War (which Erasmus called “the malady of princes” and General Sherman called “hell”), begun by Charles I of Spain against the Netherlands, was continued by his son and grandson and resulted in driving out of Europe many of North America’s early and most desirable settlers.
 
Many of the Dutch East India Company’s vessels were equipped for war as well as for commerce and her East India possessions were active in building and fitting out ships which captured many and rich prizes from the Spaniards. The richest locality for capturing such prizes was in the West Indies, and what the Netherlands greatly needed was territory near there, where her ships could be sheltered, repaired, and obtain the needed supplies. Spain was in possession of nearly all of what is now the south of the United States, and France of Canada. The English held Virginia and claimed what is now called New England, but between the two was a territory that seemed free for settlement and there is reason to believe that the Dutch East India Company was aware of that fact and aimed to take it.

In 1497 and 1498 the Cabots, in the employ of Henry VII of England, sailed westward in search of a shorter all-water route to India, coasting along the Atlantic from a parallel of latitude about the same as that of the Straits of Gibraltar clear up to Hudson straits, where the icebergs prevented further advance. Having landed and planted the English flag, they claimed the country 36 for the British crown and under their discovery the English claim in North America rested. On a German map made in 1515 America is represented as a large island in the western Atlantic. Magellan, in whose honor the straits near Cape Horn, South America, were named, sailed around the globe in 1519-21, proved that America was a continent and the world a sphere. Sir Francis Drake, in 1577-79, also circumnavigated the globe. In 1728 Vitus Behring sailed through the straits which bear his name and proved that America is no part of Asia. From 1499 to 1504 Americus Vespucius, a Florentine navigator and explorer, made, in the employ of Spain, four voyages to the east coast of South America and built a fort on the coast of Brazil, and from him, or rather in his honor, the western continent was named “America”—the name first appearing in a little pamphlet published in France in 1507 by Waldseemuler, a German geographer, who gave as his reason for the name the following, viz.: “The fourth part of the world having been discovered by Americus, it may be called the land of Americus or America.”

Between the years 1512 and 1542 Ponce de Leon, 37 Balboa, Cortez, Narvaez, Cabeza de Vaca, De Soto, Pizarro, and Coronado, all for Spain, had made extensive and very important discoveries in what are now the southern of the United States, the Mississippi river, Mexico, and Peru. Some of these men became infamous by their horrible crimes. They were arrogant and frank. Balboa, in 1513, was the first European to discover the “South sea” (the Pacific ocean), and “wading into its waters drew his sword and declared that the Kings of Spain should hold possession of the ‘South sea’ and of its coasts and islands ‘while the earth revolves, and until the universal judgment of mankind.’” Cortez bluffly declared in a few words when speaking to the Mexicans the motives of the Spanish as follows: “We Spaniards are troubled with a disease of the heart for which we find gold and gold only a specific remedy.” These discoverers, explorers, freebooters from Spain in her vast territory New Spain, merited the just contempt not only of the ancient civilizations of Mexico and Peru but also of the whole enlightened world. It seems to have been the firm belief of the Spaniard for centuries 38 that he is made of a finer material than any other nation and destined to rule and others to obey.

The French disputed the Spanish claims to North America and established a colony of Huguenots in South Carolina, but France’s discoveries and possessions in North America were principally in the north. Cartier discovered and explored the St. Lawrence river in 1535, and that was thought to be a part, if not all, of the water-way through the continent of America to the South sea or Pacific ocean en route to India. No nation was more zealous and successful than France in making discoveries and settlements in Canada, and what ultimately became the northwestern of the United States along the upper lakes and the upper Mississippi river, by those wonderful religious orders, the Franciscans and Jesuits.

Eighty-five years had elapsed after the discovery in North America by the Cabots, under which the English based their claim to the territory, before they made any attempt at colonization or even to establish a permanent settlement. In 1584 that unique, able, versatile, vain Queen Elizabeth of England granted a most remarkable charter to, at one time her especial favorite, the 39 highly gifted but eccentric Sir Walter Raleigh, to lay claim to any land in the west “not actually possessed by any Christian prince.” Raleigh sent out several expeditions to make a settlement on Roanoke island, off the coast of North Carolina. It was represented to the Queen as a remarkably fine land, so that she named it in her own honor as the Virgin Queen Virginia and thereupon knighted Raleigh. Raleigh, though he made determined and prolonged efforts and at great personal expense to establish permanent English settlements in America, failed. To Sir Walter Raleigh is given the credit or curse of having discovered in Virginia a weed which King James called “the vilest of weeds” and Edmund Spencer, the famous poet, “divine tobacco.” To Sir Walter also is generally given the credit of having introduced the most valuable of all the vegetables known to man—the potato.

