Chudleigh, towards which he could imagine the Julia A. Decker, vainly
as it proved, pointing her figure head through fog and ice. Only six
hundred miles due south the granite chapel of Bowdoin College points
heavenward both its uplifted hands. Four hundred and fifty miles to
the west rolled the waves of that great inland ocean, Hudson's Bay,
into whose depths, Henry Hudson, after his penetrations to northern
waters above Spitzbergen, after his pushing along the eastern coast of
Greenland, after his magnificent and successful exploration of the
American coast from Maine to Virginia, penetrating Delaware bay and
river and sailing up that river crowned by the Palisades and the
hights of the Catskills, honored with his name and whose waters bear
the largest portion of the commercial wealth of our own country; still
fascinated by the vision of a northwest passage that intrepid explorer
penetrated into the waters of the unknown sea whose waves unseen dash
along the coasts of Labrador from its westward to its northern shores
and Cape Chudleigh. All these explorations he accomplished in a
sailing vessel about the size of the Julia A. Decker, the ship
"Discoverie" of seventy tons. He had wintered at the southern
extremity of Hudson's Bay surrounded by a mutinous crew. In the
hardships and suffering of the next season, after he had divided his
last bread with his men, in the summer of 1611, while near the western
coast of Labrador, half way back to the Straits, by an ungrateful crew
he was thrust into a sail boat with his son John and five sailors sick
and blind with scurvy, and was left to perish in the great waste of
waters, which, bearing his name, is "his tomb and his monument." Cole,
with his mind and imagination filled with these facts, involuntarily
took his knife and carved his name and the expedition on the upper
part of the tree which formed his outlook. It might be his monument as
the Inland Sea was that of Hudson. Then to have the tree marked and
observable to other eyes, in case other eyes should see that country,