 | MASTER HENRY HUDSON. The beauties of Washington Irving, author of "The sketch-book," "Knickerbocker," "Crayon miscellany," &c. |  |
MASTER HENRY HUDSON.
In the ever memorable year of our Lord, 1609, on a
Saturday morning, the five and twentieth day of March,
old style, did that “worthy and irrecoverable discoverer
(as he has justly been called,) Master Henry Hudson,”
set sail from Holland in a stout vessel called the Half
Moon, being employed by the Dutch East India Company,
to seek a north-west passage to China.
Henry, (or as the Dutch historians call him, Hendrick)
Hudson was a seafaring man of renown, who had learned
to smoke tobacco under Sir Walter Raleigh, and is
said to have been the first to introduce it into Holland,
which gained him much popularity in that country, and
caused him to find great favour in the eyes of their High
Mightinesses, the lords states-general, and also of the
honourable West India Company. He was a short,
square, brawny old gentleman, with a double chin, a
mastiff mouth, and a broad copper nose, which was supposed
in those days to have acquired its fiery hue from
the constant neighbourhood of his tobacco pipe.
He wore a true Andrea Ferrara tucked in a leathern
belt, and a commodore's cocked hat on one side of his
head. He was remarkable for always jerking up his
breeches when he gave out his orders, and his voice sounded
not unlike the brattling of a tin trumpet, owing to the
number of hard north-westers which he had swallowed
in the course of his seafaring.
Such was Hendrick Hudson, of whom we have heard
so much and know so little; and I have been thus particular
in his description, for the benefit of modern painters
and statuaries, that they may represent him as he was;
and not, according to their common custom, with modern
heroes, make them look like Cæsar, or Marcus Aurelius,
or the Apolla of Belvidere.
| MASTER HENRY HUDSON. The beauties of Washington Irving, author of "The sketch-book," "Knickerbocker," "Crayon miscellany," &c. | |