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Updated: June 14, 2025
It was now October; and the furious equinoctial gales lashed the shallow sea to mountainous waves that swept clear over the decks of the Discovery, knocking the sailors from the capstan bars and setting all the lee scuppers spouting. In a rage Juet threw down his pole and declared that he would serve no longer.
These, however, are very fabulous legends, to which very cautious credence must be given; and though I am willing to admit the last quoted orthography of the name as very fit for prose, yet is there another which I peculiarly delight in, as at once poetical, melodious, and significant and which we have on the authority of Master Juet, who, in his account of the voyage of the great Hudson, calls this Manna-hata that is to say, the island of manna or, in other words, a land flowing with milk and honey.
That they did dwell on, and that they did give their name to, our island of Manhattan are facts absolutely established by the records of the ensuing three or four years. During October 3d the "Half Moon" was storm-bound. On the 4th, Juet records "Faire weather, and the wind at north north west, wee weighed and came out of the river into which we had runne so farre."
The principal conspirators were men who were bound to Hudson by long friendship, by lasting obligations, and by common interests, adventures and sufferings. Juet had sailed with him on two of his former voyages, and had shared in the glory of his discoveries.
How far Master Hendrick Hudson and his worthy mate carried their experiment with the sachem's wife is not recorded, neither does the curious Robert Juet make any mention of the after-consequences of this grand moral test; tradition, however, affirms that the sachem on landing gave his modest spouse a hearty rib-roasting, according to the connubial discipline of the aboriginals; it farther affirms that he remained a hard drinker to the day of his death, trading away all his lands, acre by acre, for aqua vitae; by which means the Roost and all its domains, from Yonkers to Sleepy Hollow, came, in the regular course of trade and by right of purchase, into the possession of the Dutchmen.
Being returned to Fort Conger, he was not restored to his rank, and remained as Juet remained after being superseded a malcontent. One of the commentators on the expedition thus has summarized the conditions of that dreadful winter of 1883-84: "It was now October, and the situation of the explorers was becoming desperate, but the bickerings seem to have increased with their peril.
Having satisfied himself by this ingenious experiment that the natives were an honest, social race of jolly roysterers, who had no objection to a drinking bout, and were very merry in their cups, the old commodore chuckled hugely to himself, and thrusting a double quid of tobacco in his cheek, directed Master Juet to have it carefully recorded, for the satisfaction of all the natural philosophers of the University of Leyden which done, he proceeded on his voyage with great self-complacency.
Upon this, Greene took up the Bible which lay there, and swore upon it, that he would do no man harm, and that what he did was for the good of the voyage, and for nothing else. Wilson took the same oath, and after him came Juet and the other conspirators separately, and swore in the same words.
Before reaching Iceland, Juet had remarked to one of the crew, that there would be bloodshed before the voyage was over; and he was evidently at that time contriving some mischief. While the ship was at anchor in this bay, a circumstance occurred, which gave Juet an opportunity to commence his intrigues. It is thus narrated by Pricket.
How easily does a wish become father to the thought! Ice lay north, open water south and west; and so south-west steered Hudson, standing by the wheel, though Juet, the old mate, raged in open mutiny because not enough provisions remained to warrant further voyaging, much less the wintering of a crew of twenty in an ice-locked world.
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