Henry Hudson

“ Hudson, who was sitting at one of the windows, empty-handed save for the pocket-handkerchief in her lap, which was held with an air of familiarity with its sadder uses. Near her, on the sofa, half-sitting, half-lounging, in the attitude of a visitor outstaying ceremony, with one long leg flung over the other and a large foot in a clumsy boot swinging to and fro continually, was a lean, sandy-haired gentleman whom Rowland recognised as the original of the portrait of Mr. Barnaby Striker. ”

“ Hudson was reduced to forgetting, above all, that the poison of Europe — as she knew Europe — might lurk in the breeze, and even to admitting that the eggs of Engelthal were almost as fresh and the cream almost as thick as those of the Connecticut Valley. She was certainly more in her element than she had been in Italy; having always lived in the country she had missed in Rome and Florence that social solitude mitigated by bushes and rocks, primarily dear to the true New England temperament. ”

“ Hudson's eyes glowed and expanded; he looked at Rowland for some time in silence. "I have a notion you really know," he said at last. "But if you don't, it does n't much matter."
"My cousin asked me to-day," said Cecilia, "whether I supposed you knew yourself how good it is."
Hudson stared, blushing a little. "Perhaps not!" he cried.
"Very likely," said Mallet. "I read in a book the other day that great talent in action—in fact the book said genius—is a kind of somnambulism. The artist performs great feats, in a dream. We must not wake him up, lest he should lose his balance." ”

“ He set off upon his last voyage in 1610, discovered the strait now called Hudson Strait, and passed through it into Hudson Bay, where, although poorly provisioned, he determined to pass the winter. When food gave out, the sailors mutinied, and cast Hudson and eight others adrift in the summer of 1611. The ringleaders perished in a fight with savages, and the survivors after great suffering reached England. All these voyages were made in the service of Dutch merchants. See George Asher's Henry Hudson the Navigator. ”

“ And I hold that Hudson's fame, as a most brave explorer and as a great discoverer, is not dimmed by the fact that up to a certain point he followed in other men's footsteps; nor do I think that his glory is lessened by his seeming predestination to go on fixed lines to a fixed end. ”

“ FROM HUDSON TO PHIPPS AND NELSON With the voyages of Weymouth, Knight, and Hall, which occupied the first few years of the seventeenth century, we need not concern ourselves at all, for they resulted in no discoveries of any importance. In the year 1607, however, Henry Hudson started off on the first of that series of travels by which his name became famous, and during the course of which he succeeded in carrying the British flag to places that had never before been trodden by the foot of civilised man. ”

“ He refused invitations, to Rowland’s knowledge, in order to dine at the jejune little table-d’hote; wherever his spirit might be, he was present in the flesh with religious constancy. Mrs. Hudson’s felicity betrayed itself in a remarkable tendency to finish her sentences and wear her best black silk gown. Her tremors had trembled away; she was like a child who discovers that the shaggy monster it has so long been afraid to touch is an inanimate terror, compounded of straw and saw-dust, and that it is even a safe audacity to tickle its nose. ”

“ Henry Hudson was the first white man who ever sailed up the Hudson River. He was an English sailor in the service of the Dutch, who sent him on a voyage to North America. While sailing along the Atlantic coast he entered the bay of New York, and passing inland discovered the beautiful river that bears his name. ”

“ It is a curious truth that every important move in Hudson's life of which we have record seems to have been a forced move: sometimes with a look of chance about it—as when the directors of the Dutch East India Company called him back and hastily renewed with him their suspended agreement that he should search for a passage to Cathay on a northeast course past Nova Zembla, and so sent him off on the voyage that brought the "Half Moon" into Hudson's River ”

“ Henry Grene, William Wilson, John Thomas and Michael Pearse were slain on shore by the savages at Sir Dudley Digges Island, and Robert Ivett [Juet] died at sea after they were slain.
Philip Staffe, the ship's carpenter, was one of them who were put into the shallop with the master and the rest; whether he is dead or not, he knows not.
The master displaced some of the crew, and put others in their room, but there was no mutiny that he knew of.
Henry Hudson was pinioned, when he was put into the shallop. ”

“ That is only a hundred; a thousand are more, ten times. Looking up I count a thousand leaves; then stop counting, because there are thousands more behind the first, and thousands more, crowded together so that I cannot count them. Lying in your arms, looking up into your face, it was like that; I could not count the things I remembered. In the wood, when you were there, and before; and long, long ago at Voa, when I was a child with mother."
"Tell me some of the things you remembered, Rima."
"Yes, one—only one now. When I was a child at Voa mother was very lame—you know that. ”

“ Hudson has no cause to quarrel with the rating that has been fixed for him in the eternal balances. All that he lost (or seemed to lose) in life has been more than made good to him in the flowing of the years since he fought out with Fate his last losing round.
In his River and Strait and Bay he has such monuments set up before the whole world as have been awarded to only one other navigator. ”

“ At this time a growing discontent among the men first appeared on board; some were for returning before the perils of the journey should become greater, others were for continuing. Hudson showed them a chart showing that they had sailed two hundred leagues farther than any Englishmen had sailed before. The situation of the ship, at times embedded in ice, at others pushing her way through leads of open water, was critical and discouraging, but Henry Hudson continued his intricate navigation, finally being rewarded by finding himself in a clear, open sea. ”

