England and Holland had been allies in the contest with Spain; both had sent their ships to the Indian seas; they were both desirous of obtaining settlements in America. The Dutch, like all other nations connected either with the commerce of Asia or inquisitive with regard to America, turned their efforts to the discovery of a north-west passage. The unsuccessful attempts of the English mariners, Cabot, Frobisher, Willoughby, and others, mattered nothing to them; with that perseverance which, if it attain not to its object, generally wins some unlooked-for good, they, too, had sought repeatedly for the north-west passage, coasting for this purpose Nova Zembla and Muscovy. In 1596, one of their ships in this quest advanced within ten degrees of the pole; during the winter, when it was frozen in, on the shores of Nova Zembla, the sufferings of the unfortunate crew have hardly their parallel in any narrative of human endurance, misery, and terror at sea. Hudson had, as we have said, offered his services in the right quarter. A vessel of discovery, called the Crescent, was soon equipped for him, and on the 4th of April, 1609, he set sail in search of the north-western passage, accompanied again by his son. Masses of ice prevented his sailing toward Nova Zembla; turning to the south-west, therefore, and passing Greenland and Newfoundland, he ran along the coast of Acadia, and entered Penobscot Bay, on the southern coast of Maine, and so on southward to Cape Cod, which, supposing himself to have first discovered, he called New Holland, and still sailing southward, reached the entrance of Chesapeake Bay, where he remembered that his countrymen had a settlement. From this point he again turned northward, having discovered Delaware Bay; on the 3rd of September, about five months from the time of his setting sail, he anchored within Sandy Hook; the natives being attracted to the ship from the neighbouring shores, which he described as crowned with “goodly oaks.” After tarrying here a week, Hudson advanced up the Narrows, and anchored in a safe harbour at the mouth of the river. Every object around was worthy of admiration—the luxuriant grass, the trees, the flowers, and the fragrance which was diffused over all. For ten days the Crescent, the wonder of the Indians who congregated on the shore to witness the marvellous apparition and to welcome the strangers, ascended the river above the highlands, and some little distance beyond where the city of Hudson now stands, and whence he took a boat forward as far as the present city of Albany. He descended the stream rapidly, and on the 4th of October, set sail for Europe, “leaving,” says the eloquent historian, “once more to its solitude the land that his imagination, anticipating the future, described as the most beautiful in the world.”