Much

A large part of Holland is a delta, formed of the mud deposited by the Rhine and other rivers, in the same manner as the Delta of Egypt has been formed by the Nile. The greater portion of it has been perseveringly rescued from the water, to whose dominion it may almost be said to belong, by the continual efforts and ingenuity of man, and in a long series of years. of it is mud driven up by the sea, in return for what it carries away from some parts of the coast. Were human agency and care removed but for six months, the waves would, without doubt, regain their ancient dominion, so much of the land lies below the level of the sea; and an extensive tract of the country would be reduced to the state of those vast wastes, composed of sand and mud-banks, quite unfit for human habitation, which now lie at the mouths of the Nile and Mississippi. And yet these fields, gained by such difficulty, and preserved with constant watchfulness from the waters, have been, in more instances than one, inundated by their owners during their contests with foreign foes; and Dutch patriotism has not hesitated to subject the land to temporary ruin in the desire of preserving liberty. The cutting of the dykes, and opening of the sluice-gates, which was resorted to in order to free Holland from Spanish tyranny, was a desperate resource, and in itself a national calamity, entailing beggary for some years upon a large portion of the population, owing to the length of time and the very great expense which a second recovery of the land from the sea required. This glorious sacrifice, however, served to show that it needs not the mountains of Switzerland nor the fastnesses of Tyrol, to enable a brave people to defend their native land.

Holland may be considered in many respects, as the most wonderful country, perhaps, under the sun: it is certainly unlike every other. What elsewhere would be considered as impossible, has here been carried into effect, and incongruities have been rendered consistent. "The house built upon the sand" may here be seen standing; neither Amsterdam nor Rotterdam has any better foundation than sand into which piles are driven through many feet of superincumbent mud. We speak contemptuously of any thing which is held together by straws, yet a long line of coast of several provinces is consolidated by no other means than a few reeds intermixed with straw wisps, or woven into mats. Without this frail but effectual support, the fickle dunes, or sand-hills, would be driven about into the interior, and would overwhelm whole districts of cultivated land. In Holland the laws of nature seem to be reversed; the sea is higher than the land; the lowest ground in the country is 24 feet below high-water mark, and, when the tide is driven high by the wind, 30 feet! There are few other countries where, as in this corner of the globe, the keels of the ships are above the chimneys of the houses, and where the frog, croaking from among the bulrushes, looks down upon the swallow on the house-top. Where rivers take their course, it is not in beds of their own choosing; they are compelled to pass through canals, and are confined within fixed bounds by the stupendous mounds imposed on them by human art, which has also succeeded in overcoming the everywhere else resistless impetuosity of the ocean: here, and nowhere else, does the sea appear to have half obeyed the command, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no further."

In a very extensive district, the canals are brimful of water, which can hardly stir, and, when in motion, moves with a current barely perceptible. There is not a stone or pebble to be found, and there are no hills, save such as are raised by the winds; unless, indeed, we take into consideration those vast artificial mountains of granite, which have been brought at enormous expense from Norway and Sweden, and sunk under water to serve as barriers to the sea. Excepting the eastern provinces, the parks of Haarlem and the Hague, and the avenues leading from one city to another, the land does not produce much wood: but then entire Norwegian forests have been buried beneath the mud in the shape of piles.

In almost every respect, nature appears in the character of a hard-hearted stepmother: man seems but little beholden to her; he has done every thing for himself. Is it then to be wondered at that she should be forgotten, or at least kept out of sight? Thus, where trees occur, they are found growing, not in the natural way, but as they have been arranged by the plummet and line, in rank and file, in straight rows and avenues. Their branches are not allowed to spread abroad as nature intended, but are cut and clipped till they are transformed into green walls, or are even trained into more grotesque shapes. By way of improving still further upon nature, the trunks and lower branches are not unfrequently painted over with bright colours in North Holland, partly for the sake of cleanliness, partly to preserve them from insects.

The Dutchman may be said to have made even the wind his slave. It might be supposed that the universal flatness, and the absence of those elevations which afford shelter to other countries, would leave this at the mercy of every blast that blows, to sweep every thing before it. So far is this from being the case, that not a breath of air is allowed to pass without paying toll, as it were, by turning a windmill. These machines are so numerous, that they may be said to be never out of sight in a Dutch landscape. In the suburbs of great cities, they are congregated like armies of giants spreading out their broad arms, as if to protect the streets and houses which they overlook. With us they are rarely used except to grind corn: in Holland they are employed almost as variously as the steam-engine; they saw timber, crush rape-seeds for oil, grind snuff, &c.; but the principal service which they perform is in draining the land; and here the Dutch have most ingeniously set the wind to counteract the water. At least one half of the windmills have water-wheels attached to them, which act as pumps, and, by constantly raising the water into the canals, alone keep the low land dry and fit for cultivation and the habitation of man. As, however, a single windmill can raise water only 3 feet at once, 3 or 4 are often planted in a row: they are constructed of much larger dimensions than with us: a single sail is often 120 feet long, and the usual length is 80 feet.

