Part 2

The Portuguese continued their surveys of the northern coasts most likely to discover advantageous fisheries. They advanced slowly along the shores of Newfoundland and then up to the mouth of Hudson strait, then through that strait, and at last into _Hudson bay_. With a certain number of ancient maps, ranging from 1529 to 1570, before us we can trace the progress step by step. In 1554 the Portuguese seemed not yet to have reached the mouth of the Hudson strait. In 1558 their geographical knowledge extended beyond the mouth of the strait and in 1570 they had reached the bay. The authorities for all this are our ancient geographical delineations. Much geographical intelligence in those days was kept secret. _We can therefore state with the greatest certainty that Hudson bay had been discovered before the publication of Ortelius's Atlas, published 1570. So said Dr. Asher._

General J. M. Read, Jr., with competent assistants, much time and ample means, pursued a thorough, exhaustive examination to ascertain all possible about the Hudsons, of which Henry was one; and while the book is very interesting and many ingenious theories presented, yet rock-foundation of evidence seems to be lacking.

While neither the parents of Henry Hudson nor the date of his birth have been ascertained, that he was born in England, and almost beyond question in Hoddersdon (where so many of the Hudsons lived) in Hertfordshire, about seventeen miles north by east of London, seems settled. It, moreover, seems highly probable that our Henry Hudson was the grandson of Henry Hudson, a Londoner of great wealth and influence, one of the founders and the first president of the Muscovy or Russian Company which Sebastian Cabot suggested and of which he became its first governor, and that in the service of that company our navigator there had his first service and won the rank and distinction of captain. The Muscovy or Russian Company was formed of London merchant adventurers for the purpose of seeking an all-water route to the Indies by sailing north of Russia and then down the Pacific, greatly shortening the route via the Cape of Good Hope. This company was held in such high esteem that both England and Russia granted it a charter in 1555. Several unsuccessful voyages for this purpose were made, the ice and storms proving insurmountable obstacles. It was in the employ of this company where, and in his own journal, our Henry Hudson first makes himself known as the captain of the "Hopeful," which sailed April 19, 1607, with ten sailors and his son John, a boy, aboard, with directions to explore the coast of Greenland, pass around it to the northeast, or directly under the Pole or, in his own words, "for to discover a passage by the North Pole to Japan and China." The "Hopeful" left Gravesend May 1, 1607, and in twenty-six days reached the Shetland Islands, where supplies were taken on. Four days after leaving these islands it was observed that the magnetic needle was deflected, which created consternation among the sailors. They believed the voyage was under an evil spell and would meet with disaster. Then the resources of the captain were evoked to carry out instructions or plans and prevent mutiny. Hudson managed his crew, sailed along the east coast of Greenland and thence along the ice barrier to Spitzbergen (discovered by the Dutch in 1596), going as far north as 80° 23'. Prevented by ice, he sailed back to England, which he reached September 15, 1607.

The Muscovy Company still believed that an all-water and a very much shorter route than that via Cape of Good Hope from Western Europe to India could be found by the northeast, fitted out a vessel with a larger crew and gave our Captain Henry Hudson the command of it and under the same instructions as before. His son, as well as several others of his crew on the "Hopeful," went with him on this second voyage. He sailed from London April 25, 1608, and, obstructed by the ice, he could go no further than Nova Zembla, which had been discovered in 1553. He promptly returned to England and reported to the company. Hudson asked for more men and less rigid orders that he might make another voyage, but the company did not comply with his request. "It is not known whether it was because it had abandoned the hope of finding a northeastern route or had lost confidence in Hudson's ability." Navigators, like prophets, "are not without honor save in their own country;" as examples, Columbus, John Cabot, Verazzano, Magellan and Americus Vespucius, whose discoveries were for nations not their own.

Hudson, firm in the belief that he could find a much shorter all-water route than then was known, sought employment from the Dutch East India Company, which had heard of him as an able, brave and skilled navigator who had been in the employ of their rival--the English--an incentive to secure his services. Hudson was invited to Amsterdam to confer with the directors of the Dutch East India Company. He went and there met the Amsterdam directors of the Dutch East India Company. The Amsterdam directors thought favorably of securing Hudson's services for the Dutch East India Company--at all events to prevent him from entering any other service and it is said they asked him to come to them a year later for employment as a matter of that importance could be acted on only by the Council of Seventeen. This was to postpone the matter, much to Hudson's disappointment and detriment--ending, possibly, in mere talk. The Dutch East India Company was then the most prosperous of the East India companies and was really more anxious to prevent any other company from discovering a new all-water route (_the company had resolved to do that at any cost_) than to find one themselves. However, the Amsterdam directors did not hoodwink Hudson by their excuse for delay, which would bind him for a year and leave them free. A former director of the Dutch East India Company, who thought he had been ill treated by the company, resigned, became a bitter opponent of the company and resided in Paris. He told Hudson of the duplicity and purpose of the Amsterdam directors in holding him in suspense. The then French King, Henry IV, felt chagrined that France, through oversight or neglect, had not in any due proportion, considering her dignity and importance, shared in the India trade and that her expeditions to Canada had not proved a success, determined to seek and obtain an experienced navigator to take command of a well-equipped expedition in quest of the best all-water route to India. The French King was advised to communicate with James Lemaire, a Dutch navigator of great wealth and residing in Paris. He did so and Lemaire knew Hudson and named him as the best man for the position.

