Furious Over-
fall”).
Lundy Island, 5.
Mackenzie River, 149.
Magellan, Strait of, 69, 76, 108.
Magnetic Pole, 134.
Maine, coast of, 90.
Manhattan, 102, no, 120.
Marco Polo, 5.
Marlowe, Christopher, 86.
Martha’s Vineyard, 94.
Mary, Queen, to.
Mathiies, Bennett (Bennet Mathewes),
124, 125, 142, 154, 161, 162, 180,
181, i86, 191, 195.
Matochkin Shar, 49, 53.
Maurice, Prince, of Nassau, Prince of
Orange, 70.
May, Jan Jacobsz, 38.
Mercator, Gerardus, 15, 19.
Merchant Adventurers, Company of,
9» 13:
Mermaids, 47, 48.
Meteren, Emanuel van, 6x, 85, ri8,
119.
Michiel, Giovanni, 1 5.
Mohawks, 121.
Moluccas, 7.
Monmouth County, New Jersey, 99.
Montaigne, Seigneur de Michel,
loi, 109.
Montoma, 107.
Moore, Adame, 124, 125, 144, 162,
164.
Moscow’, 13.
Mosquito Bay, 172.
Motter, Adrian, 1 24, 143, 154, 1 6 1 ,
162, 176, 177, 178, 179, !8o.
Moucheron, Balthasar de, 18, 20, 24,
68 , 69.
Moucheron, Melchior de, 24.
Mount Beerenbcrg, 44,
Mount of God’s Mercie, 28.
Mount Hekla, 127, 128.
Mount Kenya, 50.
Mount Staraschin, 36.
Murphy, Henry Cruse, Uniteti States
Minister at the Hague, 77.
INDEX
2II
Muscovy Company, 13, 14, 15, i8,
19, 24., 32, 39, 43, 45, 120, 121.
Nansen, Fridtjof, 93.
Narrows, the, 98, 99, loi.
Narwhal, 16, 173.
Navesink, 95.
Newburgh, 114.
Newfoundland, 90, 1x7, iiS, 181.
New Holland (see Cape Cod).
New Jersey, 98, 99.
Newland or Nieuland (see Spits-
bergen).
New York City, 98, 105, 108.
New York Harbour, 97, 99, 101-102.
Nordenskidld, Baron Nils Adolf Erik,
56.
North Cape, 46, 85.
North-East Passage, 20, 45, 74.
North Pole, passage across, 24-25, 26,
29* 35> 39> 72*
North River (see Hudson River).
North-West Passage, 117, 119, 122,
15X, 158, 168, 183, 184, 185.
Nottaway, river, 146.
Novaya Zemlya (Nova Zembla), 14,
16, 20, 21, 23, 45, 48, 49, 77, 81,
82, 150.
Ob or Oby, the river, 18, 19, 20, 38,
5 *, 56, 82.
Octhcr, 32.
Olden-Barneveldt, John van, 68, 70,
7 *-
Opritchniki, the, X3.
Orange Islands, 20.
Orinoco River, 6.
Orkney Islands, 126, 127.
Ortelius, Abraham, xi8, 130.
Os, Dirk van, 67, 77, 78.
Pausades, X04. '
Parma, Alexander Farnese, Duke of,
PecSora, river, 20.
Peekskill, 1x4.
Penobscot Bay, 91.
Peregrine falcon, 52*
Perse, Michael, 45, 46, 124, 1 54, i6x,
162, 170, 176, X77, xyS, 179*
Pet, Arthur, 16, 22, 49.
Pet Strait, 20.
Philip II of Spain, 10, 62, 65, 71.
Philip III of Spain, 70.
Plancius, Peter, 20, 26, 73, 74, 76,
81, 92, 131, 183.
Pleyce or Pleyse, John, 27, 28, 34,
35, 36, 42 j 63.
5, 56, 128. ^
Plymouth or Pilgrim fathers, 93.
Poole, Jonas, 53.
Porpoises, 48, 57.
Portland Promontory, 1 7 1 .
Poughkeepsie, 114.
