Henry Hudson in Holland An Inquiry into the Origin and Objects of the Voyage which Led to the Discovery of the Hudson River
Description
Other points of interest connected with the sending out of this expedition will attract especial attention. The most important of them is the explicit statement of hudson in regard to the amelioration of the climate at the extreme Northern latitude attained by him in his previous explorations, and its remarkable concom itant, an open navigation towards the pole. It was this relation which satisfied the minds of the directors of the Company as to the expediency of making a new search for a passage to China in those comparatively mild and possibly habitable regions. We know how often this observation of hudson has since been con firmed by later voyagers at different points of the arctic circle and yet our knowledge, after the lapse of two hundred and fifty years in regard to this strange phenomenon has hardly advanced one step and we are in the same state both of doubt and hopeful effort on the subject, as the merchants of Amsterdam were on the occasion of the narration of our navigator. Science too then as now stepped in to substantiate the fact when otherwise it would have been incredible and to encourage the under taking.
In prosecuting this task we have sought the most authentic sources of information; and with that viewhave examined the records of the East India Company, comprising the registers or books of resolutions of the general council of the Company, styled the Council of Seventeen, and of the chambers of Amsterdam and Zeeland respectively, with some other documents of a miscellaneous character, among the Archives of the Kingdom at the Hague; where all the books and papers of the Company, which were until lately dispersed among the different cities where the operations of the different chambers were conducted, have been brought together and arranged. A copy of the contract between hudson and the Chamber of Amsterdam was found appended to a history of the Company never published, but prepared at its request by Mr. P. Van dam who held the position of Counsel of the Company for the extra ordinary period of fifty four years, that is, from 1652 until his death in 1706. The original instrument is not to be found. That would have been a precious relic to see, but for all the purposes of history the copy thus accidentally preserved will answer its place.
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