SOME GLIMPSES OF HOLLAND

Since Athens and Sparta contended for the supremacy of the world, no state of such territorial insignificance has performed such a phenomenal part in human affairs as Holland. In point of influence upon the progress of civilization-in achievements in commerce, agriculture, science, art, and literature-few states have won a prouder name than this little patch of redeemed swamp and sand-barren wrested from the dominion of the sea. The planting of such a commonwealth, in defiance of such prodigious natural difficulties as were to be overcome, is itself one of the most unique and beneficent triumphs of the will, energy, and genius of man. The exploits of the old Greek heroes may have been more poetic than this, and more dazzling, but they were less useful, and in results far less enduring.

The term "Dutchman" is sometimes applied in an opprobrious sense, as significant of stupidity, but no people are more prudent and self-respecting, or have among them fewer mendicants, or a larger proportion of wellinformed, enterprising men, and refined and beautiful women than the Dutch of to-day. Their uniformly tidy and well-ordered homes contrast most suggestively with the squalor and profligacy seen in many other communities on the European continent, while their robust appearance is eloquent of health and contentment, and their faces as a rule bear the stamp, not of stolidity, but of intelligence, stability, and personal independence.

The general surface of Holland lies much below sea-level, and is also lower than the levels of its intersecting rivers. Inundation from the water-courses, as well as the encroachment of the sea, is prevented only by an elaborate system of enormous dykes, built at an aggregate cost of $1,500,000,000. The largest of these dykes are about thirty feet in height, seventy feet broad at the base, and wide enough on top for a public thoroughfare. To give them firmness the underlying earth is stamped or compressed, and their escarpments when completed are covered with turf, and thickly planted with willows. As soon as they are sufficiently grown the willows are plaited together and plastered with mud. Some of the dykes are protected against the violence of the waves by revetments of masonry or palisades of stakes. To keep these vast embankments in repair requires an annual expenditure of about $3,000,000, and the constant vigilance and activity of a large corps of workmen. A perpetual

struggle with the ocean is the price of existence in Holland, as any one may realize who stands at the foot of one of the coastwise dykes at high tide, and listens to the breaking of the waves on the other side, fifteen or twenty feet above him.

The surface of the country is criss-crossed by canals, of countless number, which serve the threefold purpose of drains, highways for traffic, and enclosures for fields, gardens, and houses. The ordinary arterial canals are about sixty feet wide and six deep, but the great North Holland canal connecting Amsterdam with the Helder, is one hundred and twenty feet wide and twenty deep. Another immense work of this kind is that known as the North Sea canal, which extends from Amsterdam to the North Sea direct, and is practicable for the largest sea-going vessels. Its width is nearly two hundred feet, and its depth over twenty-two feet. This immense ditch begun in 1865, and not fully completed until 1877, cost together with its huge sea-gates and piers the sum of $17,000,000. It was rendered necessary by the increasing shallowness of the Zuyder Zee, seriously threatening the commerce of Amsterdam.

Next in magnitude to the work of barring out the sea, has been that of draining the great ponds and marshes of which the territories of Holland were, for the most part, originally composed. The first step taken in this process is the excavation of a deep ditch around the land to be drained, so as to prevent the influx of water from the outside. The marsh or lake from which the water is to be removed may lie at a considerably lower level than this ditch, in which case a series of trenches is dug, one below another, sloping inward, and into these, successively, from the lowest to the highest, the marsh water is pumped by windmills or by steam. The lands thus reclaimed are of great fertility and value, and can be readily irrigated from the circumjacent ditches. In winter they usually lie under water, by which treatment their power of production is supposed to be preserved and promoted.

From 1840 to 1853 the Haarlemmer Meer, a fresh-water lake eighteen miles long, nine miles wide, and fourteen feet deep, was emptied in the manner just described, at a cost of $5,200,000. The water was lifted by three enormous steam-engines, each capable, with the pumps attached, of raising sixty-six tons of water at a single stroke. The lands once at the bottom of the lake are now worth three hundred and fifty dollars per acre, and support a population of ten thousand souls. The polder land of the great Beemster marsh, reclaimed in 1608-'12, is now valued at five hundred dollars per acre. A scheme is discussed for draining the entire Zuyder Zee (once an inland lake), and, if executed, will add to Holland a new

province six hundred and eighty-seven square miles in extent, and create another great reservoir of agricultural wealth.

The public enemy, water, is kept in subjection by the aid of its twin element, wind. The motive power by which the drainage is performed is chiefly furnished by windmills, which strew the country in battalions and armies, imparting to the scenery its most striking feature. Sometimes they are ranked upon the dykes, and sometimes they stand on the ramparts of towns, which they seem to be defending by the energetic sway of their gigantic vanes. Many of these mills are of monstrous size, having single sails over sixty feet in length. Their numbers also are enormous. Along the banks of the Zaan, between Zaandam and Krommenie, a distance of four miles, there are about four hundred. Besides driving the pumps by which the marsh water is lifted into the canals, the windmills furnish power for milling, and for a great variety of agricultural and manufactur ing purposes.

Along the coast sand-hills are thrown up by the action of the wind and waves, to the height of from thirty to one hundred and sixty feet. Nearest the sea these hills are arid and transitory, but farther inland they are annually sown with reed-grass and other hardy plants, by the growth and decay of which the sandy surface is eventually covered with vegetable mold, and changed from a condition of barrenness to one of extreme fertility. Between the central downs, which are highest and broadest, and those still further remote from the sea-coast, lie some of the finest potato lands and pastures. The sand-hills being honeycombed with rabbit warrens, and a favorite haunt for some kinds of feathered game, furnish an attractive field to the sportsman.

