80 THE LAND OF PLUCK

January, from morning till night, pay visits from house to
house, wishing the ladies a “Happy New Year”? Simply
because these were Holland customs. The Americans of
the day only were following the example long ago set them
by the Dutch.

Hendrik Hudson, the first white man who explored
our noble North River, was an adopted Dutchman. He
modestly called it De Groote (or the Great) River, little
thinking that for all time after it would be known as the
Hudson. Staten (or States) Island was so named by him
in honor of his home government, the States-General.

At that time he was in the service of the Dutch East
India Company. Three years later he made another voy-
age and discovered the famous bay, far to our northward,
which now bears his name. Intrepid as he was, the bitter
cold of that region, and threatened starvation, prevented
him from carrying out his resolve to spend the winter on
the shores of his bay, and he set sail for home, only to
meet the tragic fate which to this day is veiled in mystery.
The sailors mutinied, and set him afloat, with eight other
men, in an open boat. They were never seen nor heard of
again,

It is said that Hudson gave the name Helle Gat, or
Beautiful Pass, to the dangerous waterway between Long
Island and Manhattan Island which in 1885, only nine
years ago, yielded its most dangerous reef, Flood Rock,
to the persuasions of science and dynamite.

The site of the present capital of the State of New
York at first was called New Orange, in honor of William,
Prince of Orange and Stadtholder of Holland; but in 1664,