The cost of the building was £28,000, and the sum paid by the corporation to Sir J. W. Ramsden, Bart., for the market-rights and site, was £25,790, in addition to £15,273 for the site and rights of the cattle-market. A public cemetery, off New North Road, the property of the corporation, with mortuary chapels for Churchmen and Nonconformists, was completed in 1855; and the cemetery at Almondbury was taken over by the corporation in 1868. The extensive gas-works are the property of the corporation, as are also the water-works, which afford an ample supply of excellent water, the reservoirs being capable of storing 900,000,000 gallons. The cost has been over £750,000. A public park of 21 acres, called the Beaumont Park, is the gift of Mr H. F. Beaumont; the first sod was cut on May 29, 1880. There are fourteen handsome board schools, erected at a cost of about £120,000, twenty-one national schools, and one Roman Catholic school. The principal public societies are the mechanics’ institution, the building for which, a large edifice in the Italian style, was opened in 1861, and the mechanics’ institutes at Lindley and Lockwood, each possessing handsome buildings. Huddersfield is a place of considerable antiquity, being mentioned in Domesday, and is supposed by some to derive its name from Oder or Hudard, a Saxon chief; but its importance dates from the establishment of the woollen manufacture within the last century. It is the principal seat of the fancy woollen trade in England; and it exceeds every other place in the variety of its manufacture of this class of textile fabrics, which includes doeskins, angolas, tweeds, worsted coatings and trouserings, Ulster cloths, mohairs, cashmeres, sealskins, fancy dress skirtings, kerseys, woollen cords, quiltings, a few broad cloths, and a large number of union materials. It also possesses silk and cotton spinning mills, iron foundries, engineering works for steam-engines, steam-engine boilers, and the machinery used in the various manufactures, chemical works, dye-houses, lead-piping and t .nitary tube manufactories, and three organ factories. Handloom weaving is carried on in the surrounding villages, but to a much less extent than formerly. A market for woollen goods is held weekly. Coal is abundant in the vicinity. There is a sulphurous spa in the Lockwood ward, with warm, cold, vapour, and shower baths. At Almondbury, 2 miles distant from the centre of the town, there was at one time a Saxon fortress, and by some writers the Roman station Cambodunum, mentioned by Antonine, is believed to have been situated there; recent excavations, however, have proved almost conclusively that at Slack, just outside the opposite boundary of the borough, was the real Cambodunum. Kirklees park, 3 miles from Huddersfield, is popularly supposed to have been the burial-place of Robin Hood. Since 1832 Huddersfield has returned one member to parliament, and it became a municipal borough in 1868, with 12 wards, and a town council of 56 members. The area of the town was greatly increased at the time of its incorporation. The area of the parliamentary borough is 10,998 acres, and that of the municipal borough 10,498 acres. The population of the parliamentary borough in 1861 was 34,877; and in 1871, owing chiefly to the increased area, it was 74,358. The population of the municipal borough ip 1880 was estimated at 81,780.

HUDSON, George (1800-1871), the “railway king,” was born in York in 1800, was a successful linen draper in that city, and subsequently became the leading representative of the railway mania of 1845-46. Elected chairman of the North Midland Company, he was for three years the ruling spirit of speculation and as the arbiter of capital held the key of untold treasures. All classes delighted to honour him, and, as if a colossal fortune were an insufficient reward for his public services, the richest men in England presented him with a tribute of <£20,000. Deputy-lieutenant for Durham, and thrice lord mayor of York, he was returned in the Conservative interest for Sunderland in 1845, the event being judged of such public interest that the news was conveyed to London by a special train, which travelled part of the way at the rate of 75 miles an hour. Full of rewards and honours, he was suddenly ruined by the disclosure of the Eastern Railway frauds. Sunderland clung to her generous representative till 1859, but on the bursting of the bubble he had lost influence and fortune at a single stroke. His later life was chiefly spent on the Continent, where he benefited little by a display of unabated energy and enterprise. Some friends gave him a small annuity a short time before his death, which took place in London, 14th December 1871. His name has long been used to point the moral of vaunting ambition and unstable fortune. The “big swollen gambler,” as Carlyle calls him in one of the Latter Day Pamphlets, was savagely and excessively reprobated by the world which had blindly believed in his golden prophecies. He certainly ruined scrip-holders, and disturbed the great centres of industry; but he had an honest faith in his own schemes, and, while he beggared himself in their promotion, he succeeded in overcoming the powerful landed interest which delayed the adoption of railways in England long after the date of their regular introduction into America.