“ 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's wail three doors away. The rage of the weather, for all its violence, was slow to abate; it held its own for two lone hours. With the drop of the thunder the rush of water continued, and night had come on impenetrably black. Rowland thought of Mary Garland's question in the porch, but he thought still more that, although the fetid interior of a high-nestling châlet may offer a convenient refuge from an Alpine tempest, there was no possible music in the universe so sweet as the sound of Roderick's voice. ”

“ Some of his men becoming disheartened and mutinous (it is now supposed that he had arrived two or three months too early) , he lost hope of effecting anything by that route, and submitted to his men, as alternative proposals, either to go to Lumley’s Inlet and follow up Waymouth’s light, or to make for North Virginia and seek the passage in about 40° lat., according to the letter and map sent him by his friend Captain John Smith. The latter plan was adopted, and on the 14th of May Hudson set his face towards the Chesapeake and China. ”

“ For my own part, I much prefer to believe in the mermaid—and, by so believing, to create in my own heart somewhat of the feeling which was in the hearts of those old seafarers in a time when sea-prodigies and sea-mysteries were to be counted with as among the perils of every ocean voyage.
This belief of mine is not a mere whimsical fancy. Unless we take as real what the shipmen of Hudson's time took as real, we not only miss the strong romance which was so large a part of their life, but we go wide of understanding the brave spirit in which their exploring work was done. ”

“ Hudson's rooms opened into a small garden founded on substructions of immense strength, rising from the part of the hill that sloped steeply away. This garden was a charming place. Its southern wall was curtained with a screen of orange-blossoms, a dozen fig-trees here and there offered you their large-leaved shade, and over the low parapet the soft grave Tuscan landscape kept you company. ”

“ Mallet, be merciful!" said Mrs. Hudson, in a tone which, for all its gentleness, made Rowland stare. The poor fellow's stare covered a great deal of concentrated wonder and apprehension—a presentiment of what a small, sweet, feeble, elderly lady might be capable of, in the way of suddenly generated animosity. There was no space in Mrs. Hudson's tiny maternal mind for complications of feeling, and one emotion existed only by turning another over flat and perching on top of it. She was evidently not following Roderick at all in his dusky aberrations. ”

“ Unaware of its previous discovery by Barentz, Stephen Bennet—who commanded the expedition—christened the island Cherie Island, in honour of his patron, and to this day the two names are used almost indiscriminately.
In 1607, Henry Hudson was despatched by the Muscovy Company, with orders to sail, if possible, right across the pole. Although perpetually baffled by the ice, Hudson at last succeeded in reaching the north-west extremity of Spitzbergen, but finding his further progress arrested by an impenetrable barrier of fixed ice, he was forced to return. ”

“ This older Henry Hudson left many sons and kinsmen, whose names sometimes appear as Hoddesdon and Hogeson, and who all seem to have been interested in or connected with the Muscovy Company. Hudson, the navigator, is first mentioned as appointed in 1607 to command the Hopeful in a voyage set forth by the same company 'to discover the pole.' On 19 April he and the crew of the Hopeful, twelve men all told, communicated together in the church of St. ”

“ Hudson looked at first as if this could be but an insidious device for increasing her distress by the assistance of some art of comedy. Then reassured little by little by Rowland's air of conviction, she gave him an appealing glance and a timorous "Really?"
But before her visitor could respond Mr. Striker again intervened. "Do I fully apprehend your expression?" he asked. "Our young friend is to become one of our great men?" ”

“ Henry Hudson never dreamed of the city of New York. These men only blazed the trail. It was for{134} those who came after to understand and use what they had found.
Each year men were finding, and helping others to find, a new land. Some of these men were the pioneers who cleared the ground and planted farms; some were those who built roads and bridges; some were those who took iron, coal, and oil from the ground; some were those who taught the children of the new land in the little bare school-houses. All of these people helped to discover our America. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Because of his full accomplishment of what others essayed and only partially accomplished, Hudson's name is the best known—excepting only that of Columbus—of all the names of explorers by land and sea. From Purchas's time downward it has headed the list of Arctic discoverers; in every history of America it has a leading place; on every map of North America it thrice is written large; here in New York, which owes its founding to his exploring voyage, it is uttered—as we refer to the river, the county, the city, the street, the railroad, bearing it—a thousand times a day. ”

“ Come out."
Then he stirred himself, slowly creeping out on all fours; and, finally, getting free of the dead twigs and leaves, he stood up and faced me. He had a strange, wild look, his white beard all disordered, moss and dead leaves clinging to it, his eyes staring like an owl's, while his mouth opened and shut, the teeth striking together audibly, like an angry peccary's. ”

“ But I have given up trying to imitate Miss Garland," said Christina.
"You surely need imitate no one."
"Don't say that," she said gravely. "So you have walked ten miles this morning? And you are to walk back again?"
"Back again to supper."
"And Mr. Hudson too?"
"Mr. Hudson especially. He is a great walker."
"You men are happy!" Christina cried. "I believe I should enjoy the mountains if I could do such things. It is sitting still and having them scowl down at you! Prince Casamassina never rides. He only goes on a mule. He was carried up the Faulhorn on a litter."
"On a litter?" said Rowland. ”

“ But the note seemed to Rowland to be struck rather at random, for he perceived no echo of it in the boyish garrulity of his later talk. Hudson was a tall, slender young fellow, with a singularly mobile and intelligent face. Rowland was struck at first only with its responsive vivacity, but in a short time he perceived it was remarkably handsome. The features were admirably chiseled and finished, and a frank smile played over them as gracefully as a breeze among flowers. The fault of the young man's whole structure was an excessive want of breadth. ”