an Italian astronomer, who had heard of the
magnifying glasses which had been made in Holland, by which distant
objects could be brought seemingly near, caught at the idea, constructed
a telescope, and pointed it to the heavens. Yes, my friends, in the same
year in which Hudson discovered your river and the site of your ancient
town, in which Robinson made his melancholy hegira from Amsterdam to
Leyden, Galileo Galilei, with a telescope, the work of his own hands,
discovered the phases of Venus and the satellites of Jupiter; and now,
after the lapse of less than two centuries and a half, on a spot then
embosomed in the wilderness--the covert of the least civilized of all
the races of men--we are assembled--descendants of the Hollanders,
descendants of the Pilgrims, in this ancient and prosperous city, to
inaugurate the establishment of a first-class Astronomical Observatory.

EARLY DAYS OF ALBANY.

One more glance at your early history. Three years after the landing of
the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Fort Orange was erected, in the center of what
is now the business part of the city of Albany; and, a few years later,
the little hamlet of Beverswyck began to nestle under its walls. Two
centuries ago, my Albanian friends, this very year, and I believe this
very month of August, your forefathers assembled, not to inaugurate an
observatory, but to lay the foundations of a new church, in the place of
the rude cabin which had hitherto served them in that capacity. It was
built at the intersection of Yonker's and Handelaar's, better known to
you as State and Market streets. Public and private liberality
cooperated in the important work. The authorities at the Fort gave
fifteen hundred guilders; the patroon of that early day, with the
liberality coeval with the name and the race, contributed a thousand;
while the inhabitants, for whose benefit it was erected, whose numbers
were small and their resources smaller, contributed twenty beavers "for
the purchase of an oaken pulpit in Holland." Whether the largest part of
this subscription was bestowed by some liberal benefactress, tradition
has not informed us.

NEW AMSTERDAM

Nor is the year 1656 memorable in the annals of Albany alone. In that
same year your imperial metropolis, then numbering about three hundred
inhabitants, was first laid out as a city, by the name of New
Amsterdam.[A] In eight years more, New Netherland beco