Governments employ a secret service to keep a close watch upon other governments and to report promptly what they are doing and contemplating. King Henry learned about Henry Hudson's conference with the Amsterdam directors of the Dutch East India Company who wanted to bind him to wait a year before engaging again in a voyage of discovery for India and then come to them for employment.

The French King gave orders that Hudson be engaged at once on most liberal terms in the service of France, but the Amsterdam directors learned of his decision and without any further delay entered on the 8th of January, 1609, in a contract with Hudson which resulted in the Dutch claim of New Netherlands instead, perhaps, of extended French claims in the New World. This contract has been very sharply commented upon as being very illiberal in the compensation stated for the services and great risk that Hudson was to undergo; that while clear in terms it was not in perfect good faith for as it claimed to be an act of the Dutch East India Company and was signed by _only two of the directors of the Amsterdam chamber who had no authority to bind the company in such a matter and that therefore it was voidable if for any reason the company so desired_. It might have been merely an inexpensive scheme to prevent Hudson from entering any other employ. Then, too, it appeared singular that either the Amsterdam directors or Hudson should want to attempt the _northeastern_ route which so often had resulted in failure before our Hudson's time and that Hudson himself as a master had signally failed in two expeditions and probably before that while as a mariner in the employ of the Muscovy Company. It seemed as though Hudson who, after commanding two searches for the Muscovy Company wanted greater freedom in the pursuit and so asked of that company. The belief on the part of some was that there was a secret agreement or understanding between the contracting parties that Hudson might, or was really, to ignore the contract which was given to the public as a blind. While subsequent events gave color, plausibility to these thoughts, they were merely conjectures, for it is most remarkable that there has so little documentary evidence been found about a man whose name appears so often and so prominently in North America. Hudson's last voyage was for three wealthy Englishmen, viz.: Sir Thomas Smythe, Sir Dudley Digges and John Wolstenholme. Doubtless very much of Hudson's writings were not made public--probably publication at that time was forbidden, fearing that rival navigators would thereby gain some information to their advantage and to the detriment of Hudson's employers. Then, too, it has been thought and said that if Hudson's writings had been published in full some things would have been revealed that at least some of the contracting parties were anxious to conceal. Although nearly 300 years have passed and the public has not been fully enlightened on this subject there still remains the belief that Hudson's writings about his contracts for searching for an all-water and shorter route to India will yet be discovered and published. To engage in any great and hazardous undertaking there must be some adequate motive. Considering the high demands and promises made to bold and skillful navigators (perhaps in compensation, rank, and authority none comparable with the case of Christopher Columbus) it is scarcely presumable that Henry Hudson entered the service of the Dutch East India Company merely for the paltry sum named in that contract and in a route which he himself on two occasions or more had found impracticable--presumably impossible. Henry Hudson, a bold and experienced navigator, well posted in the discoveries made by maritime discoverers especially in the New World; in the discoveries in geography, geometry, and in possession of the latest and best maps of the world, surely had some strong motive, presumably a worthy ambition to become a discoverer of a new all-water route to India, and in his journal he told of his desire to seek that route by sailing _westward_ when his instructions were distinct and positive to sail _north_ and _east_.

If, then, such were the views and purposes of Hudson when he made the contract (which is quoted herein) with the Amsterdam directors of the Dutch East India Company, let us see, if we may, the real and principal motives actuating that company, so powerful, so dominant in the Netherlands, to engage Hudson by contract and whether either party was not going to live up to it in good faith or whether the strong presumption is that it was merely a blind to deceive rivals and that there was another and very different secret agreement.

Charles V, German Emperor, was born at Ghent, Flanders, 1500. He was the eldest son of Philip, Archduke of Austria, and of Joanna, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Philip's parents were the Emperor Maximilian and Marie, daughter and heiress of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. On the death of his grandfather, Ferdinand, in 1516, Charles took possession of the throne of Spain by the title of Charles I.

