"Here he lingered a week," continues the same author, "in friendly intercourse with the natives of New Jersey, while a boat's company explored the waters up to Newark Bay. And now the great question:--Shall he turn back, or ascend the stream? Hudson was of a race not prone to turn back, by sea or land. On the 11th of September, he raised the anchor of the Half-Moon, and passed through the Narrows, beholding on both sides 'as beautiful a land as one could tread on;' the ship floating cautiously and slowly up the noble stream,--the first that ever rested on its bosom. He passed the Palisades, Nature's dark basaltic Malakoff; forced the iron gateway of the Highlands; anchored on the 14th near West Point; swept around and upwards the following day, by grassy meadows and tangled slopes, hereafter to be covered with smiling villages, by elevated banks and woody heights, the destined sites of towns and cities,--of Newburgh, Poughkeepsie, Catskill; on the evening of the 15th arrived 'opposite the mountains which rise from the river's side,' where he found 'a very loving people and very old men;' and, the day following, sailed by the spot hereafter to be honored by his own illustrious name. One more day wafts him up between Schodac and Castleton; and here he landed and passed a day with the natives, greeted with all sorts of barbarous hospitality,--the land 'the finest for cultivation he ever set foot on.' On the following morning, with the early flood-tide, the Half-Moon ran higher up, and came to anchor in deep water, near the site of the present city of Albany. Happy if he could have closed his gallant career on the banks of the stream which so justly bears his name, and thus have escaped the sorrowful and mysterious catastrophe which awaited him the next year." He soon after returned to England; and, not being discouraged, nor finding it difficult to obtain the means of continuing his maritime adventures, he set sail, in 1610, in a vessel of fifty-five tons' burden, manned by twenty-three men and victualled for six months. He touched at the Orkneys and anchored at Iceland. Mount Hecla revealed to him the magnificence of a volcano in travail, and the Hot Springs obligingly cooked his food. He passed Greenland, where the sun set in the north. In the course of June and July, he passed to the northward of Labrador, and followed the strait which now bears his name. In spite of ice and disturbances among his crew, which at times assumed the character of a mutiny, he pushed on into the great inland sea known as Hudson's Bay. For a long time he did not know that it was a bay, and naturally was led to hope that he was on the point of attaining the object of all his efforts,--a passage by the northwest to China. The extent of its surface amply justified him in these expectations, for it is the largest inland sea in the world, with the exception of the Mediterranean.