Assembled as we are, under your auspices, in this ancient and hospitable
city, for an object indicative of a highly-advanced stage of scientific
culture, it is natural, in the first place, to cast a historical glance
at the past. It seems almost to surpass belief, though an unquestioned
fact, that more than a century should have passed away, after Cabot had
discovered the coast of North America for England, before any knowledge
was gained of the noble river on which your city stands, and which was
destined by Providence to determine, in after times, the position of the
commercial metropolis of the Continent. It is true that Verazzano, a
bold and sagacious Florentine navigator, in the service of France, had
entered the Narrows in 1524, which he describes as a very large river,
deep at its mouth, which forced its way through steep hills to the sea;
but though he, like all the naval adventurers of that age, was sailing
westward in search of a shorter passage to India, he left this part
of the coast without any attempt to ascend the river; nor can it be
gathered from his narrative that he believed it to penetrate far into
the interior.