no distant day." That
note was written nearly fifty years ago, and its writer died long
since with his hope unrealized.

But while General Read failed to accomplish his main purpose, he
did, as I have said, more than any other investigator has done to
throw light on Hudson's ancestry, and on his connection with the
Muscovy Company in whose service he sailed. Our navigator may or
may not have been a grandson of the alderman who cut so fine a
figure in the City three centuries and a half ago; but beyond a
reasonable doubt he was of the family--so eminently distinguished
in the annals of discovery--to which that alderman, one of the
founders of the Muscovy Company, and Christopher Hudson, one of its
later governors, and Captain Thomas Hudson, who sailed in its
service, all belonged. And, being akin to such folk, the natural
disposition to adventure was so strong within him that it led him
on to accomplishments which have made him the most illustrious
bearer of his name.

III

"Anno, 1607, Aprill the nineteenth, at Saint Ethelburge, in Bishops
Gate street, did communicate with the rest of the parishioners,
these persons, seamen, purposing to goe to sea foure days after,
for to discover a passage by the North Pole to Japan and China.
First, Henry Hudson, master. Secondly, William Colines, his mate.
Thirdly, James Young. Fourthly, John Colman. Fiftly, John Cooke.
Sixtly, James Beubery. Seventhly, James Skrutton. Eightly, John
Pleyce. Ninthly, Thomas Barter. Tenthly, Richard Day. Eleventhly,
James Knight. Twelfthly, John Hudson, a boy."

With those words Purchas prefaced his account of what is
known--because we have no record of earlier voyages--as Hudson's
first voyage; and with those words our certain knowledge of
Hudson's life begins.

St. Ethelburga's, a restful pause in the bustle of Bishopsgate
Street, still stands--the worse, to be sure, for the clutter of
little shops that has been built in front of it, and for
incongruous interior renovation--and I am very grateful to Purchas
for having preserved the scrap of information that links Hudson's
living body with that church which still is alive: into which may
pass by the very doorway that he passed through those who venerate
his memory; and there may stand within the very walls and beneath
the very roof that sheltered him when he and his ship's company
partook of the Sacrament together three hundred years ago. Purchas,
no doubt, could have told all that w