The research room in the Royal Archives, showing some of the volumes relating to New Sweden, preserved in the Royal Archives and in the Archives of the Exchequer (The Kammararkiv), Stockholm.] CHAPTER IV. THE FOUNDING AND FIRST PERIOD OF THE COLONY, 1638–1643. I. It is not now possible to say, who was the first European to visit the Delaware. Perhaps the Irish or Scotch saw its waters in the early centuries of our era, if the legends of their American voyages be true. Perhaps some bold Viking in the eleventh century ventured as far south along the New England coast as the 39th degree, when the Norsemen planted colonies on this continent, and, according to tradition, established churches here. Possibly some lonely Frenchman or Portuguese driven out of his course by accident touched the lordly Delaware, years before Columbus set sail from Cadiz; or it may be that some Norman, Briton or Basque, coasting along the North American continent on his way to the cod-fisheries of Newfoundland, saw the famous river, long before Hudson made his memorable voyage. Cabot might have passed within sight of Cape Henlopen in 1497; that Verrazzano sailed by the Delaware in 1524 is quite certain. It has been stated “that the coast of New York and the neighboring districts” were known to the Spaniards almost a century before Hudson came here. Estévan Gomes “is said to have visited the country at latitudes 40 and 41 degrees north” in 1525, and a year later Lucas Vasquez de Aillon and Matienzo made landings, and explored the country south and east of New York. De Costa thinks that the French visited New York harbor prior to 1562, and it has been claimed that they had a fort on Castle Island within the present limits of Albany. Is it not, therefore, reasonable to think that they may have visited the Delaware? Bradford wrote in 1627 that the Dutch traded on the Hudson “this six or seven and twenty years.” If so, may we not suppose that some Dutch skipper eager for gain would search for new fields of traffic with the natives, and on his way southward find the “mighty river”? All this merely goes to show, how utterly impossible it is to determine, who was really the first European to get a glimpse of the river, where Dutch, Swedes and English were later to contend for the mastery. In 1609 we tread on firm and historic ground. Henry Hudson, an Englishman of London, undertook to discover a short route to Asia by the north for the Dutch East India Company. On Saturday, March 25, 1609, he set sail in the _Half Moon_, Robert Jewitt being second mate; and on August 28, at seven in the evening, he “anchored in eight fathoms of water” in Delaware Bay, “weighing at the break of day” the next morning. Returning to Europe in October, he arrived at Dartmouth in November, whence he sent a report to the Dutch East India Company.