thers of birds of various
colors.

"They came towards us with evident delight, raising loud
shouts of admiration, and showing us where we could most
securely land with our boat. We passed up this river about
half a league, when we found it formed a most beautiful lake
three leagues in circuit, upon which they were rowing thirty
or more of their small boats, from one shore to the other,
filled with multitudes who came to see us. All of a sudden,
as is wont to happen to navigators, a violent contrary wind
blew in from the sea, and forced us to return to our ship,
greatly regretting to leave this region which seemed so
commodious and delightful, and which we supposed must also
contain great riches, as the hills showed many indications
of minerals."

In the year 1609, a band of Dutch merchants, called the East India
Company, fitted out an expedition to discover a northeast passage to
the Indies. They built a vessel of about eighty tons burden, called
the Half Moon, and manning her with twenty sailors, entrusted the
command to an Englishman, Henry Hudson. He sailed from the Texel in
his solitary vessel, upon this hazardous expedition, on the 6th of
April, 1609. Doubling North Cape amid storms and fog and ice, after
the rough voyage of a month, he became discouraged, and determined to
change his plan and seek a northwest passage.

Crossing the Atlantic, which, in those high latitudes, seems ever to
be swept by storms, he laid in a store of codfish on the banks of
Newfoundland, and, on the 17th of July, ran his storm-shattered bark
into what is now known as Penobscot Bay, on the coast of Maine. Here
he found the natives friendly. He had lost his foremast in a storm,
and remained at this place a week, preparing a new one. He had heard
in Europe that there was probably a passage through the unexplored
continent, to the Pacific ocean, south of Virginia. Continuing his
voyage southward, he passed Cape Cod, which he supposed to be an
island, and arrived on the 18th of August at the entrance of
Chesapeake Bay. He then ran along the coast in a northerly direction
and entered a great bay with rivers, which he named South River, but
which has since received the name of the Delaware.

Still following the coast, he reached the Highlands of Neversink, on
the 2d of September, and at three o'clock in the afternoon of the same
day, came to what then seemed to him to