Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: C III JERSEY DISCOVERED HRISTOPHER COLUMBUS discovered America on October 12, 1492, but it was not until a century had passed that New Jersey entered upon its New World history. Henry Hudson, sailing up-coast from the Delaware Bay on or about the first of September, A. D. 1609, was the first Englishman to make note of the seashore that has since become famous the world over. And it was only because of a change of plan in Hudson's mind while in mid-ocean that New Jersey was sighted then. The navigator had set out upon his voyage of discovery for the purpose of finding a northeast passage to India, but bethought himself otherwise while at sea and determined to seek a northwest passage at 40 N. latitude. He failed to find this and spent a week cruising in the Delaware Bay and River, then proceeded up the coast now known as New Jersey and landed from the " Half Moon " upon Sandy Hook. From early sketches and from the navigator's own diary it appears that the "Half Moon "kept well within sight of land during the voyage from the Delaware Capes to Sandy Hook, and if the bathers of the Jersey seashore resorts had been spending their 1609 September vacations on the sands of Long Beach they would have been accorded a passing review of the ship of original discovery. But about the best the modern bather cando is to gaze upon the place where the "Half Moon" passed some three hundred and five years ago. The next adventurer to view the Jersey Coast was Captain Cornelius Jacobson Mey, and the captain's name is well spread out over South Jersey to this day, particularly in Cape May County, Cape May Court House, Cape May City, and Mays Landing on the Great Egg Harbor River. The names of two South Jersey county seats have fallen to the honor of this Dutch sailor—Cape May Court House...