We continued our course toward England, without seeing any land by the way, all the rest of this month of October; and on the seventh day of November, _stilo novo_,[360] being Saturday, by the grace of God we safely arrived in the range of Dartmouth, in Devonshire, in the year 1609. II.――INDIAN TRADITIONS OF HENRY HUDSON’S ARRIVAL. [The following narrative was written in 1801, by Rev. John Heckewelder, for many years a missionary among the Indians; the traditions having been told to him, as he says, forty years earlier, that is, about 1761, a century and a half after the coming of Hudson.] THE following account of the first arrival of Europeans at New York Island is verbatim as it was related to me by aged and respected Delawares, Monseys, and Mahicanni (otherwise called Mohegans, Mahicandus), near forty years ago. It is copied from notes and manuscripts taken on the spot. They say,―― A long time ago, when there was no such thing known to the Indians as people with a white skin,――their expression,――some Indians who had been out a-fishing, and where the sea widens, espied at a great distance something remarkably large, swimming or floating on the water, and such as they had never seen before. They, immediately returning to the shore, apprised their countrymen of what they had seen, and pressed them to go out with them, and discover what it might be. These together hurried out, and saw, to their great surprise, the phenomenon, but could not agree what it might be; some concluding it to be an uncommon large fish or other animal, while others were of opinion it must be some very large house. It was at length agreed among those who were spectators, that as this phenomenon moved towards the land,――whether or not it was an animal, or any thing that had life in it,――it would be well to inform all the Indians on the inhabited islands of what they had seen, and put them on their guard.