In 1606 James I, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, granted two charters—one to the London Company giving it power to establish settlements anywhere between the thirty-fourth and thirty-eighth degrees of north latitude (that is between Cape Fear and the Potomac); and the other to the Plymouth Company granting it the territory in Northern Virginia between the forty-first and the forty-fifth degrees of north latitude (that is between the eastern end of Long Island and the northern limit of Nova Scotia), with the right to establish settlements therein. Each of these grants extended 100 miles inland. The territory between these two companies (from thirty-ninth to forty-first degrees), embracing what is Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and a little of New York, was open to settlement by either of these companies, provided that neither should make a settlement within 100 miles of the other. It is not presumable that the alert, watchful, shrewd Amsterdam directors of the Dutch East India Company were ignorant of the discoveries, explorations, and important events in the western world nor of the charters of 1606 granted by King James which seemed to leave an unoccupied and an unknown territory extending from the thirty-eight to the forty-eight degrees of North latitude which would furnish the Netherlands a desirable base for their operations in America against Spain. Perhaps that territory might be secured under the right of prior discovery if a small craft was sent out nominally to sail northeast as a blind but really westward for the double purpose either of finding a shorter route to India or obtaining a desirable foothold in the New World. Let us see whether we may ascertain more about Hudson’s views, preparation, and knowledge before the contract was entered into with the Amsterdam directors of the Dutch East India Company. In his second voyage in the employ of the Muscovy Company, under date of August 7, 1608, he made the following entry into his journal: “I used all diligence to arrive in London, for being at Nova Zembla on the 8th day of July and void of hope of a northeast route except by Vaygats, for which I was not fitted to try or prove, I therefore resolved to use all means I could to sail to the _northwest_ (which would have been in direct violation of his instructions) and to make trial at Lumley’s Inlet and Captain Davis Straits, hoping to run into it a hundred leagues and return.” He did not carry out his resolve but indicated his desire to seek a _northwestern_ passage then.