The mountains in the upper river came right down to the water
like the glacis of a giant fort, and fitful winds pounced upon the _Half
Moon_ and rocked her like a cradle. Once there was a late
thunder-shower, and the noise of the thunder among the humped ranges was
for all the world like balls rolling in a great game of bowls played by
goblins of the mountains.
On the fourth of October, the _Half Moon_ left the island which the
Indians called Manahatta, passed through the Narrows and sailed for
Europe. Looking back at those green shores with their bronze
feather-crowned people watching to see the flight of their strange
guest, John Hudson felt that when he was a man, he would like nothing
better than to have an estate on the shores of the noble river, which no
white boy had ever before set eyes on. Where a great terrace rose, some
fifty miles above Manahatta, walled around by mountains and almost two
hundred feet above the river, there should be a fort, of which Captain
John Smith should be the commander; and in the broadening of the river
below to form an inland sea, his father's squadron should ride, while
the Indians of all the upper reaches of the river should come to pay
tribute and bring wampum, furs and tobacco in exchange for trinkets. And
on the island at the mouth of the river there would be a great city,
greater than Antwerp, to which all the ships of the world should come as
they came now to Antwerp and to London.
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