Justin Winsor, a distinguished American historian, said that the scheme to form a West India Company was first broached in 1592 by William Usselinx, an exiled Antwerp merchant. It was many years before it could be accomplished. The longing for a share in the riches of the New World 40 conduced in the meantime to the establishment of the “Greenland Company” about 1596 and the pretended search by its ships for a northwestern passage led to a supposed first discovery of the Hudson river, if we may rely upon an unsupported statement by the officers of the West India Company in an appeal for assistance to the Assembly of the Nineteenth in 1644. According to this statement ships of the “Greenland Company” had entered the North and Delaware rivers in 1598; their crews had landed in both places and had built small forts to protect them against the inclemency of the weather and to resist the attacks of the Indians.

A company of English merchants had organized to trade to America in the first year of the seventeenth century. Their first adventure to Guiana and Virginia were not successful yet gave a new impetus to the scheme originally conceived by Usselinx. A plan for the organization of a West India Company was drawn up in 1606, according to the excited Belgian ideas. This company was to have an existence of thirty-six years; to receive during the first six years assistance from all the United Provinces, and to be managed 41 in the same manner as the East India Company. It was not consummated. Olden-Barneveldt, the Advocate of Holland and one of the most prominent and influential members of the peace party, foresaw that the organization of a West India Company with the avowed purpose of obtaining most of its profits by preying on Spanish commerce in American waters would only prolong the war. Usselinx’s plan was to compel Spain by these means to evacuate Belgium and thus give her exiled sons a chance to return to their old home. A wholesale departure of the shrewd, industrious, and skilful Belgians would have deprived Holland of her political pre-eminence and have left her an obscure and isolated province. The conflicting views and claims of the provinces caused the scheme to fail until after Olden-Barneveldt, accused of high treason, was tried, condemned, and beheaded in 1619. Subsequently Maurice of Nassau took up the scheme of forming the Dutch West India Company. Private ships sailing from Dutch ports had not been idle in the meantime; in 1607 we hear of them in Canada trading for furs. Belgium and the Netherlands, compelled to become maritime 42 nations, while other circumstances directed to commercial pursuits, had become the common carriers of the sea and the Netherlands especially had availed themselves of the discoveries made by the Cabots, Verrazano, and other adventurous explorers in the country succeeding Columbus’ discovery of America. They thought Spain most assailable in the West Indies where they could prey upon their commerce and capture their treasures from Mexico and Peru. The first proposition to make such an expedition was submitted to the States General in 1581 by an English sea captain named Beets. It was refused. Later it gained favor and caused the formation of a West India Company really to fight Spain and not ignoring the search for a shorter route to India.

Before Henry Hudson’s attempts to find a northwest passage to India six trials had been made and subsequently more than twenty-five more, and while it is claimed that Sir Robert McClure in his expedition in 1650-54 succeeded, it was only by abandoning his vessel and completing his way on ice. The discovery is of no practical utility.

In 1606 James I, King of England, Scotland 43 and Ireland, granted two charters—one to the London Company giving it power to establish settlements anywhere between the thirty-fourth and thirty-eighth degrees of north latitude (that is between Cape Fear and the Potomac); and the other to the Plymouth Company granting it the territory in Northern Virginia between the forty-first and the forty-fifth degrees of north latitude (that is between the eastern end of Long Island and the northern limit of Nova Scotia), with the right to establish settlements therein. Each of these grants extended 100 miles inland. The territory between these two companies (from thirty-ninth to forty-first degrees), embracing what is Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and a little of New York, was open to settlement by either of these companies, provided that neither should make a settlement within 100 miles of the other.

It is not presumable that the alert, watchful, shrewd Amsterdam directors of the Dutch East India Company were ignorant of the discoveries, explorations, and important events in the western world nor of the charters of 1606 granted by King James which seemed to leave an unoccupied and an unknown territory extending from the thirty-eight 44 to the forty-eight degrees of North latitude which would furnish the Netherlands a desirable base for their operations in America against Spain. Perhaps that territory might be secured under the right of prior discovery if a small craft was sent out nominally to sail northeast as a blind but really westward for the double purpose either of finding a shorter route to India or obtaining a desirable foothold in the New World.

Let us see whether we may ascertain more about Hudson’s views, preparation, and knowledge before the contract was entered into with the Amsterdam directors of the Dutch East India Company. In his second voyage in the employ of the Muscovy Company, under date of August 7, 1608, he made the following entry into his journal: “I used all diligence to arrive in London, for being at Nova Zembla on the 8th day of July and void of hope of a northeast route except by Vaygats, for which I was not fitted to try or prove, I therefore resolved to use all means I could to sail to the northwest (which would have been in direct violation of his instructions) and to make trial at Lumley’s Inlet and Captain Davis Straits, hoping to run into it a hundred leagues and return.” He 45 did not carry out his resolve but indicated his desire to seek a northwestern passage then.

Henry Hudson was not wild, erratic, nor a rover. Perhaps no one whom Hudson met in London so much determined his course as did Captain John Smith, a very remarkable English adventurer—a daring rover in early life, entering military service in several of the European governments, captured, imprisoned, and escaped to play such a prominent part in establishing the first permanent English ............