We have observed in our last book, that the Directors of the Dutch East India Company sent out in March last year, on purpose to seek a passage to China by northeast or northwest, an experienced English pilot, named Henry Hudson, in a vlie boat, having a crew of eighteen or twenty hands, partly English, partly Dutch.

This Henry Hudson left the Texel the 6th of April, 1609, and having doubled the Cape of Norway the 5th of May, directed his course along the northern coasts towards Nova Zembla; but he there found the sea as full of ice as he had found it in the preceding year, so that he lost the hope of effecting anything during the season. This circumstance, and the cold which some of his men who had been in the East Indies could not bear, caused quarrels among the crew, they being partly English, partly Dutch; upon which the captain, Henry Hudson, laid before them two propositions; the first of these was, to go to the coast of America to the latitude of 40°. This idea had been suggested to him by some letters and maps which his friend Capt. Smith had sent him from Virginia, and by which he informed him that there was a sea leading into the western ocean, by the north of the southern English colony.