Prickett, Abacuk or Abecocke, or
Abacuck Pricket, 124, 125, 126,
i27» 136, 138, 140, 141J i43> i45>
148, i53> i59> i6x, 162, 165,
168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 176, 177,
178, 180, 181, 183, 184, 185, 186,
191, 192, 193, 195, 196, 197.
Public Record Office, 185.
Purchas, Rev. Samuel, 26, 60, 145,
170, 184.
Radisson, Pierre Esprit, 154, 188.
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 24, 86, 123.
Raynar, Robert, 45, 47.
Read, General John Meredith, viii.
Reael, Commander Laurens, 119.
Red Hook, 1 14.
Red Indians, 80, 91, 92, 93, 98, 101,
102, X05, 107, 108, 109, ixo, 112,
113, 114, 115, X16, 121, 152, 153,
158.
Resolution,” the, 184.
Resolution Island, 134.
Ribeiro's chart, 80.
Rockefeller, John D., 105.
Rocky Mountains, 50.
Rotchesfcll, the mountain of, 37.
Rupert’s Bay, 144.
Ryp, John Cornelius, or Jan Cornelis-
zoon Rijp, 20, 31.
Saddleback Islands (the Isles of
God’s Mercies), 135, 138, 180.
St. Antonio River (see Hudson River).
St. Ethelburga, church of, i, 2, 3, 24.
St. Katherine, Precinct of, 124.
St. Katherine’s Pool, 46, 124.
St. Mary Aldermary, 61.
212
HENRY HUDSON
Salisbury Island, 136.
Samoyeds, 51.
Sandy Hook, 95.
Scandinavian Colony in Greenland,
xjij X33»
Scott, Robert Falcon, 41.
Scurvy, 44, 148.
Seals, 52, 88, 178.
“ Searchthrift,” the, 10, 15.
Sea Venture,” the, 89.
Seneca, 5.
Seven Icebergs, the, or the Seven
Mountains, 34.
Shackleton, Sir Ernest Henry, 41.
Shakespeare, Susanna, daughter of
William, 28.
Shakespeare, William, 89, 146.
Sherrick Mountain, 145.
Sidney, Sir Philip, 80.
Skraelings (see Eskimos).
Skrutton or Strutton, James, 27, 45.
Smeerenburg or Blubbertown, 40.
Smith, Captain John, 79, 81, 92, 94.
Smith Island, 141.
Smith, Sir Thomas, 122, 183.
Sneyden’s Landing, 104, 105.
Somers, Sir George, 89.
South Goose Cape, 49.
South Sea or Sea Sur, 173, 184.
Spice Islands, 66.
Spitsbergen (Nieuland, Newland,
Spitzbergen, Svalbard), 21, 30, 31,
32> 35^ 37> 3S> 39> 43>
49, 84.
Spuyten Duyvil, 104, 115.
Staffe, Philip, 45, 46, 124, 137, 142,
144, J45, 147, 148, 158, 163, 16$,
188.
Stage Harbour, 94.
Staten Island, 98.
Statcs-General, 67, 68, 69.
Steelyard, the, 8.
** Susan Constance,” the, 191, 192,
X93 j X 93> X96, 197.
Svalbard (see Spitsbergen).
Syms, Nicholas, 124, 158, 163, i8o.
Tabin, Promontory, 16, 18, 56.
TappanSea, 105.
T ayjor, Captain, 182.
Tempest^ The^ 89.
Ternate (Spice Island), 85.
Terschelling Island, 21,
Thomas, John, 124, 125, 154, 161,
162, 163, 164, 169, 176, 177, 178,
179.
Thorne, Robert, 25.
Thule, 5, 127.
Tidore (Spice Island), 85.
Tomson, Richard, 45.
Trinity House, 172, 183.
Ungava Bay, 135, 137.
Unicorn, horn, 16.
United Netherlands {see United Pro-
vinces).
United Provinces (United Nether-
lands, Rebellious Provinces, Hol-
land), 65, 70,71,72, 117,118,1x9.
Usselincx, William, 65.
Vaigach (Vaigaits, Waigats, Vay-
gats), x6, 20, 49, 56.
Van Cortlandts, X2i.
Van Rensselacrs, 121.
