And nearly a quarter of a century more
elapsed before Englishmen settled on the shores of Massachusetts
Bay. Those were the two points most accessible to ships and most
favorable for settlement. The middle ground of the Delaware and
Hudson regions was not so easily entered and remained unoccupied.
The mouth of the Delaware was full of shoals and was always
difficult to navigate. The natural harbor at the mouth of the
Hudson was excellent, but the entrance to it was not at first
apparent.
Into these two regions, however, the Dutch chanced just after the
English had effected the settlement of Jamestown in Virginia. The
Dutch had employed an Englishman named Henry Hudson and sent him
in 1609 in a small ship called the Half Moon to find a passage to
China and India by way of the Arctic Ocean. Turned back by the
ice in the Arctic, he sailed down the coast of North America, and
began exploring the middle ground from the Virginia settlement,
which he seems to have known about; and, working cautiously
northward along the coast and feeling his way with the lead line,
he soon entered Delaware Bay.
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