Frank Chamberlain

“ Art and architecture have embellished its banks by lovely gardens, parterres and magnificent residences and stately buildings. Attractive villages, great and prosperous cities crown the Hudson from the north and terminating in that unique, wonderful, greatest, truly cosmopolitan city of the world, New York. Nothing else did so much to produce these results as Fulton’s application of steam to navigation and the opening up of a 98 through water transportation route from the Atlantic to the Great lakes. ”

“ Such a river as the Hudson could not have its origin in a low, marshy country, and its flow seaward, in any but a healthy region, but the inducement to seek that country must be more than the mere sentiment of beauty. There must seem to be a prospect of bettering one’s condition, so far as physical comforts, or civil and religious rights are concerned. Hudson, after his exploration of the Hudson river, on his return to Europe, took back there many very valuable furs which he obtained from the Indians in exchange for trinkets of little cost and of still less real value. ”

“ While the New England colonies were rapidly increasing in population and prosperity, the New Netherlands was not. In 1647 the population of the New Netherlands was only about 1,000 or 2,000 less than in 1643. A new policy was ordered by the Lords States General so liberal that settlers could buy as few acres as they wished to and enjoy civil and religious freedom as did the English colonies north and south of them. Under the Patroon régime the Dutch colonists had less freedom, the enjoyment of fewer rights, and greater hardships to endure than in Holland. ”

“ So inferior, so inadequate, for ocean navigation, were the vessels then, and so little was known about ocean currents and the trade winds, that we can easily imagine that long sea voyages were discouraging.
There is no other class of men so superstitious as were the sailors, nor as are the sailors now. Everything that they see or hear of, that is unusual or they don’t understand, frightens them as foreboding evil. ”

“ Columbus, believing that he was inspired and commissioned by God to convert the heathen, sailed and thought he had reached India, called the natives Indians (so they have been called ever since) and he died so thinking.
If the magnitude of the earth—its diameter had been ascertained and the relative proportion of land to water with the known longitude and latitude of India, then the problem was easily solved that an all-water route to India from Europe, whether by sailing westward or northward, would greatly diminish the distance (about 8,000 miles) covered by sailing around Cape Good Hope. ”

“ For at Albany, near the confluence of the two great rivers of the territory of New York, the Hudson from the north and the Mohawk from the west, the Indians from the north and west came in their canoes with their peltry and furs, as a market place, designed by nature, for the exchange of articles between the red men and the white men for what they did not want, to get what, respectively, they did want. ”

“ Others thought the earth was a sphere because “the sphere is the most perfect form; it was the center of the universe because that is the place of honor; and it is motionless, because motion is less dignified than rest.” Some believed that the earth is round and rests upon the ocean. ”

“ The Dutch East India Company was clothed with extraordinary powers and privileges and became very wealthy; not alone in the pursuit of the East India trade, but by capturing in the West Indies galleons containing great quantities of gold and silver, which the Spaniards, by the most cruel methods, had taken in Mexico and Peru. ”

“ The report made by the Nineteen in 1629 to the Lords States General said: “All who are inclined to do any sort of work here procure enough to eat 79 without any trouble and therefore are not willing to go far from home on an uncertainty.” It was apparent that if the Dutch West India Company was to prove a success in the New Netherlands a different course must be pursued, for Virginia and New England were being settled and their territory, in many respects better, was not. ”

“ From 1609 until 1664 the Dutch held the New Netherlands and then were compelled to surrender the territory to the English under the grant of Charles II to James, his brother, the Duke of York and Albany, who, in 1685, became King of England under the title of James III. Great Britain never recognized the Dutch claim—always protested against it—but being engaged in wars almost constantly did not 90 use force to obtain possession before. ”

“ The Dutch did not rely solely on Hudson’s voyage on the Hudson, but none of their claims had validity and the colony of New Netherlands passed under British rule and the Patroon took the oath of allegiance to the English King, and English laws instead of Dutch henceforth prevailed in the colony.
As soon as the Patroons began to plant colonies in New Netherlands the directors of the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch West India Company became jealous and opposed the Patroon system. ”

“ It was the season of the year when nature, in that latitude, dons her variegated and most beautiful colors. Hudson had, along the river in many places where he stopped, many interesting and pleasant interviews with the Indians, gaining much information, and exchanging his trinkets for their valuable furs. The Indians, as a rule, were hospitable, entertaining the strangers with game and fruits, etc. There were a few regrettable incidents on Hudson’s voyage up the river between the Indians and the crew, and it seems probable the latter were most blameworthy. ”

