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Last Voyage of Henry Hudson.-Anon.

1. HAPPY, indeed, would it have been for Hudson if he could have closed his career on the banks of the river whose beauty he was the first to witness and describe, and thus have escaped the sorrowful and mysterious catastrophe' which awaited him the next year. On his fourth and last voyage he set sail in a small vessel, of only fifty-five tons' burden, manned by twenty-three men, and victualled for six months. (1610).

2. After touching at the Orkney Islands, he steered his course to Iceland, where he witnessed one of nature's grandest spectacles-Mount Hecla in the blaze of a violent eruption, surrounded by perpetual snows. The crew landed, and, having killed a number of wild fowl, cooked them in one of the hot springs of this wonderful island. Again weighing anchor, Hudson passed the south of Greenland till he reached the strait which now bears his name.

3. Here, in addition to the ordinary difficulties and dangers of navigation among the ice, he had to struggle against a mutiny among his crew; but, in spite of all, this intrepid explorer boldly pushed on till his vessel ploughed the waters of that great inland sea now known as Hudson's Bay. He did not know for a long time that it was a bay, but indulged the hope that he had discovered what he had so long sought-a passage by the northwest to China. Indeed, the extent of the surface amply justified this expectation, since, with the exception of the Mediterranean, it is the largest inland sea in the world.

4. Being obliged to pass the winter in these frost-bound regions, on the 1st of November, after seeking winter-quarters, his men found a suitable spot for beaching their vessel. Ten days afterward they were frozen in, with so scanty a stock of provisions, that, on the most stinted allowance, it was hardly sufficient to last till, by the return of spring, they could expect a release from the ice.

5. It is impossible to describe the hardships of that winter,

during which, notwithstanding all the birds, fishes, and animals serviceable for food, which they could succeed in catching, they were always suffering from want and starvation. When we are told that they were finally compelled to live upon moss and frogs, we may form some faint conception of their awful privations.

6. When the ice broke up, Hudson prepared for the homeward voyage. The last ration of bread was dealt out to the crew on the day of their setting sail. As, with a long and perilous voyage before them, they had not other provisions for the entire crew for more than ten days, a report that their commander had concealed a quantity of bread for his own use was readily believed by the famishing men; and a mutiny, headed by a man named Green, broke out on the 21st of June. Hudson was seized, and his hands bound, on the deck of his own vessel, where his word should have been law.

7. The mutineers, not satisfied with this cruel indignity, followed it up by an act of inhumanity which it is dreadful to think that British seamen could have perpetrated:-they put the captain, together with the sick and those whom the frost had deprived of the use of their limbs, into the shallop'. The conduct of the carpenter, however, forms a striking contrast to the base heartlessness of the mutineers. Refusing to remain in the ship, he nobly prepared to share the fate of Hudson and his disabled shipmates.

8. Soon afterward the crew cast the boat adrift, with its hapless freight, and stood out to sea. Doubtless, in the great inland sea which they had discovered, Hudson and his miserable companions found a grave; for the boat was never seen or heard of more. Two days after the mutineers had sailed, they encountered a violent storm, and for fourteen days were in the greatest danger from the ice.

9. That storm was probably fatal to their intrepid commander and his forlorn party, who may thus have escaped a still more terrible death from want and exposure. We contemplate with very different feelings the just retribution which overtook the guilty mutineers. They made the best of their

way home in the ship which they had thus foully obtained; but not one of the ringleaders lived to reach the land. The rest, after suffering the most awful extremities of famine, finally gained the shore. None of them were ever brought to trial for their misdeeds;-probably because those who were deepest in guilt had already paid the penalty of their crimes.

10. The melancholy end of Hudson is more affecting than the deaths even of Columbus, Cortez, and Pizarro, in the preceding century. His talents, courage, and perseverance, rank him among the first navigators of any age. In the comparative infancy of discovery in the northern regions, he deserves to take the lead. Though treacherously abandoned in the great inland sea which he had discovered, he has not, like many of his contemporaries, been ungenerously forgotten by posterity. His skill and daring awakened the highest admiration, while the mystery of his fate causes his name even yet to be mentioned with pity.

Voyage of the Pilgrims to New England.—Bancroft.

