A sudden shout from Juet at the masthead—of shoals! A grit of the keel over pebbly bottom! On the far inland hills, the signal fires of watching Indians! Then the sea breaking from between islands turbid and muddy as if it came from some great river—September 2, they have found the inlet of the old charts. They are on the threshold of New York harbor. They have discovered the great river now known by Hudson’s name. Even the mutineers stop gambling to observe the scene. The ringleader that in all sea stories wears a hook on one arm points to the Atlantic Highlands smoky in the summer heat. On their left to the south is Sandy Hook; to the north, Staten Island. To the right with a lumpy hill line like green waves running into one another lie Coney Island and Long Island. The East India men laugh with glee. It’s a fine land. It’s a big land. This is better than risking the gallows for mutiny down in Virginia, or taking chances of having throats cut boarding some Spanish galleon of the South Seas. The ship’s log does not say anything about it. Neither does Van Meteren’s record, but I don’t think Hudson would have been human if his heart did not give a leap. At five in the afternoon of September 2, the _Half Moon_ anchored at the entrance to New York harbor not far from where the Goddess of Liberty waves her great arm to-day. Silent is the future, silent as the sphinx! How could those Dutch sailors guess, how could the Dutch company that sent them to the Pole know, that the commerce of the world for which they fought Spain—would one day beat up and down these harbor waters? Dreamed he never so wildly, Hudson’s wildest dream could not have forseen that the river he had discovered would one day throb to the multitudinous voices of a world traffic, a world empire, a world wealth. In Hudson’s day, Spain was the leader of the world’s commerce against whom all nations vied. To-day her population does not exceed twenty million, but there flows through the harbor gates, which Hudson, the penniless pilot dreamer, discovered, the commerce of a hundred million people. It is no straining to say that individual fortunes have been made in the traffic of New York harbor which exceed the national incomes of Spain and Holland and Belgium combined. But if a city’s greatness consists in something more than volume of wealth and volume of traffic; if it consists in high endeavor and self-sacrifice and the pursuit of ideals to the death, Hudson, the dreamer, beset by rascal mutineers and pursuing his aim in spite of all difficulties, embodied in himself the qualities that go to make true greatness. * * * * *