Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). New York. 1906.
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| it has succeeded and for the measure in which it has failed. |
| Hudson, on coming to the river to which his name was afterward given, did not at first know that it was a river at all; he believed and hoped that it was some great arm of the sea, that in fact it was the Northwest Passage to India, which he and so many other brave men died in vainly trying to discover. For a week he lay in the lower bay, and then for a day shifted his anchorage into what is now New York Harbor; his boats explored the surrounding shore-line, and found many Indian villages, for the neighborhood seemed well peopled. The savages flocked to see the white strangers, and eagerly traded off their tobacco for the knives and beads of the Europeans. Of course occasions of quarrel were certain to arise between the rough, brutal sailors and the fickle, suspicious, treacherous red men; and once a boat’s crew was attacked by two canoes, laden with warriors, and a sailor was killed by an arrow which pierced his throat. Yet on the whole their relations were friendly, and the trading and bartering went on unchecked. |
| Hudson soon found that he was off the mouth of a river, not a strait; and he spent three weeks in exploring it, sailing up till the shoaling water warned him that he was at the head of navigation, near the present site of Albany. He found many |