I have often thought in passing, of the contrast between these numerous advents and the landing of Hendrick Hudson on this very spot, in his voyage of discovery up the river. He found here, he says, “a very loving people, and a very old man,” by whom he and his crew were very kindly entertained. From the first step of a white man’s foot on the soil to the crowded rush of passengers from a steam-boat—from a savage wilderness to the height of civilization and science, it is but a little more than two hundred years of rapid history. Compare the old Indian canoe in which Hudson went from his vessel to the land, with a steamer carrying on its deck near a thousand souls; compare the untutored population which then swarmed upon the shore to the cultivated and refined crowds who come and go in thousands on the same spot, and the contrast is as astonishing as the extinction of the aboriginal race is melancholy. It is surprising how few details connected with the races that inhabited the older settlements of our country are reached even by the researches of Historical Societies. The materials for the future poets and historians of America, are, in this department, singularly meagre, though it might almost be supposed that the very tracks of the retreating tribes might at this early day be still visible on the soil. Wherever any particulars of the intercourse between the first settlers and the Indians are preserved, they are highly curious, and often very diverting. In a book on the settlements of this country, written by Capt. Nathaniel Uring, who visited it in 1709, there is an amusing story connected with the history of one of the forts, built, by permission of the Indians, to secure the settlers against sudden incursion.