After having agreed to winter in Ireland, Hudson managed to put into Dartmouth in England. From there he wrote a report of his voyage for the Directors of the East India Company at Amsterdam. And then, opportunely, his countrymen stepped in to rescue him. They “detained” him in England as one who had information of value to his own country, while the _Half Moon_ was returned to its owners in Holland. The Dutch East India Company, preoccupied with its profitable spice trade and its search for a shorter route to the East, promptly wrote off the cost of the voyage and closed the account. It was said at the time that all Hudson did in the west was to find a river and exchange his merchandise for some furs. But it was precisely those furs and the report of the harbor and river, all unexploited by any Europeans, that brought independent Dutch fur traders to the Valley of the Hudson the very next year. * * * * * Amsterdam merchants who bartered European and Eastern goods in Muscovy for furs had quickly taken note of the new possibilities in the west. There were no duties to pay the savages in America, such as those imposed on trade by the Czar. And a shipload of pelts could be had on Hudson’s River for an insignificant outlay of beads and trifles--as the French were doing on their great river in Canada. No time was lost in organizing a trial adventure. In a ship loaded with “a cargo of goods suitable for traffic with the Indians,” and manned by some of Hudson’s own crew of the previous year, traders from Holland arrived at Manhattan in 1610. They found the savages there no less capricious than before, just as dangerously unpredictable, but obviously anxious to barter their pelts for the white men’s goods. After driving a profitable trade, it is said, the Dutchmen promised that “they would visit them the next year again, when they would bring them more presents, and stay with them awhile,” adding however that “as they could not live without eating, they should then want a little land of them, to sow seeds, in order to raise herbs to put in their broth.” And so they did, coming each year, quite likely building a palisaded truck house and huts on Manhattan Island as early as 1613 to serve as a depot. Trading posts were established farther up the river and light-drafted shallops invaded the creeks and bays of the interior. Beavers were butchered wholesale by natives eager for hatchets, baubles and liquor. Within a few years furs were being collected in such quantity during the winter months that early spring ships from Holland could count on being cargoed along Hudson’s River with as many as seven thousand pelts. To further this profitable trade and to encourage discovery in “New Netherland” the States General at The Hague granted a temporary charter of special privileges to merchants of Amsterdam and Hoorn who had formed a western trading association known as the United New Netherland Company.