To sum up all, to such an extent do paradoxes prevail in Holland, that even the cows' tails, in other countries proverbial for growing downwards, and descending in the world as they advance in age, here grow upwards: for, with the view of promoting the cleanliness of the animal while in the stall, the tail is tied up to a ring in the roof of the stable. This may be seen in Broek and elsewhere in Holland. (See Route III.)

Many authors have exercised their wit or spleen in describing this singular country. Thus, Voltaire took leave of the land and people in these sarcastic words: "Adieu! canaux, canards, canaille."

The following verses are selected from the works of Andrew Marvel :

"Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land,
As but the offscouring of the British sand,
And so much earth as was contributed

By English pilots when they heav'd the lead;

Or what by th' ocean's slow alluvion fell,
Of shipwreck'd cockle and the muscle-shell;
This indigested vomit of the sea
Fell to the Dutch by just propriety.

"Glad, then, as miners who have found the ore,
They, with mad labour, fish'd the land to shore,
And dived as desperately for each piece
Of earth, as if 't been of ambergris ;
Collecting anxiously small loads of clay,
Less than what building swallows bear away;
Or than those pills which sordid beetles roll,
Transfusing into them their dunghill soul.

"How did they rivet with gigantic piles,
Through the centre their new-catched miles!
And to the stake a struggling country bound,
Where barking waves still bait the forced ground;
Building their watery Babel far more high
To reach the sea, than those to scale the sky.

" Yet still his claim the injur'd Ocean lay'd,
And oft at leapfrog o'er their steeples play'd;
As if on purpose it on land had come
To show them what's their mare liberum.
A daily deluge over them does boil;
The earth and water play at level coil.
The fish ofttimes the burgher dispossess'd,
And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest;
And oft the tritons and the sea-nymphs saw
Whole shoals of Dutch served up for Cabillau;
Or, as they over the new level ranged,
For pickled herring, pickled herring changed.
Nature, it seem'd, ashamed of her mistake,
Would throw their land away at duck and drake."

The author of Hudibras describes Holland as

"A country that draws fifty feet of water,
In which men live as in the hold of nature,
And when the sea does in upon them break,
And drowns a province, does but spring a leak."

And its inhabitants

"That always ply the pump, and never think
They can be safe, but at the rate they sink :
That live, as if they had been run aground,
And when they die, are cast away and drown'd:
That dwell in ships like swarms of rats, and prey

Upon the goods all nations' ships convey;
And when their merchants are blown up and crack,
Whole towns are cast away in storm and wreck :
That feed like cannibals on other fishes,
And serve their cousin-germans up in dishes.
A land that rides at anchor, and is moored,
In which they do not live, but go aboard." - Butler.

9. DYKES.

Holland includes some of the lowest land on the continent of Europe. To keep out the ocean from the sea-bound provinces, and prevent her acquiring territory which seems to be her own, immense dykes or ramparts of earth and stone are raised along the coast, so broad and strong as to prevent the water passing through them, and sufficiently lofty to bid defiance to inundation at high tide. The rivers in many parts of the country are quite as dangerous as the sea, and their waters require to be restrained in their channels by dykes nearly as extensive as the sea-dykes.

The first thing necessary in the construction of these bulwarks is, to secure a firm solid foundation, sufficiently strong to support the immense weight to be laid upon it; by ramming down the soil, and by laying a substratum of clay, or by driving in piles, when it is incoherent. Were the foundation weak and porous, the water would dissolve and undermine it, and the dykes sink down into a hollow.

The rampart itself is composed of earth, sand, and clay, which will bind most firmly. The face of the dyke is protected by willow twigs interwoven so as to form a sort of wicker-work, and the interstices are filled up with clay puddled to render it compact. This wicker-work is renewed every three or four years, and occasions a considerable consumption of willow boughs, which are cultivated to a great extent for this purpose. The dykes are frequently planted with trees, as their spreading and interlacing roots assist greatly in binding the earth together. The base is often faced with masonry, and protected by vast heaps of stones brought from a distance, and by rows of piles driven into the ground to form breakwaters to the fury of the waves; the upper part is covered with turf, and rises sometimes to the height of 40 feet.

