who had been informed that the
Englishman had secretly treated with him, had become afraid that I
might wish to employ him for the discovery of the passage. For this
reason they have again treated with him about his undertaking such
an expedition in the course of the present year. The directors of
the Amsterdam Chamber have written to the other chambers of the
same Company to request their approval; and should the others
refuse, the Amsterdam Chamber will undertake the expedition at
their own risk."

In point of fact, the other chambers did refuse (although, before
Hudson actually sailed, they seem to have ratified the agreement
made with him); and the Amsterdam Chamber, single-handed, did set
forth the voyage.

In view of the fact that the French project in a way was realized,
a curiously subtle interest attaches to Jeannin's showing of how
narrow were the chances by which Hudson missed being taken into the
French service, and was taken into that of the Dutch. A French
ship, under the command of a captain whose name has not been
preserved, did sail for the North--almost precisely a month later
than Hudson's sailing--on May 5, 1609. Beyond the bare fact that
such a voyage was made, nothing is known about it: whence the
inference is a reasonable one that it produced no new discoveries.
But suppose that Hudson had commanded; and, so commanding, had not
sailed that unknown captain's useless course but had brought his
French ship into what now are our bay and our river; and that the
French, not the Dutch, had founded the city here that now is--but
by those hair-wide chances might not have been--New York?

V

Mr. Henry C. Murphy--to whose searchings in the archives of Holland
we owe so much--found at The Hague a manuscript history of the East
India Company, written by P. van Dam in the seventeenth century, in
which a copy of Hudson's contract with the Company is preserved.
The contract reads as follows:

"On this eighth of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand
six hundred and nine, the Directors of the East India Company of
the Chamber of Amsterdam of the ten years reckoning of the one
part, and Master Henry Hudson, Englishman, assisted by Jodocus
Hondius[1], of the other part, have agreed in manner following, to
wit: That the said Directors shall in the first place equip a small
vessel or yacht of about thirty lasts [60 tons] burden, well
provided with men, provisions and other necessaries, with whi