We mentioned the dispersion of Quiros' fleet after leaving Espiritu Santo. We must recur for a moment to this incident, in order to follow the ship of Luis Vaez de Torrès, the second in command. He proceeded on his voyage to the southwest, and saw enough of Espiritu Santo to convince him that it was not a continent. He would have circumnavigated it had the season permitted. Standing finally to the northward, he fell in with numerous islands rich in pearls and spices, and "coasted for eight hundred leagues along the southern shore of some land to him unknown." This can have been no other shore than that of Papua or New Guinea; and it is considered positive that he was the first European to see this since famous and remarkable island. He found this whole sea to be filled with groups of islands producing spices and the usual tropical fruits. He made his way to the Philippines, where he rendered an account of his adventures since his separation from Quiros. While these distinguished navigators were thus searching the regions lying about the equator, another adventurer, equally enterprising, was endeavoring to reach the Pole. Henry Hudson, a seaman renowned for his hardy and daring achievements, was appointed, in 1607, by the Muscovy Company of London, to the command of a vessel intended to penetrate to China by the Arctic seas to the north of Europe. His crew consisted of ten men and a boy. He advanced as far as Greenland, and returned by Spitzbergen,--being convinced that the ice formed an insurmountable barrier against farther progress. He again set out in 1608, and, keeping more to the eastward, passed to the north of Norway, Sweden, and Russia as far as Nova Zembla. The ice again stopped him, and he returned,--persuaded that the northeastern passage did not exist. The next year he was again sent upon the same errand; but, being still unsuccessful, he crossed the Atlantic to America. He coasted along the continent as far as Chesapeake Bay, and then returned to the north, entering Delaware Bay and arriving in sight of the highlands of Neversink on the 2d of September. This he pronounced a "good land to fall in with, and a pleasant land to see." The next morning he passed Sandy Hook, and came to anchor in what is now the Lower Bay of New York. "What an event," says Everett, "in the history of American population, enterprise, commerce, intelligence and power, was the dropping of that anchor at Sandy Hook!" [Illustration: HUDSON'S VESSEL, THE HALF-MOON, OFF SANDY HOOK.]