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!


DISCOVERY OF THE HUDSON RIVER.

Here he lingered a week, in friendly intercourse with the natives of New
Jersey, while a boat's company explored the waters up to Newark Bay. And
now the great question. Shall he turn back, like Verazzano, or ascend
the stream? Hudson was of a race not prone to turn back, by sea or by
land. On the eleventh of September he raised the anchor of the _Half
Moon_, passed through the Narrows, beholding on both sides "as beautiful
a land as one can tread on;" and floated cautiously and slowly up the
noble stream--the first ship that ever rested on its bosom. He passed
the Palisades, nature's dark basaltic Malakoff, forced the iron gateway
of the Highlands, anchored, on the fourteenth, near West Point; swept
onward and upward, the following day, by grassy meadows and tangled
slopes, hereafter to be covered with smiling villages;--by elevated
banks and woody heights, the destined site of towns and cities--of
Newburg, Poughkeepsie, Catskill;--on the evening of the fifteenth
arrived opposite "the mountains which lie from the river side," where
he found "a very loving people and very old men;" and the day following
sailed by the spot hereafter to be honored by his own illustrious name.
One more day wafts him up between Schodac and Castleton; and here he
landed and passed a day with the natives,--greeted with all sorts of
barbarous hospitality,--the land "the finest for cultivation he ever set