The dwellings of the Dutch peasantry and villagers are usually built with large double windows in the first story, and high, peaked gables fronting to the street. The majority of them have walls of red brick and white cement, and are roofed with bright-red tiles. Many are painted green, and with their red tilings, polished windows, and environing trees, make a very attractive appearance. A farm-house on the lowlands is visible for miles, with its huge, red-tiled, pyramidal roof rising from the meadows and descending nearly to the ground. The country dwellings of the wealthy are often gaudily stuccoed and painted, and are usually inscribed over the portal with some sententious phrase expressive of peace, contentment, or hospitality. Every dwelling of any pretensions is fronted with an ample garden, wherein flowers are cultivated of every hue and kind, and where the favorite tulip, hyacinth, and crocus flourish in riotous splendor. It is not strange that so many of the Dutch artists have loved to paint

the interiors of these homes, for they are the very ideals of substantial and orderly domestic comfort. The rage of Dutch housewives for cleanliness amounts almost to a mania, and their dwellings are thoroughly scrubbed and polished, both internally and externally, at least once a week. Filth and vermin are held in unspeakable aversion. The town of Broek, situated in the so-called "Waterland," one of the lowest districts in Holland, has been made a subject of ridicule on account of its restrictions upon equestrians and smokers, its mosaically paved streets and courts, its gaudily painted houses with brilliant roofs of variegated tiles, its requirement that pedestrians shall leave their shoes at the door, and above all its immaculate cow-stables, in which the tails of the cows are hooked aloft. The best parlor of a Broek dwelling is thrown open only for weddings and funerals. Entrance to the house is gained through the cow-stable, which is kept superlatively clean, and serves as a reception-room. Broek has been called the cleanest town in the world, but it is no more tidy than Zaandam and other North Holland villages.

A birth in a Dutch family is announced by the display of a silken placard, and births and betrothals are both celebrated by setting out refreshments to congratulating friends and neighbors. One of the indispensables of female comfort is the stoofje, a clumsy sort of foot-warmer, which is as pervasive as the sex. Chimes of tinkling bells, hung in the towers of nearly all village churches and public buildings, announce the passing hours and quarters with gentle and pleasing melody.

Both in town and country many buildings of every kind are tilted out of their perpendicular by reason of the instability of their foundations, laid in the deep and soft alluvium. In consequence of this, long lines of tall, ungainly buildings have assumed attitudes strikingly suggestive of the uncertain equipoise and mock solemnity of a lot of tipsy revelers.

The peculiar costumes of the Dutch women, of which so much has been written, have mostly disappeared from the larger towns and cities, but in the rural districts are still in vogue, especially in North Holland and Friesland. The oddest part of this costume is the head-dress, the style of which distinguishes the women of different provinces, and is often costly as well as fantastic. In its most usual form its chief part is a broad band of gold, or gilded metal, crossing the forehead in horseshoe form, so as to hold back the hair, and bearing large rosettes of the same metal at the sides. Above this band a veil or cap of rich lace is worn, with appendages of the same metal dropping to the neck. The ears are adorned with showy pendants of gold and gems. The most grotesque form of this headgear is that adopted by the Texel Island women, consisting of a gold plate, with fripperies of

black lace, horns of black ribbon at the outer extremities of the eyebrows, and, upon the back of the head, "a brown edifice exactly like a small bronze coal-scuttle turned upside down." Still another fancy is that of a skull-cap of gold or silver covering the upper and back part of the head, a gold band across the temples, and glittering spiral ornaments suspended from long pins projecting from the sides of the head.

The Frisian women, whose complexion is singularly fair, and whose features are very lively and handsome, wear a close-fitting metal cap divided in the middle, and garnished at the sides with small disks elaborately chased. The skull-cap is very often made of gold, and never of anything less precious than silver. It has the effect of enhancing the beauty of the complexion, and with its lofty and elaborate crown of lace imparts dignity to the wearer. Leeuwarden, the ancient capital of the Frisians, is famous for its gold and silver work, and is said to contain no less than twenty-five establishments which either manufacture or trade in these peculiar coverings for the head.

It is sometimes said that a Dutch peasant-girl carries her entire dowry upon her head and ears, the fact in many cases being that the costly toggery referred to has come to its possessor as an heirloom from her mother, to whom in turn it had been handed down through successive generations. Exhibitions of such ornaments are frequently made by jewelers, showing the difference between ancient workmanship and modern, which latter seldom gains anything by the comparison.

The cultivation of flowers is a popular passion, and at the same time a profitable industry. The country about Haarlem furnishes the finest gardens in Europe with roots and bulbs, and is brilliant, in the flowering season, with the myriad hues of blooming plants, grown by the acre. As long ago as the first half of the seventeenth century, floriculture became almost a craze in some of the Dutch provinces, and large fortunes were made by speculation in bulbs. Holland possesses some of the finest botanical gardens and horticultural schools in Europe, and claims to have done more to promote horticulture than any other country in the world.

There is scarcely any leading department of industry, commerce, art, or science in which the modern Batavians have not achieved a marked success, and contributed materially to the welfare of mankind-scarcely any great historical movement in behalf of general progress and the spread of civilization in which they have not borne a prominent part. Their navigators were among the earliest and boldest, and have been among the most successful in enlarging the sphere of commercial enterprise and geographical knowledge. Under the protection of their naval power, which