"When seen only at one spot, they may probably not strike the merely cursory observer as very extraordinary; but when it is recollected that the greater part of Holland is fenced in by similar bulwarks equally massive and costly, they will appear wonderful." - I. W. C. The most stupendous of these embankments are the Dykes of the Helder (see Route IV.), and of West Cappel, at the western extremity of the island of Walcheren. The annual expense of keeping in repair each of them, alone amounts to 75,000 guilders (about 6,400l.); while the sum total annually expended throughout Holland in the repair of dykes and regulation of water-levels varies from 5,000,000 to 7,000,000 guilders (nearly 600,000l.). A special corps of engineers, called waterstaat, including among them many men of science, well skilled in the principles of hydrostatics, are employed entirely in watching the state of the waters and guarding against all accidents from irruptions, - a most important duty, upon which the national welfare, and, indeed, existence, of Holland may be said to depend. During the winter, they are stationed near those spots where danger is most to be apprehended, and magazines are erected, provided with the necessary stores and implements, so as to be ready at a moment's notice.

The winter is the season most liable to accidents, when it not unfrequently happens that long prevailing S. W. winds, acting on the surface of the Atlantic, drive an accumulation of waters round the north of Scotland into the German Ocean. If these are succeeded by very violent tempests blowing from the N. W., the effect is, to propel the sea with great violence southward through the British Channel: but the straits of Dover are too narrow to admit the augmented body of water readily to pass, and in consequence it falls back upon the coast of Holland. At such moments the "tall ocean" may truly be said " to lean against the land," and the strength of the dykes alone preserves it from submersion. To guard against such an assault, the utmost energy, activity, and skill are required. Watchmen are posted day and night along the line of threatened attack, to give instantaneous warning if symptoms of weakness are anywhere observed in the ramparts; and workmen are appointed by the authorities to be in readiness in the neighbouring villages.

It may easily be imagined with what intense anxiety the rising tide is, at such times, observed. The accumulation of waters in the ocean causes them to ascend far above the ordinary high-water mark; and if they only surmount the top of the dyke so as to flow over it, its ruin is inevitable. When such a calamity is anticipated, the alarm bell is rung, and every man hastens to his post. With the utmost rapidity, an upper rampart is constructed upon the top of the dyke to keep out the waters. It is incredible in how short a time a bulwark of this kind is elevated; it is a race between the tide and the embankment. If the strength and solidity of the dyke be doubtful, and a breach be apprehended, large sheets of sailcloth or mats of woven straw and rushes are laid on the outside, in the same manner as a leak is sometimes stopped in a ship. This prevents the earth's being washed away by the action of the waves. If all this be ineffectual, a course is pursued exactly similar to that employed in defending a breach made by artillery in the wall of a besieged fortress. A semicircular rampart is thrown up behind the part of the sea-wall which has shown symptoms of weakness, so that if the outer work be forced, an inner barrier, nearly as strong, stands ready prepared to resist the attack. It must be remembered that the works, raised at such an emergency, vast as they are, are only temporary, and are removed whenever the danger is past. Instances are not rare in which these precautions have proved quite ineffectual; and whole districts have been overwhelmed and lost for ever in the sea, or in the Rhine and its branches. The greater part of the space now occupied by the Zuider Zee was dry land down to the XIIIth century. The Gulf of Dollart, in the province of Groningen, was the result of the inundation of 1277, which swallowed up 44 villages. Similar calamities have several times produced the same effects in that province. Even so late as 1717, 1560 habitations disappeared beneath the waters of the ocean, which had broken its bounds. The Biesbosch, near Dordt, and the sandbanks near South Beveland, called Verdronken Land (drowned land), are two other examples of submerged districts.

The annals of one province (Friesland), however, present the most extraordinary series of disasters from the ocean, and these, better than any thing else, will serve to show by what an unstable tenure the Dutch hold the land.

"Friesland was inundated in 533, 792, 806,839, 1164, 1170, 1210, 1221, 1230, 1237 (this year the island called Vlieland, i. e. Lake-land, or land retrieved from the water, was formed), 1248, 1249, 1250 (the consequence of this inundation was a pestilence, which destroyed several thousand persons), 1277 (this year the Gulf of Dollart was formed). In 1287 the Zuider Zee assumed its present extent and shape, and 80,000 persons lost their lives in the inundation. 1336, 1400, 1421, 1429, 1516, 1524 (three inundations in this year), 1530, 1532, 1559, 1570. On Nov. 1. an inundation occurred which covered even the heights called Wieren, and cut off, in different parts of Holland, 100,000 persons, 30,000 of whom were Freislanders. From this year the inundations are less frequent; as an improved method of constructing the dykes was then introduced by the Spanish governor Robles,