Thereat once more he moved about, and clomb
Ev’n to the highest he could climb, and saw,
Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand,
Or thought he saw, the speck that bare the King,

[Illustration:  THE BARGE MOVED FROM THE BRINK]

Down that long water opening on the deep
Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go
From less to less and vanish into light. 
And the new sun rose bringing the new year.

HENRY HUDSON’S FOURTH VOYAGE[1]

[Footnote 1:  This sketch of Henry Hudson’s fourth voyage is taken from the Life of Henry Hudson by Henry R. Cleveland, which appears in Jared Sparks’s series of books on American biography.]

By HENRY R. CLEVELAND

Note.—­It should be remembered that Hudson had already made three voyages in search of the Northwestern Passage.  On his first voyage he tried to sail around the northern part of Greenland, but was driven back by the ice and returned to England, whence he had sailed.

On his second voyage he attempted to find a northeastern passage around the North Cape and north of Europe.  He reached Nova Zembla but was unable to get any farther.

On his third voyage he sailed under the management of the Dutch East India Company and left the port of Amsterdam, expecting to go north around the continent of America.  In this he was disappointed; but he proceeded west to the Banks of Newfoundland and thence south along the coast of the United States.  He visited Penobscot Bay in Maine, sailed around Cape Cod and southward at some distance from the coast, to Virginia, deciding by this time that he could not find a passage westward in that direction.  As he knew of the discoveries along the coast of Virginia he returned north, and on his way discovered Delaware Bay and the outlet of the Hudson River.  After some delay he explored the river to the present site of Albany, where he again found that his Northwestern Passage was barred by the shallowing waters of the river.  This was the extent of the explorations of this voyage, from which he finally returned in safety to London.

China was well known to the people of Hudson’s time, but had been reached always by water around the Cape of Good Hope and along the southern shore of Asia, or by the long and perilous land journey across Europe and Asia.  It was the dream of all these early navigators to find a water passage much shorter than the one around the Cape, and for this they naturally looked to the northwest, where they knew the distance must be much shorter.  They little knew that this search was to continue for hundreds of years—­so long, in fact, that no practicable passage of that sort is even now known.