One sailor alone had the courage to respond to the invitation, and he was nearly drowned in attempting to swim to the shore. Picked up in an exhausted condition by the Indians, he was, however, restored by their tender treatment. Fires were lighted, by which his clothes were dried; and when he was completely restored, he was allowed to return to his comrades, who had all the while been watching the proceedings on shore in horror-struck silence, expecting the lighting of the fires to be the preliminary of a human sacrifice. In the hands of a true leader of men this little episode might have been made the foundation of lasting and, eventually, beneficial relations between the Indians and their guests. Verrazano, however, was no exception to the explorers of his day; he rewarded those who had saved the life of his sailor by carrying off a young boy as a slave, and then, weighing anchor, he set sail with his solitary prize for the North, arriving, after a long cruise, in what is supposed to have been the harbor of New York. Then, as now, though its aspect is so materially changed, the mouth of the Hudson presented a beautiful appearance, with what are now known as Staten and Long Islands on one side, and the magnificent sheet of water flowing into the sea on the other. Instead of the stately vessels and trim little gun-boats which now guard the approach to the capital of the Metropolis, Indian canoes were shooting here and there on the sunlighted waters, their rowers pausing again and again to look at the strange intruder from the South. Verrazano remained at anchor off the mouth of the Hudson for about fifteen days, receiving visits on board from the natives――a kindly, cheerful race, with regular features, clear complexions, long, straight hair, and good figures. Then steering up the shores of New England for some forty or fifty leagues, he came to the harbor of Nova Scotia, where he would gladly have rested awhile, but finding his provisions failing him, and the Indians meeting his advances with coldness and suspicion, he turned the _Dauphine’s_ head eastward-ho, arriving at Dieppe after an absence of only six months. Illustration: JACQUES CARTIER.