We passed through the centuries with constantly decreasing speed, and entered the Christian era. Then to 1000 A.D. The Mongols had come from the Eastern world, come here and lived, cut off upon this backward continent. Without contact, they remained backward. Primitive savages. They were here now--the American Indian with his wigwams set in the forests of these wooded slopes; his signal fires rising above the trees; his bark canoes floating on these sheltered waters. But his impress upon Nature was too slight for us to see. Men, risen higher in civilization's scale, were in Europe now. Thinking. Wondering. Soon they would be here, adventuring. 1500 A.D. Columbus had come into the west now. Seeking his passage to China he had come, and returned disappointed in his quest. We passed 1550. And 1600. 1609 A.D. was gone by in a moment. Henry Hudson had been here now! The Half Moon had come sailing up this placid river. A flash, those days, so brief to us that we saw nothing. But with my mind's eye, I saw it. Quaint little ship, adventuring here. Passing our island; navigating the river up beyond where Albany was to be; seeking the passage to China, running aground up there in the narrowing river and deciding with complete correctness that here was no easy way to China; and turning back and departing, disappointed. Turber was saying: "Ah, here is man--at last--" The standard of civilized man! Something enduring of man's handiwork was visible off there through one of the windows. Shadows--tiny blurs--of what might have been houses were materializing on the marshes of the Jersey lowlands; a settlement. It persisted, and grew. And now, another--here on our island near at hand. To the south--the lower tip of Manhattan Island--the outlines of a fort had appeared; it endured; a fort with a stockade. In a breath, like tiny chickens clustering about the mother hen, little buildings were appearing. All within the stockade at first. * * * * * The Dutch were here! New Amsterdam existed here, now! The humble, struggling beginning of the great city. But it persisted. It grew. Tiny shadows of houses flowed into shadowy being as we stared. All were down at the lower end of the island--and the savages roamed up here. The years went by. The hardy Dutchmen were thriving. On all the distant shores we could see the small settlements appearing. All over the busy scene the Dutch were imprinting evidence of their hardihood. The peppery Peter Stuyvesant was stamping his wooden leg about here now. I could imagine him upon his brash forays into enemy country. Warring upon the savages; and upon greater game. Voyaging with trenchant belligerence to attack the Swedes of the Delaware. We were nearly at our destination. The aero was going very slowly. Soon there was almost color in the scene. Soundless flashes of what seemed alternate light and darkness.