16 DUTCH AND ENGLISH ON THE HUDSON

country from which he set out on this quest, never
again to enter the river which he had explored.
But he had achieved immortal fame for himself
and had secured a new empire for the Netherlands.
The Cabots possibly, and Verrazano almost cer-
tainly, had visited the locality of "the Great
River" before him; but Hudson was in the truest
sense its discoverer, and history has accorded him
his rights. Today the replica of the Half Moon
lies in a quiet backwater of the Hudson River at
the foot of- Bear Mountain — stripped of her gild-
ing, her sails, and her gay pennants. She still
^ makes a unique appeal to our imagination as we
fancy the tiny original buffeting the ocean waves
and feeling her way along uncharted waters to the
head of navigation. To see even the copy is to
feel the thrill of adventure and to realize the bold-
ness of those early mariners whom savages could
not affright nor any form of danger daunt. *

1 For further details of the appearance of the Half Moon, see E.
H. Hall's paper on Henry Hudson and the Discovery of the Hudson
River, published by the American Scenic and Historic Preservation
Society (1910).