Astonished at a discovery so little expected, and convinced that great results might ensue from the thorough exploration of the country around, our hero resolved to winter in these desolate latitudes, and pursue his work in the spring of 1611. The failure of his provisions compelled him, however, to relinquish this grand scheme, and the belief which obtained among his men, that he intended to return home, leaving some of them behind to perish miserably, caused a mutiny. Hudson, his young son, and one or two sailors who remained true to him, were overpowered, placed in a boat, and cast adrift on the waters of the bay he had discovered at so terrible a cost; and of his further sufferings, or of his final fate, no rumor has ever reached Europe, though an expedition was sent in quest of him from England. Meanwhile the Dutch, eager to precede the English in taking possession of the fertile districts watered by the Hudson, lost not a moment in following up the discoveries inaugurated by their Government, and in the three years succeeding Hudson’s first voyages, one private merchant after another sent out agents to trade with the natives and found colonies among them. As early as 1613, Manhattan Island owned its Dutch fort and surrounding buildings, and was chief among many stations for the collection of peltries, or furs, and their dispatch to European ports; while the bays of the mainland as far south as the mouth of the Delaware, were dotted with clusters of the huts of the Dutch fishermen. Among the leaders of the various early Dutch enterprises in these regions, Hendrick Christansen, Adriaen Block, and Cornelis Jacobsen May stand out pre-eminent: the first as having founded the first large fort――that called Nassau――on the Hudson; the second for his exploration of Long Island Sound, and discovery of the Connecticut river; and the third for his survey of the coast of New Jersey, still commemorated by the name given to New Jersey’s southern headland――Cape May. On the 11th October, 1614, after long and tedious preliminary negotiations, a charter, insuring to them a monopoly of the fur trade for three years, was granted to the Dutch, and the name of New Netherland given to the region between New France and Virginia――_i.e._, the Atlantic seaboard between 40° and 45° N. lat. These three years, during which no rival European power interfered, were turned to the best account by the sturdy colonists from Holland, and their scouts penetrated far into the interior on the west, one party, it is supposed, having reached the upper waters of the Delaware, and descended it in native canoes to the mouth of its tributary, the Schuylkill, which is now known to rise in the carboniferous highlands of Pennsylvania, and to join the Delaware five miles below the capital of that state.