Rollo in Holland Part 14

"LEYDEN, HOLLAND, September 27.

"MY DEAR EDWARD:[6]

[Footnote 6: Edward was Mr. George's brother. He was a boy about twelve years old.]

"We have been travelling now for several days in Holland, and it is one of the most curious and amusing countries to travel in that I have ever seen.

"We all know from the books of geography which we study at school, that Holland is a very low country--lower in many places than the ocean; and that the water of the ocean is kept from overflowing it by dikes, which the people built ages ago, along the sh.o.r.es. I always used to suppose that it was only from the sea that people had any danger to fear of inundations; but I find now that it is not so.

"The people have to defend themselves from inundations, not only on the side towards the sea, but also quite as much, if not more, on the side towards the land, from the waters of the River Rhine. The River Rhine rises in Switzerland, and flows through various countries of Europe until it comes to the borders of Holland, and there it spreads out into innumerable branches, and runs every where, all over the country. It would often overflow the country entirely, were it not that the banks are guarded by dikes, like the dikes of the sea. The various branches of the rivers are connected together by ca.n.a.ls, which are also higher than the land on each side of them. Thus the whole country is covered with a great network of ca.n.a.ls, rivers, and inlets from the sea, with water in them higher than the land. When the tide is low in the sea, the surplus water from these rivers and ca.n.a.ls flows off through immense sluices at the mouth of them. When the tide comes up, it is kept from flowing in by immense gates, with which the sluices are closed. They call the tracts of land that lie lower than the channels of water around them, _polders_. That is rather a queer name. I suppose it is a Dutch name.

"The polders all have drains and ca.n.a.ls cut in them. As we ride along in the railway carriages we overlook these polders. They look like immense green fields, extending as far as you can see, with straight ca.n.a.ls running through them in every direction, and crossing each other at right angles. These ca.n.a.ls, in the bottom of the polders, are about six feet wide. They are wide enough to prevent the cattle from jumping across them, and so they serve for fences to divide the fields from each other. They also serve for roads, for the Dutchmen use boats on their farms to get in their hay and produce, instead of carts.

"The water that collects in these low ca.n.a.ls and drains, which run across the polders, cannot flow out into the large ca.n.a.ls, which are higher than they are, and so they have to pump it out. They pump it out generally by means of wind mills. So wherever you go, throughout all Holland, you find an immense number of wind mills. These wind mills are very curious indeed. Some of them are immensely large. They look like lighthouses. The large ones are generally built of brick, and some of them are several hundred years old. The sails of the big ones are often fifty feet long, and sometimes eighty feet. This makes a wheel one hundred and sixty feet in diameter. When you stand under one of these mills, and look up, and see these immense sails revolving so high in the air that the lowest point, when the sail comes round, is higher than the tops of the four story houses, the effect is quite sublime.

"With these wind mills they pump the water up from one drain or ca.n.a.l to another, till they get it high enough to run off into the sea. In some places, however, it is very difficult to get the water into the sea even in this way, even at low tides. The River Amstel, for instance, which comes out at Amsterdam, and into which a great many ca.n.a.ls and channels are pumped, is so low at its mouth that the sea is never, at the lowest tides, more than a foot and a half below it. At high tides the sea is a great deal above it. The average is about a foot above. Of course it requires a great deal of management to get the waters of the river out, and avoid letting the water of the sea in. They do it by immense sluices, which are generally kept shut, and only opened when the tide is low.

"In the mean time, if it should ever so happen that they could not succeed in letting the water out fast enough, it would, of course, acc.u.mulate, and rise in the rivers, and press against the dikes that run along the banks of it, till at last it would break through in some weak place; and then, unless the people could stop the breach, the whole polder on that side would be gradually overflowed. The inundation would extend until it came to some other dike to stop it. The polder that would first be filled would become a lake. The lake would be many miles in extent, perhaps, but the water in it would not usually be very deep--not more than eight or ten feet, perhaps; though in some cases the polders are so low, that an inundation from the rivers and ca.n.a.ls around it would make the lake twenty or thirty feet deep.

"Of course, in ancient times, when a portion of the country became thus submerged, it was for the people to consider whether they would abandon it or try to pump all that water out again, by means of the wind mills.

They would think that if they pumped it out it would be some years before the land would be good again; for the salt in the water would tend to make it barren. So they would sometimes abandon it, and put all their energy into requisition to strengthen the dikes around it, in order to prevent the inundation from spreading any farther. For water, in Holland, tends to spread and to destroy life and property, just as fire does in other countries. The lakes and rivers, where they are higher than the land, are liable to burst their barriers after heavy rains falling in the country, or great floods coming down the rivers, or high tides rise from the sea, and so run into each other; and the people have continually to contend against this danger, just as in other countries they do against spreading conflagrations.

