But the discovery of your great river and of the site of your ancient
city, is not the only event which renders the year 1609 memorable in the
annals of America and the world. It was one of those years in which a
sort of sympathetic movement toward great results unconsciously pervades
the races and the minds of men. While Hudson discovered this mighty
river and this vast region for the Dutch East India Company, Champlain,
in the same year, carried the lilies of France to the beautiful
lake which bears his name on your northern limits; the languishing
establishments of England in Virginia were strengthened by the second
charter granted to that colony; the little church of Robinson removed
from Amsterdam to Leyden, from which, in a few years, they went forth,
to lay the foundations of New England on Plymouth Rock; the seven United
Provinces of the Netherlands, after that terrific struggle of forty
years (the commencement of which has just been embalmed in a record
worthy of the great event by an American historian) wrested from Spain
the virtual acknowledgment of their independence, in the Twelve Years'
Truce; and James the First, in the same year, granted to the British
East India Company their first permanent charter,--corner-stone of an
empire destined in two centuries to overshadow the East.