In view of the fact that the French project in a way was realized, a curiously subtle interest attaches to Jeannin’s showing of how narrow were the chances by which Hudson missed being taken into the French service, and was taken into that of the Dutch.  A French ship, under the command of a captain whose name has not been preserved, did sail for the North—­almost precisely a month later than Hudson’s sailing—­on May 5, 1609.  Beyond the bare fact that such a voyage was made, nothing is known about it:  whence the inference is a reasonable one that it produced no new discoveries.  But suppose that Hudson had commanded; and, so commanding, had not sailed that unknown captain’s useless course but had brought his French ship into what now are our bay and our river; and that the French, not the Dutch, had founded the city here that now is—­but by those hair-wide chances might not have been—­New York?

V

Mr. Henry C. Murphy—­to whose searchings in the archives of Holland we owe so much—­found at The Hague a manuscript history of the East India Company, written by P. van Dam in the seventeenth century, in which a copy of Hudson’s contract with the Company is preserved.  The contract reads as follows: 

“On this eighth of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and nine, the Directors of the East India Company of the Chamber of Amsterdam of the ten years reckoning of the one part, and Master Henry Hudson, Englishman, assisted by Jodocus Hondius[1], of the other part, have agreed in manner following, to wit:  That the said Directors shall in the first place equip a small vessel or yacht of about thirty lasts [60 tons] burden, well provided with men, provisions and other necessaries, with which the above named Hudson shall, about the first of April, sail in order to search for a passage by the north, around the north side of Nova Zembla, and shall continue thus along that parallel until he shall be able to sail southward to the latitude of sixty degrees.  He shall obtain as much knowledge of the lands as can be done without any considerable loss of time, and if it is possible return immediately in order to make a faithful report and relation of his voyage to the Directors, and to deliver over his journals, log-books, and charts, together with an account of everything whatsoever which shall happen to him during the voyage without keeping anything back.

“For which said voyage the Directors shall pay the said Hudson, as well for his outfit for the said voyage as for the support of his wife and children, the sum of eight hundred guilders [say $336].  And in case (which God prevent) he does not come back or arrive hereabouts within a year, the Directors shall farther pay to his wife two hundred guilders in cash; and thereupon they shall not be farther liable to him or his heirs, unless he shall either afterward or within the year arrive and have found the passage good and suitable for the Company to use; in which case the Directors will reward the before named Hudson for his dangers, trouble, and knowledge, in their discretion.