Not quite one hundred years after Verrazzano’s discovery of the Bay of New York, during all which period we have no account of its having been visited by an European vessel, Hudson made the Capes of Virginia on his third cruise in search of the north-west passage. Standing still on a northward course, he arrived in sight of the Narrows, distinguishing from a great distance the Highlands of Never Sink, which his mate, Robert Juet, describes in the journal he kept as a “very good land to fall with, and a pleasant land to see.” The most interesting peculiarity of our country to a European observer, is the freshness of its early history, and the strong contrast it presents of most of the features of a highly civilized land, with the youth and recent adventure of a newly discovered one. The details of these first discoveries are becoming every day more interesting: and to accompany a drawing of the Narrows, or entrance to the Bay of New York, the most fit illustration is that part of the journal of the great navigator which relates to his first view of them. The following extracts describe the Narrows as they were two hundred years ago: the drawing presents them as they are. “At three of the clock in the afternoone we came to three great rivers. So we stood along to the northernmost, thinking to have gone into it, but we found it to have a very shoald barre before it, for we had but ten foot water. Then we cast about to the southward, and found two fathoms, three fathoms, and three and a quarter, till we came to the souther side of them, then we had five or six fathoms, and anchored. So we sent in our boat to sound, and they found no less water than foure, five, six, and seven fathoms, and returned in an hour and a halfe. So we weighed and went in, and rode in five fathoms, ose ground, and saw many salmons, and mullets, and rayes very great. “The fourth, in the morning, as soone as the day was light, we saw that it was good riding farther up. So we sent our boate to sound, and found that it was a very good harbour; then we weighed and went in with our ship. Then our boat went on land with our net to fish, and caught ten great mullets, of a foot and a half long apeece, and a ray as great as foure men could hale into the ship. So we trimmed our boat, and rode still all day. At night the wind blew hard at the north-west, and our anchor came home, and we drove on shore, but took no hurt, thanked bee God, for the ground is soft sand and ose. This day the people of the country came aboard of us, seeming very glad of our comming, and brought greene tobacco, and gave us of it for knives and beads. They go in deere skins loose, well dressed. They have yellow copper. They desire cloathes, and are very civill. They have great store of maise, or Indian wheate, whereof they make good bread. The country is full of great and tall oaks.