HUDSON, Henry, a distinguished English navigator, of whose personal history before April 19, 1607, or after June 21, 1611, absolutely nothing is known, and whose well-earned fame rests entirely on four voyages which were all unsuccessful as regarded their immediate object, the discovery of a commercial passage to China other and shorter than that by the Cape of Good Hope. The first of these, in quest of new trade and the passage to China by the North Pole, was made for the Muscovy Company, with ten men and a boy, in the little “Hopewell” of 60 tons that had so successfully braved the dangers of Frobisher’s last voyage twenty-nine years before. Sailing from the Thames on April 19, 1607, Hudson first coasted the east side of Greenland, and thence hugging the Arctic ice-barrier, proceeded to the “north-east of Newland” to near 82° N. lat. He then turned back to seek, according to his chart, the passage round the north of Greenland into Davis Straits to make trial of Lumley’s Inlet, or “the furious overfall but, having traced the ice-barrier from 78∣° to 80°, he on July 27 became convinced that by this way there is no passage, and on August 15 he returned to the Thames. Molineux’s chart, published by Hakluyt about 1600, was Hudson’s blind guide in this voyage, and the polar map of 1611 by Pontanus illustrates well what he attempted, and the valuable results both negative and positive which he reached. He investigated the trade prospects at Cherrie Island, and recommended his patrons to seek higher game in Newland; hence he may be called the father of the English whale-fisheries at Spitzbergen.

Next year Hudson was a second time sent by the Muscovy Company “to open the passage to China by the north-east between Newland and Nova Zemla;” this voyage lasted from April 22 to August 26, 1608. From June 12 to June 29, he raked the Barrentz Sea between 75° 30' N.W. and 71° 15' S.E. on the Goose coast of Nova Zemla, meeting with much ice and no great encouragement for trade, and deleting Willoughby Island from his chart. On July 6, “voide of hope of a north-east passage (except by the Way-gats, for which I was not fitted to try or prove), I therefore resolved to use all means I could to sayle to the north-west” (still harping on Lumley’s Inlet and “the furious overfall”). The failure of this second attempt satisfied the Muscovy Company, which thenceforward directed all its energies to the profitable Spitzbergen trade.

In the Autumn of 1608 Hudson “had a call” to Amsterdam, where he saw Plancius, who gave him Waymouth’s journals, and Hondius, who supplied him with translations of certain Dutch papers. After some vacillating negotiations he finally undertook for the Dutch East India Company his important third voyage to find the passage to China “by the east or the west.” With a mixed crew of eighteen or twenty men he left theTexel in the “Half-Moon” on April 5, and by May 5 was in the Barrentz Sea, and soon afterwards among the ice near Costin Sareh in Nova Zemla, where he had been the year before. Some of his men becoming disheartened and mutinous (it is now supposed that he had arrived two or three months too early), he soon lost hope of effecting anything by that route, and submitted to his men, as alternative proposals, either to go to Lumley’s Inlet and follow up Waymouth’s light, or to make for North Virginia and seek the passage in about 40° lat., according to the letter and map sent him by his friend Captain John Smith. The latter plan was adopted, and on May 14 Hudson set his face towards the Chesapeake and China. He touched at Stromo for water, and on June 15 off Newfoundland in about 48° lat. the “Half-Moon” “spent overboord her foremast.” This accident compelled him to put into Sagadahoc (44° 1' lat.), where on July 18 a mast was procured, some communication with the Indians was had, and an unnecessary battle fought, in which the ship’s two “stone murderers” were employed. Sailing again on July 25, he was off Cape Cod on August 6, and on the 9th (38° 39' lat.) “went with low sail because we were in an unknown sea.” On August 18 they made Smith’s Islands, 6 or 7 miles north of the entrance to the Chesapeake. On August 28, beginning the survey where Smith left off at 37° 36' according to his map, he coasted north to Sandy Hook, passing the “overfall” of the Delaware with scarcely any notice, probably because a western inlet there would have taken him in amid Smith’s surveys. On September 3, in 40° 30', he entered the fine bay now known by the name of New York. After having gone 150 miles up what is now the Hudson river, treating with the Indians, surveying the country, and trying the stream above tide-water, he became satisfied that this course did not lead to the South Sea or China,a conclusion in harmony with that of Champlain, who the same summer had been making his way south through Lake Champlain and Lake St Sacrement to the South Sea. The two explorers by opposite routes approached within 20 leagues of each other. On October 4 the “HalfMoon” weighed for the Texel, and on November 7 put in to Dartmouth, where she was seized by the English Government and the crew detained. The voyage had fallen short of Hudson’s expectations, but it served many purposes perhaps as important to the world. Among other results it exploded Hakluyt’s myth, which from the publication of Lok’s map in 1582 to the 3d charter of Virginia in May 1609 he had lost no opportunity of promulgating, that near 40° lat. there was a narrow isthmus, formed by the sea of Verrazano, like that of Tehuantepec or Panama.

Hudson’s three failures served only to increase men’s confidence in the existence of a passage by the north-west, for the discovery of which a new and strong joint-stock company was accordingly formed. The command was given to Hudson, who on April 10, 1610, sailed in the “Discoverie” of 70 tons, the ship that took Waymouth in 1602 in the same direction. How he penetrated through the long straits, discovered the great bay that bears his name, at once his monument and his grave, how he and his men wintered in its southern extremity, how in coming north in the next summer, near the east coast, half way back to the straits, he, his son, and seven of his men, in a mutiny, were put into a shallop and cut adrift on Midsummer day 1611, is told in many books. The ringleaders and half the crew perished miserably, but the “Discoverie” was finally brought home to London. No more tidings were received of Hudson, but no one doubted the complete success of his voyage. A grander company was incorporated in 1612, under Prince Henry, to complete the exploration of the passage, and to find the lost discoverer and his companions. Sir Thomas Butler was the commander in 1612, and the “Discoverie” was again the chosen ship. In 1613 the voyage was repeated by Gibbons, and once more in 1614 by Baffin; and the bay was thoroughly explored with the results which have long been universally familiar.

