It was not long, therefore, before some of these enterprising Dutch merchants became interested in the long sought for short route to China and the Indies; and in the autumn of 1693 they engaged Henry Hudson, an Englishman, to search for the passage for them.

In the spring of the following year, Capt. Hudson, with a crew of about twenty men, set sail from Holland in the Half Moon, and following a map and letter sent him by his friend, Capt. John Smith, he arrived on Sept. 31 sic", "") ?> at the fine bay now known as New York Harbor. As he entered the bay, the Indians came hurrying out from the shores in their canoes, paddling up to the Half Moon. They were friendly—as Indians generally were until some act of treachery or cruelty on the part of the white men put them on their guard—and they freely traded with the sailors of the strange Half Moon.

Then Hudson sailed as far up the beautiful river as he could with his vessel, and then sent boats up as far as what is now Albany. "Perhaps," said he, "this river cuts through the continent to the other ocean, and will prove to be a short route to the Indies."

But, as you and I know now, he was disappointed in this. The river grew less and less navigable as it neared its source, and Hudson was obliged to sail back into New York bay. But so beautiful had the country seemed to him, and so valuable were the furs which the Indians offered in trade, that Hudson, on his return to Holland, gave a most glowing description of the opportunities for making wealth in this new world—so glowing, indeed, that it was not very long before the wide-awake, enterprising little country sent traders to settle upon the banks of the river, and to build up villages for themselves.

Holland, accordingly, now claimed the whole country around the river, and named it New Netherland. The Dutch colonists went to work at once trading with the Indians, cultivating the land and building their mills with the great whirring sails. The Indians were terribly afraid of these monsters, which were able to grind corn or saw boards. They would sit for hours staring at the strange things, wondering if they were alive. Often they would set fire to them, believing an evil spirit must be in them.

But on the whole the Dutchmen got along very well with the Indians, and it was not many years before they bought from the Indians the whole island of Manhattan and began the building of their city—New Amsterdam; or, as it is now called, New York.

Some of the very first governors of this Dutch colony are said to have been rather remarkable men in one way or another. There was Peter Minuit, an enterprising man, I am sure you will believe, when you hear that one of his first acts was to buy the whole of Manhattan Island from the Indians for twenty-five dollars, and that, too, paid mostly with beads and trinkets, of which the Indians were very fond.

Minuit was followed by Van Twiller, the second governor. Of this man I will give you Washington Irving's own He says, "Van Twiller was exactly five feet six inches in height and six feet five inches in circumference. His head was a perfect sphere, and of such dimensions that Dame Nature, with all her ingenuity, would have been puzzled indeed to construct a neck capable of supporting it. Therefore, she had declined to try and had settled it firmly on the top of his backbone just between his shoulders. His body was oblong. His legs were short but sturdy in proportion to the weight they had to sustain; so that when erect he had much the appearance of a beer barrel on skids."

Then, by and by, came gallant old Peter Stuyvesant. He was a grim old fellow, battle-scarred, and no more movable when his mind was made up than a wall of solid granite. How he did puff and steam as he stumped around on his funny old wooden leg, shouting his orders and telling of his own wonderful feats in battle! But for all this he was a good governor; and his love for the colony, his pride in it, and his honest desire to see it all and the best it could be, will never be quite forgotten by the New York people. They say that sometimes the bump, bump, bump of the old wooden leg even now is to be heard dark nights moving as of yore up and down the aisles of St. Mark's church, near where his bones lie buried. Well, if this is so it only goes to prove that he still loves old Manhattan Island as he loved it in those early days when he was its ruler and its governor.