The Muscovy Company had headquarters in London, where Hudson would go, and there he met, it is known, Captain John Smith, and it is probable that there he met and formed a favorable opinion of Jodocus Hondius, who was his interpreter, adviser, and witness to the contract of January 8th. He was an educated gentleman, a minister of the Reformed Church, a Belgian, driven out of his country, went to London, a geographer, map-maker and portrait painter. He painted Queen Elizabeth’s portrait. The center around which the Belgians then gathered as their brightest man in discovery was Peter Plancius, another Belgian, a Calvinistic minister driven from Belgium, and who had settled in Amsterdam, and was a devoted friend and adviser of Hudson. Hudson before he had engaged with the Amsterdam directors had seen and examined the most important maps of the French, English, Spanish and Portuguese, and especially of the Arctic regions, New York and Canada, and had borrowed some of them from Plancius and Smith, and those that he wanted most were about the northwest and above 35° north latitude. Hudson’s friends were warm, zealous to help him, that they might lessen the power and vindictiveness of the Spaniards. Captain John Smith sent Captain Henry Hudson important maps and instructions from Virginia, before Hudson set sail in the “Half Moon.” Smith’s advice to Hudson seems to have been to seek a passage to the Pacific ocean at about 40° north latitude or about 50° north latitude, or still farther north, and seek a passage through Lumly inlet or some other entrance into the Hudson bay. Hudson made extraordinary preparations if he did not expect to pursue that course for the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch East India Company. That Henry Hudson first discovered, at least first reported, the “Open Sea” north of 66° north is conceded, and that has been confirmed by several Arctic explorers since—prominent among them Dr. Kane. That Sebastian Cabot discovered Hudson straits in about 1517 is admitted. Jodocus Hondius, a warm friend of Hudson, tried to dissuade him from entering Hudson bay in hopes to find a passage to the Pacific, for he told him that a relative of his had explored the bay, and that there was no communication with the Pacific ocean. Read, Jr., says our sense of the loss of Hudson’s own journal in conclusion with his discovery of Delaware bay is indeed irreparable. Our sense of the loss is increased by the remembrance that the Hudson river, Hudson strait and Hudson bay had been visited long before Hudson explored them. George Weymouth had visited the mouth of Hudson straits. Gerard Mercator’s celebrated map of the world, made at Duisburg, Germany, in 1569, shows the French fort on the east side of the Grande (or Hudson) river. He outlined the Hudson to the height of its navigation with the Mohawk as far as the French had explored it.