Summer Excursion Routes, and Catskill Mountain Resorts, 1910: With Supplementary List of the Resorts on the Line of the New Paltz, Highland Poughkeepsie Traction Co (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

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Excerpt from Summer Excursion Routes, and Catskill Mountain Resorts, 1910: With Supplementary List of the Resorts on the Line of the New Paltz, Highland Poughkeepsie Traction Co

We have passed the three hundredth anniversary of Hendrick Hudson's discovery of the river that now bears his name. It matters not whether he was the first European navigator to visit that historic stream; it may have been Roberval in 1542, or French fur-traders in 1540, or Verrazano in 1524, or the Cabots about 1497, or Zeno in 1380, or Madoc in 1170, or Thorvard and Helgi in 1011, or Thorfinn and Thorvard in 1007, or Thorwald in 1003, or Lief, the son of Eric, in the year 1000, or perhaps some bold navigator or storm-stressed voyager in even earlier years, unknown to tradition and unhonored by history, for there is much dim tradition and historians disagree; but, be that as it may, the first actual explorer of the river of whom we have any authentic account was Hendrick Hudson who, in September, 1609, navigated the "Haalvemaan" (Half-moon) up its broad stream to a point a little beyond latitude 42° 18', and that event drew in its wake the train of occurrences that settled and created the colonies which have become the United States of America.

The prow of that vessel has left a broadening wake whose ripples have written an indelible history not only along the Hudson's shores, but have left their imprint on kingdoms over the sea. In that track came the trader, and then the settler with his ax, carving a home out of the wilderness and making a new Netherland. The fame of the "New Netherland" spread abroad, and the little band of English Puritans which had fled to Holland for refuge, fearing the loss of its national identity in that country, in 1620 followed in the wake of the "Half-moon," intending to settle on Hudson's River; but at the end, driven by stress of weather, they were obliged to abandon their purpose and land near Cape Cod. And thus to the Hudson do we owe the beginning of the colonies which stimulated the settlement and founding of the New World.

We might picture the palmy days of the Dutch colony along the 'Mauritius River," as it was then called in honor of Prince Maurice, broken at length by the envious greed of England which wrested the sovereignty from the Netherlands; then the long years of gathering storm, brewed by British oppression and mismanagement until its shadow rested over all the colonies, and finally broke in the tempest of the Revolution.

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