UP THE GREAT RIVER 5

not fight without cause! Good advice makes the
wheels run smoothly!

Perhaps the thing which interested the Indians
most was the great wooden block fastened to the
deck behind the mainmast. This strange object
was fashioned in the shape of a man's head, and
through it passed the ropes used to hoist the yards.
It was called sometimes "the silent servant,"
sometimes "the knighthead." To the Indians it
must have seemed the final touch of necromancy,
and they were prepared to bow down in awe before
a race of beings who could thus make blocks of
wood serve them.

Trusting, no doubt, to the impression which he
had made on the minds of the natives, Hudson
decided to go ashore. The Indians crowded around
him and "sang in their fashion" — a motley
horde, as strange to the ship's crew as the Half
Moon and its company seemed marvelous to the
aborigines. Men, women, and children, dressed
in fur or tricked out with feathers, stood about or
floated in their boats hewn from solid logs, the men
carrying pipes of red copper in which they smoked
that precious product, tobacco — the consolation
prize offered by the New World to the Old in lieu
of the hoped-for passage to Cathay.