See Henry Hudson, the Navigator (Hakluyt Society, 1860)

By the Erie canal the river is connected with Lake Erie, by the Champlain canal with Lake Champlain, and by the Delaware canal with the Delaware river; and its commercial importance as a means of traffic is not excelled by that of any other river in the world. It was on the Hudson that Fulton, the inventor of steam navigation, made his first successful experiment. The Hudson River Railway skirts the east bank of the river from New York to Troy, whence it bends eastward on its way to Lake Champlain. On the west bank a railway is to run from Jersey City to Newburg, and branch lines from various centres touch both banks at several points. The Hudson has some valuable fisheries, the principal fish being bass, shad, and sturgeon. The attempts to stock it with salmon have not been very successful. Though Verrazzani in 1524 proceeded up the river Hudson a short distance in a boat, the first to demonstrate its extent and importance was Henry Hudson, from whom it derives its name. He sailed above the mouth of the Mohawk in September 1609.

In the year 1670 Charles IT. granted a charter to Prince Rupert and seventeen other noblemen and gentlemen, incorporating them as the “Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson’s Bay,” and securing to them “the sole trade and commerce of all those seas, straits, bays, rivers, lakes, creeks, and sounds, in whatsoever latitude they shall be, that lie within the entrance of the straits commonly called Hudson’s Straits, together with all the lands and territories upon the countries, coasts, and confines of the seas, bays, &c., aforesaid, that are not already actually possessed by or granted to any of our subjects, or possessed by the subjects of any other Christian prince or state.” Besides the complete lordship and entire legislative, judicial, and executive power within these vague limits (which the company finally agreed to accept as meaning all lands watered by streams flowing into Hudson’s Bay), the corporation received also the right to “the whole and entire trade and traffic to and from all havens, bays, creeks, rivers, lakes, and seas into which they shall find entrance or passage by water or land out of the territories, limits, or places aforesaid.” The first settlements in the country thus granted, which was to be known as Rupert’s Land, were made on James’s Bay and at Churchhill and Hayes rivers; but it was long before there was any advance into the interior, for in 1749, when an unsuccessful attempt was made in parliament to deprive the company of its charter on the plea of “non-user,” it had only some four or five forts on the coast, with about 120 regular employes. Although the commercial success of the enterprise was from the first immense, great losses, amounting before 1700 to £215,514, were inflicted on the company by the French, who sent several military expeditions against the forts. After the cession of Canada to Great Britain in 1763, numbers of fur-traders spread over that country, and into the northwestern parts of the continent, and began even to encroach on the Hudson’s Bay Company’s territories. These individual speculators finally combined into the North-West Fur Company of Montreal, of which Washington Irving has given an interesting description in his Astoria. The fierce competition which at once sprang up between the companies was marked by features which sufficiently demonstrate the advantages of a monopoly in commercial dealings with savages, even although it is the manifest interest of the monopolists to retard the advance of civilization towards their hunting grounds. The Indians were demoralized, body and soul, by the abundance of ardent spirits with which the rival traders sought to attract them to themselves; the supply of furs threatened soon to be exhausted by the indiscriminate slaughter, even during the breeding season, of both male and female animals; the worst passions of both whites and Indians were inflamed to their fiercest, and costly destruction of human life and property was the result (see Red River Settlement). At last, in 1821, the companies, mutually exhausted, amalgamated, obtaining a licence to hold for 21 years the monopoly of trade in the vast regions lying to the west and north-west of the older company’s grant. In 1838 Hudson’s Bay Company acquired the sole rights for itself, and obtained a new licence, also for 21 years. On the expiry of this, it was not renewed, and since 1859 the district has been open to all, the Hudson’s Bay Company having no special advantages beyond its tried and splendid organization. The licences to trade did not of course affect the original possessions of the company. These it retained till 1869, when they were transferred to the British Government for £300,000; in 1870 they were incorporated with the Dominion of Canada. The company, which now trades entirely as a private corporation, still retains one-twentieth of the entire grant, together with valuable blocks of land round the various forts; and these possessions will doubtless, as the country becomes opened up and colonized, yield a considerable revenue at some future time.

For further information see the Report of the Select Parliamentary Committee in 1857; The Hudson's Bay Territories and Vancouver's Island, by R. Μ. Martin, 1849; An Examination of the Charter and Proceedings of the Hudson’s Bay Company, <fcc., by J. E. Fitzgerald, 1849; Notes of a Twenty-five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory, by J. Maclean, 2 vols., 1849; The Great Lone Land, 1872, and The Wild North Land, 1873, both by Captain W. F. Butler.