ITS STORY.

Sandy Hook is one of the striking features in the scenery of New York.
It is a low point of sand projecting from below the Highlands into the
sea. Before its extreme end runs the channel of deep water through which
passes all the commerce of the port--the most important of all the
world's seats of trade. Beyond the deep channel the bar rises, covered
with white breakers, and extends to the distant Rockaway shore. Around
Sandy Hook all the interest of the scene centres, and its bare point,
now marked by the new fortifications, has witnessed some of the most
wonderful voyages of the past. It saw Verazzani in his antique
craft--the most awkward and dangerous of vessels--make his way slowly,
with lead and line, into the wide-spreading harbor, and trace for the
first time the unknown shore. What a wild and lonely scene it was!--the
home of a few savages and of wild beasts and birds. But Verazzani never
came back, and the next ship that sailed by Sandy Hook into the tranquil
bay was that of Hendrick Hudson.

His vessel, the _Half-Moon_, was a Dutch galliot, strongly built, as
were all the Dutch ships of the time, but so small, heavy, and slow that
it seems almost incredible that it should ever outlive a storm or make
any headway on the sea. The stern and prow were high and broad, the bow
round, the hull unwieldy, the masts and sails too small for such a
vessel, and the rudder almost unmanageable. Compared with the modern
sailing ship, nothing could seem more inconvenient or unfit for
navigating stormy seas than these vessels of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Yet with them Barentz broke into the icy ocean of
the North, and defied the arctic cold. Great fleets of them, sometimes
numbering several hundred, sailed from Amsterdam around the Cape of Good
Hope to the East Indies, drove off the Portuguese, and came back laden
with the precious products of the East--gems, gold, and spices. The
immense quantity of cloves and cinnamon used by our ancestors is
startling. But the slow ships sailed safely along the African shore on
both sides, and in the midst of pirates, privateers, storms, and
cyclones made profitable voyages that gave Holland a wonderful
prosperity.

The _Half-Moon_ crossed the bar, anchored in the lower bay, and the
Dutch navigators proceeded cautiously to survey the hostile shore of
Coney Island, where now the countless visitors of Manhattan or Brighton
Beach gather on summer evenings, and a