Near a hundred years elapsed before that great thought acquired
substance and form. In the spring of 1609, the heroic but unfortunate
Hudson, one of the brightest names in the history of English maritime
adventure, but then in the employment of the Dutch East India Company,
in a vessel of eighty tons, bearing the very astronomical name of the
_Half Moon_, having been stopped by the ice in the Polar Sea, in the
attempt to reach the East by the way of Nova Zembla, struck over to the
coast of America in a high northern latitude. He then stretched down
southwardly to the entrance of Chesapeake Bay (of which he had gained
a knowledge from the charts and descriptions of his friend, Captain
Smith), thence returning to the north, entered Delaware Bay, standing
out again to sea, arrived on the second of September in sight of the
"high hills" of Neversink, pronouncing it "a good land to fall in with,
and a pleasant land to see;" and, on the following morning, sending his
boat before him to sound the way, passed Sandy Hook, and there came to
anchor on the third of September, 1609; two hundred and forty-seven
years ago next Wednesday. What an event, my friends, in the history of
American population, enterprise, commerce, intelligence, and power--the
dropping of that anchor at Sandy Hook!