On the death of Maximilian in 1519 Charles was elected German Emperor and crowned October 22, 1519, at Aix-la-Chapelle and received from the Pope the title of Roman Emperor, making him the most powerful monarch in Europe. A zealous Catholic, he aimed to nullify the doctrine taught by the reformer Martin Luther and to compel the Hollanders, the Netherlanders, to express their faith and belief in Ignatius Loyola, the reputed founder of the Society of Jesus--the Jesuits. It was not Loyola but Torquemada, whose name, as the Chief Inquisitor, became a by-word and reproach. Justin Winsor, a high authority, said that Carlyle said, "Those Dutch are a strong people. They raised their land out of a marsh and went on for a long time breeding cows and making cheese and might have gone with their cows and cheese till doomsday. But Spain comes over and says, 'We want you to believe in Ignatius.' The Dutch replied, 'We are very sorry, but we cannot.' 'God, but you must,' said Spain, and went about it with guns and swords to make the Dutch believe in Ignatius." Thus began a religious war (usually the fiercest and most unrelenting) which, with some cessation of hostilities, lasted for nearly seventy years, down to 1648, when the independence of the Dutch Republic was acknowledged and it had become one of the foremost, if not really the foremost, power in Europe.

War (which Erasmus called "the malady of princes" and General Sherman called "hell"), begun by Charles I of Spain against the Netherlands, was continued by his son and grandson and resulted in driving out of Europe many of North America's early and most desirable settlers.

Many of the Dutch East India Company's vessels were equipped for war as well as for commerce and her East India possessions were active in building and fitting out ships which captured many and rich prizes from the Spaniards. The richest locality for capturing such prizes was in the West Indies, and what the Netherlands greatly needed was territory near there, where her ships could be sheltered, repaired, and obtain the needed supplies. Spain was in possession of nearly all of what is now the south of the United States, and France of Canada. The English held Virginia and claimed what is now called New England, but between the two was a territory that seemed free for settlement and there is reason to believe that the Dutch East India Company was aware of that fact and aimed to take it.

In 1497 and 1498 the Cabots, in the employ of Henry VII of England, sailed westward in search of a shorter all-water route to India, coasting along the Atlantic from a parallel of latitude about the same as that of the Straits of Gibraltar clear up to Hudson straits, where the icebergs prevented further advance. Having landed and planted the English flag, they claimed the country for the British crown and under their discovery the English claim in North America rested. On a German map made in 1515 America is represented as a large island in the western Atlantic. Magellan, in whose honor the straits near Cape Horn, South America, were named, sailed around the globe in 1519-21, proved that America was a continent and the world a sphere. Sir Francis Drake, in 1577-79, also circumnavigated the globe. In 1728 Vitus Behring sailed through the straits which bear his name and proved that America is no part of Asia. From 1499 to 1504 Americus Vespucius, a Florentine navigator and explorer, made, in the employ of Spain, four voyages to the east coast of South America and built a fort on the coast of Brazil, and from him, or rather in his honor, the western continent was named "America"--the name first appearing in a little pamphlet published in France in 1507 by Waldseemuler, a German geographer, who gave as his reason for the name the following, viz.: "The fourth part of the world having been discovered by Americus, it may be called the land of Americus or America."

Between the years 1512 and 1542 Ponce de Leon, Balboa, Cortez, Narvaez, Cabeza de Vaca, De Soto, Pizarro, and Coronado, all for Spain, had made extensive and very important discoveries in what are now the southern of the United States, the Mississippi river, Mexico, and Peru. Some of these men became infamous by their horrible crimes. They were arrogant and frank. Balboa, in 1513, was the first European to discover the "South sea" (the Pacific ocean), and "wading into its waters drew his sword and declared that the Kings of Spain should hold possession of the 'South sea' and of its coasts and islands 'while the earth revolves, and until the universal judgment of mankind.'" Cortez bluffly declared in a few words when speaking to the Mexicans the motives of the Spanish as follows: "We Spaniards are troubled with a disease of the heart for which we find gold and gold only a specific remedy." These discoverers, explorers, freebooters from Spain in her vast territory New Spain, merited the just contempt not only of the ancient civilizations of Mexico and Peru but also of the whole enlightened world. It seems to have been the firm belief of the Spaniard for centuries that he is made of a finer material than any other nation and destined to rule and others to obey.

The French disputed the Spanish claims to North America and established a colony of Huguenots in South Carolina, but France's discoveries and possessions in North America were principally in the north. Cartier discovered and explored the St. Lawrence river in 1535, and that was thought to be a part, if not all, of the water-way through the continent of America to the South sea or Pacific ocean en route to India. No nation was more zealous and successful than France in making discoveries and settlements in Canada, and what ultimately became the northwestern of the United States along the upper lakes and the upper Mississippi river, by those wonderful religious orders, the Franciscans and Jesuits.