Vardo Island (Vardoehuus), 12, 23,
57 *
Vasilivitch, Duke of Muscovy (see
Ivan the Terrible).
Venson, Master, 126, 147.
Verazzano, Giovanni da : discovery or
Hudson River, statue of, So, 96, 97,
101.
Verdict on Mutineers, 190-198.
Virginia, colony of, 79, So, 8 x, 87, 89,
1 19.
Vogel Hook (Vogelhoek, Vogel
Hooke), 21, 31, 42.
Walruses, 32, 38, 44, 50, 52, 53,
S4» 5^-
Wampum, 110, 1 13.
Wardoehuus (see Vardo).
Warner, William, 19.
Waymouth, John, 182.
Wechawken, xx6.
West Indies, 5.
West Point, X04.
Wetheringsett, 35.
Weymouth, Captain George, 81,
X3*-
Whales, 33, 38, 39, 40, 41, 4*, 43.
INDEX
213
Whales Bay (King’s Bay), 32, 33,
84, 99.
White Nose, the (White Nore, White
Nothe) promontory of Dorset, 57.
White Sea, 12, 18, 51.
Williams, John, 124, 125, 147.
William the Silent, Prince of Orange,
63, 64.
Willoughby, Sir Hugh, 9, 12, 14, 15
Willoughby’s Land, 14, 43, 57.
Wilson, Edward, ship’s surgeon, 124,
129, 163, 164, 180,183, 184, i86,
192? i 93 > 196, 197-
Wilson, William, seaman, 124, 143,
150, 152, 154, 155, 157, i59»
160, 162, 164, 169, 176, 177, 179.
Wolstenholme, Sir John, 122, 146.
Wydowse (Woodhouse, Widowes,
Wydhouse), Thomas, 124, 125,
138, I43> 152? 162, 164.
Yonkers, 104.
Young, James, 27.
Young’s Cape, 28.
I Zeni chart, 27, 29.
BOOKS BT THE SAME AUTHOR
THE CONFESSIONS OF TWO BROTHERS
EBONY AND IVORY
THIRTEEN WORTHIES
BLACK LAUGHTER
SKIN FOR SKIN
THE VERDICT OF BRIDLEGOOSE
THE GOLDEN HIND SERIES
A new uniform series of biographies of the great
explorers, published under the general editorship of
Milton Waldman.
Illustrated. Demy 8vo. 12 s. 6d. net each volume.
FIRST VOLUMES
SIR FRANCIS DRAKE. By E. F. Benson.
CAPTAIN JO^' By E. Keble Chatterton.
HENRY HUDSON. By Llewelyn Powys.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH. By Milton Waldman.
SIR JOHN HAWKINS. By Philip Gosse.
SIR MARTIN FROBISHER. By William McFee.
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE. By J. C. Squire.
Each volume is well illustrated firom contemporary prints and maps,
and contains a working bibHography and a full index. The books are
attractively printed, produced, and bound in uniform style, and The
Golden Hind Series is sure to find a place in every well-chosen library.
Sme Press Opinions of
SIR FRANCIS DRAKE
“Very brilliantly has Mr. Benson sketched that marvellous epoch in our
history. ... It is a fascinating, vital time, full of the beginnings of English
greatness. . . — Spectator,
“The present fine volume is a book or everybody. It is serious enough
for the historian and fascinating enough for the schoolboy." — Daily Ne^ws.
“A fine piece of work. From the beginning to the end Mr. Benson
reconstructs the stoiy of Drake admirably." — Nen/; Statesman,
“Sowell has Mr. Benson done his work that on closing this volume
you are tempted to wish that he had turned his attention to history years
ago. . . — The Hon. Eleanor Brougham in the Sunday Express,
CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
“ Smith was one of the most remarkable adventurers of the early Stuart
period. Mr. Chatterton has written a lively book of great interest to the
loVer of history." — Times.
“ A series for the general reader and the lover of romance as well as for
the student of histoiy." — S^een,
JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LTD., VIGO STREET, W.i
PRESroENT’S SECRETARIAT
LIBRARY.
> c
Aeck.
1. Books may be retained for a period not
exceeding fifteen days.