[Captain John Smith, who had taken so active a part in the settlement of Virginia, sailed from London in 1614, with the design of making further discoveries in the vicinity of Cape Cod, which had been discovered twelve years previously by Bartholomew Gosnold. Having reached the American coast, Smith examined the shores from the Penobscot River to Cape Cod, and made a map of the country, which he called NEW ENGLAND. The lustre of the expedition was dimmed by the conduct of Thomas Hunt, one of the commanders; for by him twenty-five of the natives were seized and taken to Spain, where they were sold as slaves.

The first settlement in New England was made by a small band of Pilgrims, dissenters from the Church of England, who fled from their own country to find an asylum from religious persecution. The sect to which they belonged were known in England as Puritans, or to that portion of the sect styled Independents. They at first went to Amsterdam, in Holland, whence they removed to Leyden (li'den). There they lived in great harmony for about eleven years, under the pastoral care of John Robinson; but becoming dissatisfied with their residence in Holland, they determined to remove to Virginia; and, with this view, obtained a grant of land from the London Company. The following account of the voyage of the Pilgrims is from Bancroft's "History of the United States."]

1. AND now the English at Leyden, trusting in God and in themselves, made ready for their departure. The ships which they had provided-the Speedwell, of sixty tons, the Mayflower, of one hundred and eighty tons-could hold but a

minority of the congregation; and Robinson was, therefore, detained at Leyden, while Brewster, the governing elder, who was also able as a teacher, conducted "such of the youngest and strongest as freely offered themselves."

2. Every enterprise of the Pilgrims began from God. A solemn fast was held. "Let us seek of God," said they, "a right way for us, and for our little ones, and for all our substance." Anticipating their high destiny, and the sublime doctrines of liberty that would grow out of the principles on which their religious tenets were established, Robinson gave them a farewell, breathing a freedom of opinion and an independence of authority, such as then were hardly known in the world.

3. "When the ship was ready to carry us away," writes Edward Winslow, "the brethren that staid at Leyden, having again solemnly sought the Lord with us and for us, feasted us that were to go, at our pastor's house, being large; where we refreshed ourselves, after tears, with singing of psalms, making joyful melody in our hearts, as well as with the voice, there being many of the congregation very expert in music; and indeed it was the sweetest melody that ever mine ears heard.

4. "After this they accompanied us to Delft-Haven, where we went to embark, and then feasted us again; and, after prayer performed by our pastor, when a flood of tears was poured out, they accompanied us to the ship, but were not. able to speak one to another for the abundance of sorrow to part. But we only, going aboard, gave them a volley of small shot, and three pieces of ordnance'; and so, lifting up our hands to each other, and our hearts for each other to the Lord our God, we departed."

5. A prosperous wind soon wafts the vessel to Southampton, and, in a fortnight, the Mayflower and the Speedwell, freighted with the first colony of New England, leave Southampton for America. But they had not gone far upon the Atlantic before the smaller vessel was found to need repairs; and they entered the port of Dartmouth. After the lapse of eight precious days,

they again weigh anchor; the coast of England recedes; already they are unfurling their sails on the broad ocean, when the captain of the Speedwell, with his company, dismayed at the dangers of the enterprise, once more pretends that his ship is too weak for the service.

6. They put back to Plymouth, "and agree to dismiss her, and those who are willing, to London, though this was very grievous and discouraging." Having thus winnowed their numbers, the little band, not of resolute men only, but wives, children, infants, a floating village, yet but one hundred and two soulswent on board the single ship, which was hired only to convey them across the Atlantic; and, on the 6th day of September, 1620, thirteen years after the first colonization of Virginia, two months before the concession of the grand charter of Plymouth, without any warrant from the sovereign of England, without any useful charter from a corporate body, the passengers in the Mayflower set sail for a new world, where the past could offer no favorable auguries.

7. The eastern coast of the United States abounds in beautiful and convenient harbors, in majestic bays and rivers. The first Virginia colony, sailing along the shores of North Carolina, was, by a favoring storm, driven into the magnificent bay of the Chesapeake; the Pilgrims, having selected for their settlement the country near the Hudson, the best position on the whole coast, were conducted to the most barren and inhospitable part of Massachusetts. After a long and boisterous voyage of sixty-three days, during which one person had died, they espied land, and, in two days more, were safely moored in the harbor of Cape Cod.

8. Yet, before they landed, the manner in which their government should be constituted was considered; and, as some were observed "not well affected to unity and concord," they formed themselves into a body politic by a solemn voluntary compact:

"In the name of God, amen; we, whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign King James, having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of

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