Eighty-five years had elapsed after the discovery in North America by the Cabots, under which the English based their claim to the territory, before they made any attempt at colonization or even to establish a permanent settlement. In 1584 that unique, able, versatile, vain Queen Elizabeth of England granted a most remarkable charter to, at one time her especial favorite, the highly gifted but eccentric Sir Walter Raleigh, to lay claim to any land in the west "not actually possessed by any Christian prince." Raleigh sent out several expeditions to make a settlement on Roanoke island, off the coast of North Carolina. It was represented to the Queen as a remarkably fine land, so that she named it in her own honor as the Virgin Queen Virginia and thereupon knighted Raleigh. Raleigh, though he made determined and prolonged efforts and at great personal expense to establish permanent English settlements in America, failed. To Sir Walter Raleigh is given the credit or curse of having discovered in Virginia a weed which King James called "the vilest of weeds" and Edmund Spencer, the famous poet, "divine tobacco." To Sir Walter also is generally given the credit of having introduced the most valuable of all the vegetables known to man--the potato.

Justin Winsor, a distinguished American historian, said that the scheme to form a West India Company was first broached in 1592 by William Usselinx, an exiled Antwerp merchant. It was many years before it could be accomplished. The longing for a share in the riches of the New World conduced in the meantime to the establishment of the "Greenland Company" about 1596 and the pretended search by its ships for a northwestern passage led to a supposed first discovery of the Hudson river, if we may rely upon an unsupported statement by the officers of the West India Company in an appeal for assistance to the Assembly of the Nineteenth in 1644. According to this statement ships of the "Greenland Company" had entered the North and Delaware rivers in 1598; their crews had landed in both places and had built small forts to protect them against the inclemency of the weather and to resist the attacks of the Indians.

A company of English merchants had organized to trade to America in the first year of the seventeenth century. Their first adventure to Guiana and Virginia were not successful yet gave a new impetus to the scheme originally conceived by Usselinx. A plan for the organization of a West India Company was drawn up in 1606, according to the excited Belgian ideas. This company was to have an existence of thirty-six years; to receive during the first six years assistance from all the United Provinces, and to be managed in the same manner as the East India Company. It was not consummated. Olden-Barneveldt, the Advocate of Holland and one of the most prominent and influential members of the peace party, foresaw that the organization of a West India Company with the avowed purpose of obtaining most of its profits by preying on Spanish commerce in American waters would only prolong the war. Usselinx's plan was to compel Spain by these means to evacuate Belgium and thus give her exiled sons a chance to return to their old home. A wholesale departure of the shrewd, industrious, and skilful Belgians would have deprived Holland of her political pre-eminence and have left her an obscure and isolated province. The conflicting views and claims of the provinces caused the scheme to fail until after Olden-Barneveldt, accused of high treason, was tried, condemned, and beheaded in 1619. Subsequently Maurice of Nassau took up the scheme of forming the Dutch West India Company. Private ships sailing from Dutch ports had not been idle in the meantime; in 1607 we hear of them in Canada trading for furs. Belgium and the Netherlands, compelled to become maritime nations, while other circumstances directed to commercial pursuits, had become the common carriers of the sea and the Netherlands especially had availed themselves of the discoveries made by the Cabots, Verrazano, and other adventurous explorers in the country succeeding Columbus' discovery of America. They thought Spain most assailable in the West Indies where they could prey upon their commerce and capture their treasures from Mexico and Peru. The first proposition to make such an expedition was submitted to the States General in 1581 by an English sea captain named Beets. It was refused. Later it gained favor and caused the formation of a West India Company really to fight Spain and not ignoring the search for a shorter route to India.

Before Henry Hudson's attempts to find a _northwest_ passage to India six trials had been made and subsequently more than twenty-five more, and while it is claimed that Sir Robert McClure in his expedition in 1650-54 succeeded, it was only by abandoning his vessel and completing his way on ice. The discovery is of no practical utility.

In 1606 James I, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, granted two charters--one to the London Company giving it power to establish settlements anywhere between the thirty-fourth and thirty-eighth degrees of north latitude (that is between Cape Fear and the Potomac); and the other to the Plymouth Company granting it the territory in Northern Virginia between the forty-first and the forty-fifth degrees of north latitude (that is between the eastern end of Long Island and the northern limit of Nova Scotia), with the right to establish settlements therein. Each of these grants extended 100 miles inland. The territory between these two companies (from thirty-ninth to forty-first degrees), embracing what is Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and a little of New York, was open to settlement by either of these companies, provided that neither should make a settlement within 100 miles of the other.