BOOK II.

TREATING OF THE FIRST SETTLEMENT OF THE PROVINCE OF NIEUW NEDERLANDTS.

CHAPTER I.

In which are contained divers reasons why a man should not write in a hurry. Also, of Master Hendrick Hudson, his discovery of a strange countryand how he was magnificently rewarded by the munificence of their High Mightinesses.

My great-grandfather, by the mother's side, Hermanus Van Clattercop, when employed to build the large stone church at Rotterdam, which stands about three hundred yards to your left after you turn off from the Boomkeys, and which is so conveniently constructed, that all the zealous Christians of Rotterdam prefer sleeping through a sermon there to any other church in the city-my great-grandfather, I say, when employed to build that famous church, did, in the first place, send to Delft for a box of long pipes; then having purchased a new spitting-box and a hundred weight of the best Virginia, he sat himself down, and did nothing for the space of three months but smoke most laboriously. Then did he spend full three months more in trudging on foot, and voyaging in trekschuit, from Rotterdam to Amsterdam-to Delft to Haerlem-to Leyden-to the Hague,

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HOW HE BUILT A CHURCH.

knocking his head and breaking his pipe against every church in his road. Then did he advance gradually nearer and nearer to Rotterdam, until he came in full sight of the identical spot whereon the church was to be built. Then did he spend three months longer in walking round it and round it, contemplating it, first from one point of view, and then from another-now would he be paddled by it on the canal—now would he peep at it through a telescope, from the other side of the Meuse, and now would he take a bird's-eye glance at it, from the top of one of those gigantic windmills which protect the gates of the city. The good folks of the place were on the tiptoe of expectation and impatience-notwithstanding all the turmoil of my great-grandfather, not a symptom of the church was yet to be seen; they even began to fear it would never be brought into the world, but that its great projector would lie down and die in labour of the mighty plan he had conceived. At length, having occupied twelve good months in puffing and paddling, and talking and walking having travelled over all Holland, and even taken a peep into France and Germany-having smoked five hundred and ninety-nine pipes, and three hundred weight of the best Virginia tobaccomy great-grandfather gathered together all that knowing and industrious class of citizens who prefer attending to any body's business sooner than their own, and having pulled off his coat and five pair of breeches, he advanced sturdily up, and laid the corner-stone of the church, in the presence of the whole multi

HIS EXAMPLE FOLLOWED.

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tude-just at the commencement of the thirteenth month.

In a similar manner, and with the example of my worthy ancestor full before my eyes, have I proceeded in writing this most authentic history. The honest Rotterdamers no doubt thought my great-grandfather was doing nothing at all to the purpose, while he was making such a world of prefatory bustle, about the building of his church-and many of the ingenious inhabitants of this fair city will unquestionably suppose that all the preliminary chapters, with the discovery, population, and final settlement of America, were totally irrevalent and superfluous—and that the main business, the history of New-York, is not a jot more advanced, than if I had never taken up my pen. Never were wise people more mistaken in their conjectures; in consequence of going to work slowly and deliberately, the church came out of my grandfather's hands one of the most sumptuous, goodly, and glorious edifices in the known worldexcepting that, like our magnificent capitol, at Washington, it was begun on so grand a scale that the good folks could not afford to finish more than the wing of it. So, likewise, I trust, if ever I am able to finish this work on the plan I have commenced, (of which, in simple truth, I sometimes have my doubts,) it will be found 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 now-a-days is considered one of the great triumphs

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HENDRICK HUDSON DESCRIBED.

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 sea-faring 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 favour in the eyes of their High Mightinesses, the Lords States General, and also of the honourable 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 neighbourhood 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 northwesters which he had swallowed in the course of his sea-faring.

ROBERT JUET, HIS MATE.

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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 Cæsar, or Marcus Aurelius, or the Apollo of Belvidere.

As chief mate and favourite companion, the commodore chose master Robert Juet, of Limehouse, in England. By some his name has been spelled 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 name Juet. He was an old comrade and early schoolmate of the great Hudson, with whom he had often played truant and sailed chip boats in a neighbouring pond, when they were little boysfrom whence it is said the commodore first derived his bias towards a sea-faring life. Certain it is, that the old people about Limehouse declared Robert Juet to be an unlucky urchin, prone to mischief, that - would one day or other come to the gallows.

He grew up as boys of that kind often grow up, a rambling, heedless varlet, tossed about in all quarters of the world-meeting with more perils and wonders than did Sinbad the Sailor, without growing a whit Under every more wise, prudent, or ill-natured. misfortune, he comforted himself with a quid of tobacco, and the truly philosophic maxim, that “it VOL. I.

H