%27. The Dutch on the Hudson.%--Meantime great things had been happening to the northward. In 1609 Henry Hudson, an English sailor in the service of Holland, was sent to find a northwest passage to India. He reached our coast not far from Portland, Maine, and abandoning all idea of finding a passage, he sailed alongshore to the southward as far as Cape Cod. Here he put to sea, and when he again sighted land was off Delaware Bay. In attempting to sail up it, his ship, the _Half-Moon,_ grounded, and Hudson turned about. Running along the Jersey coast, he entered New York Bay, and sailed up the river which the Dutch called the North River, but which we know as the Hudson. Hudson's voyage gave the Dutch a claim to all the country drained by the Delaware or South River and the Hudson River, and some Dutch traders at once sent out vessels, and were soon trading actively with the Indians. By 1614 a rude fort had been erected near the site of Albany, and some trading huts had been put up on Manhattan Island. These ventures proved so profitable that numbers of merchants began to engage in the trade, whereupon those already in it, in order to shut out others, organized a company, and in 1615 obtained a trading charter for three years from the States General of Holland, and carried on their operations from Albany to the Delaware River. [Illustration: View of New Amsterdam in 1656] %28. Dutch West India Company.%--On the expiration of the charter (in 1618) it was not renewed, but a new corporation, the Dutch West India Company (1621), was created with almost absolute political and commercial power over all the Dutch domains in North America, which were called New Netherland. In 1623 the company began to send out settlers. Some went to Albany, or, as they called it, Fort Orange. Others were sent to the South or Delaware River, where a trading post, Fort Nassau, was built on the site of Gloucester in New Jersey. A few went to the Connecticut River; some settled on Long Island; and others on Manhattan Island, where they founded New Amsterdam, now called New York city.