I
If ever a compelling Fate set its grip upon a man and drove him to
an accomplishment beside his purpose and outside his thought, it
was when Henry Hudson--having headed his ship upon an ordered
course northeastward--directly traversed his orders by fetching
that compass to the southwestward which ended by bringing him into
what now is Hudson's River, and which led on quickly to the
founding of what now is New York.
Indeed, the late Thomas Aquinas, and the later Calvin, could have
made out from the few known facts in the life of this navigator so
pretty a case in favor of Predestination that the blessed St.
Augustine and the worthy Arminius--supposing the four come together
for a friendly dish of theological talk--would have had their work
cut out for them to formulate a countercase in favor of Free Will.
It is a curious truth that every important move in Hudson's life of
which we have record seems to have been a forced move: sometimes
with a look of chance about it--as when the directors of the Dutch
East India Company called him back and hastily renewed with him
their suspended agreement that he should search for a passage to
Cathay on a northeast course past Nova Zembla, and so sent him off
on the voyage that brought the "Half Moon" into Hudson's River;
sometimes with the fatalism very much in evidence--as when his own
government seized him out of the Dutch service, and so put him in
the way to go sailing to his death on that voyage through Hudson's
Strait that ended, for him, in his mutineering crew casting him
adrift to starve with cold and hunger in Hudson's Bay. And, being
dead, the same inconsequent Fate that harried him while alive has
preserved his name, and very nobly, by anchoring it fast to that
River and Strait and Bay forever: and this notwithstanding the fact
that all three of them were discovered by other navigators before
his time.
Hudson sought, as from the time of Columbus downward other
navigators had sought before him, a short cut to the Indies; but
his search was made, because of what those others had accomplished,
within narrowed lines. In the century and more that had passed
between the great Admiral's death and the beginning of Hudson's
explorations one important geographical fact had been established:
that there was no water-way across America between, roughly,
the latitudes of 40° South and 40° North. Of necessity,
therefore--since to round America south of 40° South would make a
longer voyage than by the known route around the Cape of Good
Hope--exploration that might produce practical results had to be
made north of 40° North, either westward from the Atlantic or
eastward from the North Sea.
Even within those lessened limits much had been determined before
Hudson's time. To the eastward, both Dutch and English searchers
had gone far along the coast of Russia; passing between that coast
and Nova Zembla and entering the Kara Sea. To the westward, in the
year 1524, Verazzano had sailed along the American coast from 34°
to 50° North; and in the course of that voyage had entered what now
is New York Bay. In the year 1598, Sebastian Cabot had coasted
America from 38° North to the mouth of what now is Hudson's Strait.
Frobisher had entered that Strait in the year 1577; Weymouth had
sailed into it nearly one hundred leagues in the year 1602; and
Portuguese navigators, in the years 1558 and 1569, probably had
passed through it and had entered what now is Hudson's Bay.
[Illustration: FAC-SIMILE OF TITLE-PAGE OF A SEA HANDBOOK OF
HUDSON'S TIME]
As the result of all this exploration, Hudson had at his command a
mass of information--positive as well as negative--that at once
narrowed his search and directed it; and there is very good reason
for believing that he actually carried with him charts of a crude
sort on which, more or less clearly, were indicated the Strait and
the Bay and the River which popularly are regarded as of his
discovery and to which have been given his name. But I hold that
his just fame is not lessened by the fact that his discoveries,
nominally, were rediscoveries. Within the proper meaning of the
word they truly were his dis-coveries: in that he did un-cover them
so effectually that they became known clearly, and thereafter
remained known clearly, to the world.