“ The ancients held different opinions about the form, dimensions, the proportion of land to water, of the earth, and as to whether it was motionless, around which all the universe revolved, as the great center, and of supreme importance, or whether it was merely a satellite revolving around the sun. ”

“ Asher, in his publication, says: “Hudson river, Hudson strait and Hudson bay remind every educated man of the illustrious navigator by whom they were explored.” But though the name of Henry Hudson possesses the preservative against oblivion, little more has been done in its behalf, and few persons have any accurate notion of the real extent of its merits. By considering 61 Hudson as the discoverer of the three mighty waters that bear his name, we indeed both overrate and underrate his deserts. ”

“ He was often in consultation with Hudson in Amsterdam and to his chapter on “Norumbega (said to be somewhere in New England) et Virginia” he added a map 47 which, imperfect in some respect—incorrect in its latitudes—was serviceable to Hudson in his westward voyage. The French map of about 1517 and the map of Thomas Hood, an Englishman, published in 1594, which shows under latitude 40° north (New York city is 40° 43′ north) the mouth of a river called Rio de San Antonio, the name given by the earliest Spanish discoverers to what later on became known as the Hudson river. ”

“ They that seek gold must not go to the cold North.” The Spaniards never considered New Netherlands of any value itself.
The Pompey Stone was located near where the Cardiff Giant was found and I do not build on it.
That Giovanni de Verazzano, in the French ship “La Dauphin,” with a crew of fifty men, commissioned by Francis I, King of France, to make discoveries of new lands entered the lower and 58 upper bays of what now is New York, and the mouth of the North, or now called the Hudson river, is conceded. ”

“ Henry Hudson was a bold, skillful navigator, a careful explorer, and had the ability and spirit 70 to have made important discoveries had the time and circumstances favored. It often happens that the discoverer, the inventor, merits less honor than the party coming after, who makes that discovery or invention serviceable—useful, as it had not been before. ”

“ Hudson made the acquaintance and won the friendship of learned geographers in Amsterdam, prominent among them was the Reverend Peter Plancius, who said it was reasonable that the sea should be open near the Pole where the sun shines incessantly for months though with less heat than where it shines only a few hours by day and the hours of the night intervening, cooling. ”

“ He tried to ascend the river, thinking it the water route to the South sea or the Pacific ocean on the way to Cathay and the East Indies. A violent gale sprang up and compelled him to go to sea, and his discoveries along the coast of North America, from Florida to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, resulted in the French claiming that territory as La Nouvelle France (New France) , an extent of more than 1,100 miles.
The valuable furs and peltries of New France induced French merchants, ship owners and capitalists to send many vessels with merchandise to trade with the Indians. ”

“ The great Church of Rome, of unequaled influence and power, taught that the earth is flat 12 and the center of the universe and interdicted, and for centuries punished as heretics, those denying the infallibility of the Popes and teaching otherwise. ”

“ The emigrants taken or sent by the Patroons to New Netherlands were bound for a specified number of years as apprentices to serve their masters, agreeing not to hunt or fish without the master’s permission, agreeing to grind their grain in his mill and pay his price for grinding. ”

“ In 1614 the territory 75 extending from Cape Cod to the Delaware river, places which Hudson in his third voyage had touched, was claimed by the Netherlands and called New Netherlands, and in that year the Holland government granted a special charter to a company of Amsterdam merchants and others of the United New Netherlands Company giving them the monopoly until January 1, 1618, of all travel and trade in the New Netherlands, during which time they were at liberty to make four voyages. ”

“ They did not early come to settle and for nearly twenty years after Hudson’s exploration and glowing account of it very, very few indeed who came over to engage in, or employed in the fur trade, became settlers. It is said that Sarah Rapelje, a daughter of one of the Walloon settlers, born June 7, 1625, was the first white child born in the New Netherlands. The first reference to the population at Fort Orange (Albany) published seems to have been in a work published in Amsterdam in 1628, which says: “There are no families at Fort Orange. They keep twenty-five or twenty-six traders there.” ”

“ The Muscovy Company had headquarters in London, where Hudson would go, and there he met, it is known, Captain John Smith, and it is probable that there he met and formed a favorable opinion of Jodocus Hondius, who was his interpreter, adviser, and witness to the contract of January 8th. He was an educated gentleman, a minister of the Reformed Church, a Belgian, driven out of his country, went to London, a geographer, map-maker and portrait painter. ”

“ The Patroon must obtain Indian title, which usually cost but a trifle. He was empowered to hold civil and criminal courts on his estate and his decisions were practically final. He appointed the officers and magistrates in all the cities and towns in his territory. In order to be invested with this honor, these privileges and powers, he bound himself to take or send over at least fifty emigrants over fifteen years of age to settle on his patent within the next four years. ”