We are told that, in exchange for their hospitality, Hudson offered the savages some rum to drink. They looked at it, and smelled it, but passed it on without tasting it. Finally the bottle came to an Indian who was somewhat bolder than the rest, or who feared to offend the white man. He drank a great deal of the liquor, but he had no sooner done so than he fell down senseless, and all his companions thought he was dead. After a few hours, however, the Indian awoke from his drunken sleep, to remark that the Dutchman had the strongest water he had ever tasted. The other savages were now all eager to try the "fire water" too; and, having drunk it once, they took such a fancy to it that before long they were ready to give all they had in exchange for more. But, as you will see, this fire water was to do them a great deal of harm. On his way home Hudson stopped in England, where they kept him a prisoner, saying an Englishman ought to make discoveries only for the good of his own country. But Hudson managed to send a description of his journey to Holland, and he then reported that he had visited "as beautiful a land as one can tread upon." Hearing from him also that great bargains in furs could be made with the Indians, Dutch merchants soon sent out vessels to establish trading stations near Albany and on Manhattan Island. While the Dutch were thus bartering, Hudson, set free, started out on a voyage for England. Sailing farther north, in search of a passage to India, he came, in 1611, to the bay which still bears his name. Here his crew suffered so much from the cold climate that, in their anger against their captain, they put him, his son, and seven sick men in a boat, and cut them adrift. The ship came back to Europe in safety, but nothing more was ever heard of Hudson or the unfortunate sailors with him. The Dutch soon built Fort Orange on the Hudson, near Albany, Fort Nas´sau on the Delaware, and, later, a fort on Manhattan Island. Here, in 1614, they founded the colony later called New Am´ster-dam, on the very spot where a shipwrecked captain had built the first Dutch-American vessel about one year before. Little by little the Dutch now took possession of the land along the Hudson River and New York Bay. They built comfortable houses of bricks brought over from Holland, and before long had many thrifty farms in what they called the New Neth´er-lands. XXVIII. THE MAYFLOWER. While the Spaniards were settling in Florida and New Mexico, the French in Acadia, and the Dutch in the New Netherlands, the English, as we have seen, had also been busy. In Virginia they had founded Jamestown, and Gosnold and John Smith had visited and named several places in New England, such as Cape Cod and the Charles River.