Rocks and trees covered most of Manhattan island at that time, but the Dutch had a small village at its south end, where they built a fort and set up windmills, which ground the corn and made the place look like a town in Holland. The Indians did not like the windmills with their “big teeth biting the corn in pieces,” but they were usually friendly with the settlers, sometimes sitting before the fireplaces in the houses and eating supawn, or mush and milk, with their white friends. Little did the Indian dream what a bargain he offered to the white man when he consented to sell the whole island for a sum equal to twenty-four dollars; and the Dutchman, to do him justice, was equally ignorant. All this came about because Henry Hudson with a Dutch vessel, the _Half Moon_, had sailed into the harbor in 1609, and had explored the river for a long distance from its mouth. Hudson was an Englishman, but with most people he has had to pass for a Dutchman. He has come down in stories as Hendrick instead of Henry, no doubt because he commanded a ship belonging to a Dutch company, and because a Dutch colony was soon planted at the mouth of the river which he discovered. Hudson spent a month of early autumn about Manhattan and on the river which afterwards took his name. Sailing was easy, for the channel is cut so deep into the land that the tides, which rise and fall on the ocean border by day and night, push far up the Hudson and make it like an inland sea. In what we call the Highlands Hudson found the river narrow, with rocky cliffs rising far above him. Beyond he saw lowlands covered with trees, and stretching west to the foot of the Catskill mountains. He went at least as far as the place where Albany now stands, but there he found the water shallow and turned his ship about, giving up the idea of reaching the Indies by going that way. He did not know that a few miles to the west a deep valley lies open through the mountains, a valley which is now full of busy people and is more important for travel and trade than a dozen northwest passages to China would be. [Illustration: FIG. 6. HENRY HUDSON]