Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/68

 *erly point visited by the Spaniards. The natives of the coasts, belonging probably to the same race as those who had so hospitably received De Ayllon before his real character appeared, crowded to the beach to stare at what must have seemed to them a strange monster of the deep; and when they found the "monster" was, after all, the servant of men such as themselves, they beckoned their visitors to land.

MOUTH OF THE HUDSON RIVER.

One sailor alone had the courage to respond to the invitation, and he was nearly drowned in attempting to swim to the shore. Picked up in an exhausted condition by the Indians, he was, however, restored by their tender treatment. Fires were lighted, by which his clothes were dried; and when he was completely restored, he was allowed to return to his comrades, who had all the while been watching the proceedings on shore in horror-struck silence, expecting the lighting of the fires to be the preliminary of a human sacrifice. In the hands of a true leader of men this little episode might have been made the foundation of lasting and, eventually, beneficial relations between the Indians and their guests. Verrazano, however, was no exception to the explorers of his day; he rewarded those who had saved the life of his sailor by carrying off a young boy as a slave, and then, weighing anchor, he set sail with his solitary prize for the North, arriving, after a long cruise, in what is supposed to have been the harbor of New York. Then, as now, though its aspect is so materially changed, the mouth of the Hudson presented a beautiful appearance, with what are now known as Staten and Long Islands on one side, and the mag