Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). New York. 1906.
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| EARLY in September, 1609, the ship Half-Moon, restlessly skirting the American coast, in the vain quest for a strait or other water route leading to India, came to the mouth of a great lonely river, flowing silently out from the heart of the unknown continent. The Half-Moon was a small, clumsy, high-pooped yacht, manned by a score of Dutch and English sea-dogs, and commanded by an English adventurer then in Dutch pay, and known to his employers as Hendrik Hudson. He, his craft, and his crew were all typical of the age,—an age fertile in adventure-loving explorers, eager to sail under any flag that promised glory and profit, at no matter what cost of hardship and danger; an age fertile also beyond measure in hardy seamen, of whom the hardiest and bravest came from England and the Netherlands. It was a period when the greatest |