For this purpose he entered the river now named the Hudson, but soon found it was only a river; though he returned to Holland with such an encouraging account of the surrounding country that the Dutch a little later on, founded on the banks of the Hudson River their colony of New Amsterdam (afterwards the State of New York).

In 1610 Hudson accepted a British commission to sail beyond where Davis and Frobisher had passed, and once more seek for the north-west passage to China.

Instead he found the way into Hudson's Bay.

Here his men, alarmed at the idea of being lost in these regions of ice and snow, mutinied against him, placed him and those who were faithful to him in a boat, and cast them off, themselves returning to England with the news of his discovery.

Hudson was never heard of again, and, strange to say, the mutineers apparently received no punishment.
Between 1602 and 1668, English adventurers from London and Bristol, notable amongst whom were WILLIAM BAFFIN, LUKE FOX, and CAPTAIN JAMES, mapped the coasts of Hudson's Bay and Baffin's Bay and brought to the notice of merchants in England the abundance of whales in these Arctic waters, and of fur-bearing beasts and fur-trading Indians in the region of Hudson's Bay.
This last point was most forcibly presented to Charles II and his Government by a disappointed French Canadian, Pierre Esprit Radisson, whose adventures will later on be described.