Turning again to Bancroft, whose page seems to glow whenever it chronicles a great or noble action, he tells us that “the spirit of humanity sustained Eliot to the last; his zeal was not wearied by the hereditary idleness of the race; and his simplicity of life and manners and evangelical sweetness of temper, won for him all hearts, whether in the villages of the emigrants or the smoky cells of the natives. “Nor was Eliot alone. In the islands round Massachusetts, and within the limits of the Plymouth patent, missionary zeal and charity were active; and that New England scholar, the young Mayhew, forgetting the pride of learning, endeavoured to win the natives to a new religion. At a later day he took passage to England, but the ship in which he sailed was never more heard of. Such, however, had been the force of his example, that his father, though bowed down by the weight of seventy years, assumed the office of the son whom he had lost, and until beyond the age of fourscore and twelve continued to instruct the natives of the isles with the happiest results. The Indians within his influence, though twenty times more numerous than the whites in their neighbourhood, preserved an immutable friendship with Massachusetts. “Villages of ‘praying Indians,’ as the converted natives were called, were established. Christianity, however, scarcely spread beyond the Indians on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and the seven villages round Boston. The powerful Narragansetts, situate between Connecticut and Plymouth, retained their old belief; and Philip of Pokanoket, the fierce son of old Massasoit, the early friend of the Pilgrims, maintained with pride the faith of his fathers.” CHAPTER XII. NEW NETHERLANDS; NEW SWEDEN. We have already related how, in the year of our Lord 1609, Henry Hudson, on his second voyage of discovery, coasted America from Acadia to Delaware Bay; and how, on the 3rd of September, he anchored within Sandy Hook; after which, passing the Narrows, he entered New York Bay, and leaving the island of Manhattan, proceeded up the great river. His ship entering Sandy Hook Bay, the first European vessel which had ploughed those waters, was a wonderful object of curiosity to the natives, who assembled on the shore. Hudson ascended the river, still the same cause of wonder to the natives, who treated him well, and are reported by him to be “a very loving people.” Arriving at shallows in the river on the 19th, Hudson anchored at Schenectadea, now called Albany, and received pumpkins and grapes, as well as otter and beaver-skins, from the Indians, to whom, in return, he presented hatchets, beads and knives. On this occasion, too, they tasted for the first time the fatal fire-water, which was destined to have so disastrous an effect on the downfall of their kindred tribes over the whole continent of America.