Page:History of Hudson County and of the Old Village of Bergen.djvu/14

6 The Coming of the White Men

genuine interest in rivers. He was one of the many dreamers who for two centuries had been butting against the coast line, hoping for that rainbow thing, a passage to the golden East Indies. But the steady-minded Dutch traders who followed him thought very well of it. They saw it as a perfect water highway to the fur country, giving them almost direct access to the fur-trading Indian tribes of Canada, whose offerings passed from hand to hand down to Albany, while all along the banks could be gathered the almost equally rich tribute from the fur lands of Adirondacks and Catskills.

Its beauty, too, was loved by the Dutch. Dutch commercial instinct, Dutch thrift, never made the Dutchmen dull to the good art of living. They loved the straight wild cliffs of the Palisades. They loved the squall-darkened broad reach that they named the Tappan Zee. They loved the sweet