und that I have pursued the
latest rules of my art, as exemplified in the writings of all the great
American historians, and wrought a very large history out of a small
subject--which nowadays, is considered one of the great triumphs of
historic skill. To proceed, then, with the thread of my story.

In the ever-memorable year of our Lord, 1609, on a Saturday morning, the
five-and-twentieth day of March, old style, did that "worthy and
irrecoverable discoverer (as he has justly been called), Master Henry
Hudson," set sail from Holland in a stout vessel called the Half Moon,
being employed by the Dutch East India Company to seek a north-west
passage to China.

Henry (or, as the Dutch historians call him, Hendrick) Hudson was a
seafaring man of renown, who had learned to smoke tobacco under Sir Walter
Raleigh, and is said to have been the first to introduce it into Holland,
which gained him much popularity in that country, and caused him to find
great favor in the eyes of their High Mightinesses the Lords States
General, and also of the Honorable West India Company. He was a short,
square, brawny old gentleman, with a double chin, a mastiff mouth, and a
broad copper nose, which was supposed in those days to have acquired its
fiery hue from the constant neighborhood of his tobacco pipe.

He wore a true Andrea Ferrara tucked in a leathern belt, and a commodore's
cocked hat on one side of his head. He was remarkable for always jerking
up his breeches when he gave out his orders, and his voice sounded not
unlike the brattling of a tin trumpet, owing to the number of hard
north-westers which he had swallowed in the course of his seafaring.

Such was Hendrick Hudson, of whom we have heard so much, and know so
little; and I have been thus particular in his description, for the
benefit of modern painters and statuaries, that they may represent him as
he was; and not, according to their common custom with modern heroes, make
him look like a Caesar, or Marcus Aurelius, or the Apollo of Belvidere.

As chief mate and favorite companion, the commodore chose Master Robert
Juet, of Limehouse, in England. By some his name has been spelt Chewit,
and ascribed to the circumstance of his having been the first man that
ever chewed tobacco; but this I believe to be a mere flippancy; more
especially as certain of his progeny are living at this day, who write
their names Juet. He was an old comrade and early schoolmate of the great
Hudson, wi