Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/124

 sailors, who took many of them prisoners, and afterward burned their village. This outrage completed, the Half Moon proceeded on her voyage, passing Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, and even, it is supposed, entering Chesapeake Bay, though without holding any intercourse with the Europeans there established.

At Chesapeake Bay, Hudson once more turned his vessel's head northward, and, cruising along the coast, discovered what was afterward, in honor of the first governor of Virginia, called Delaware Bay. No south-west passage had yet been found, but on the 3d August the watchers on deck saw what they took to be the mouth of three rivers, and which turned out to be the beautiful harbor now forming the entrance to the capital of the New World.

Foiled in his attempt to enter the broadest of the three "rivers" by the bar at its mouth, Hudson ordered the Half Moon to be steered into the deeper bay, now known as Sandy Hook, and there passed the night in anxious expectation as to what the morning would bring to light. That morning dawned on a scene of exquisite, and still, in spite of its changed aspect, of world-famous beauty. The island of Manhattan, Long Island, the Narrows, and many another familiar physical feature of the Bay of New York, were there; but instead of the bristling fortifications and the well-built residences of wealthy citizens of New York of the present day, the shores of mainland and islands were dotted with native wigwams—instead of the fiery little gunboats and stately men-of-war now guarding the entrance to the great metropolis, the canoes of Indians were shooting hither and thither, in undisguised astonishment at the sudden apparition of the Half Moon.

A quarrel with the Indians inaugurated the first day's work at the mouth of the Hudson, as it had done that on the Penobscot; but the death of one Englishman, a certain John Colman, was in this case the only untoward result. The whole of the shores of the Bay of New York were thoroughly explored, and the great river itself, named after its discoverer, was then entered.

Past the low shores of Manhattan Island, and into the vast expanses of the Tappan Zee and Haverstroo, sailed the Half Moon, entering beyond them the lovely scenery of the Highlands, which rise abruptly to a height of some 1,200 to 1,600 feet on either side of the broad waters of the Hudson, until at last the mighty Catskill Mountains, stretching away in silent grandeur on the right bank of the river near its junction with the Mohawk, were sighted, and navigation became difficult, the stream daily growing shallower and shallower.