"In the case of spreading fire, water is the great friend and helper of man; and in the case of these spreading inundations of water, it is wind that he relies upon. The only mode that the Dutch had to pump out the water in former times was the wind mills. When the rains or the tides inundated the land, they called upon the wind to help them lift the water out to where it could flow away again.

"There was a time, two or three hundred years ago, when all the wind mills that the people could make, seem not to have been enough to do the work; and there was one place, in the centre of the country, where the water continued to spread more and more--breaking through as it spread from one polder to another--until, at last, it swallowed up such an extent of country as to form a lake thirty miles in circ.u.mference. This lake at last extended very near to the gates of Haarlem, and it was called the Holland Lake. You will find it laid down on all the maps of Holland, except those which have been printed within a few years. The reason why it is not laid down now is, because a few years ago, finding that the wind mills were not strong enough to pump it out, the government concluded to try what virtue there might be in steam. So they first repaired and strengthened the range of dikes that extended round the lake. In fact, they made them double all around, leaving a s.p.a.ce between for a ca.n.a.l. They made both the inner and outer of these dikes water-tight; so that the water should neither soak back into the lake again, after it was pumped out, nor ooze out into the polders beyond.

The way they made them water-tight was by lining them on both sides with a good thick coating of clay.

"When the dikes enclosing the lake were completed, the engineers set up three very powerful steam engines, and gave to each one ten or twelve enormous pumps to work. These pumping engines were made on such a grand scale that they lifted over sixty tuns of water at every stroke. But yet so large was the lake, and so vast the quant.i.ty of water to be drained, that though there were three of the engines working at this rate, and though they were kept at work night and day, it took them a year and a half to lay the ground dry. The work was, however, at last accomplished, and now, what was the bottom of the lake is all converted into pastures and green fields. But they still have to keep the pumps going all the time to lift out the surplus water that falls over the whole s.p.a.ce in rain. You may judge that the amount is very large that falls on a district thirty miles round. They calculate that the quant.i.ty which they have to pump up now, every year, in order to keep the land from being overflowed again, is over fifty millions of tuns. And that is a quant.i.ty larger than you can ever conceive of.

"And yet the piece of ground is so large, that the cost of this pumping makes only about fifty cents for each acre of land, which is very little.

"Besides these great spreading inundations, which Holland has always been subject to from the lakes and rivers in the middle of the country, there has always been a greater danger still to be feared from the ice freshets of the Rhine, and other great rivers coming from the interior of the country. The Rhine, you know, flows from south to north, and often the ice, in the spring, breaks up in the middle of the course of the river, before it gets thawed in Holland. The broken ice, in coming down the stream towards the north, is kept within the banks of the stream where the banks are high; but when it reaches Holland it is not only no longer so confined, but it finds its flow obstructed by the ice which there still remains solid, and so it gets jammed and forms dams, and that makes the water rise very fast. At one time when such a dam was formed, the water rose seven feet in an hour. At such times the pressure becomes so prodigious that the dikes along the bank of the river are burst, and water, sand, gravel, and ice, all pour over together upon the surrounding country, and overwhelm and destroy every thing that comes in its way.

"Some of the inundations caused in Holland by these floods and freshets have been terrible. In ancient times they were worse than they are now; because now the dikes are stronger, and are better guarded. At one inundation that occurred about sixty years ago, eighty thousand persons were drowned. At another, three hundred years earlier, one hundred thousand perished. Think what awful floods there must have been.

"But I cannot write any more in this letter. I have taken up so much s.p.a.ce and time in telling you about the inundations and freshets, that I have not time to describe a great many other things which I have seen, that are quite as curious and remarkable as they. But when I get home I can tell you all about them, in the winter evenings, and read to you about them from my journal.

"Your affectionate brother, "GEORGE."

ROLLO'S LETTER.

"LEYDEN, Tuesday, September 27.

"MY DEAR MOTHER:

"Uncle George and I are having a very fine time indeed in travelling about Holland; it is such a funny country, on account of their being so many ca.n.a.ls. The water is all smooth and still in all the ca.n.a.ls, (except when the wind blows,) and so there must be excellent skating every where in the winter.

"I wish it was winter here now, for one day, so that uncle George and I could have some Dutch skating.

"There must be good skating every where here in the winter, for there is water every where, and it is all good water for skating. In the fields, instead of brooks running in crooked ways and tumbling over rocks, there are only long and narrow channels of smooth water, just about wide enough to skate upon, and reaching as far as you can see.

"The people here speak Dutch, and they cannot understand me, and I cannot understand them. And that is not the worst of it; they can't understand that _I can't understand_ them. Sometimes the woman that comes to make my bed tells me something in Dutch, and I tell her that I can't understand. I know the Dutch for 'I can't understand.' Then she says, 'O!' and goes on to tell me over again, only now she tries to speak plainer--as if it could make any difference to me whether she speaks plain or not. I shake my head, and tell her I can't understand any thing. I tell her in French, and in English, and in Dutch. But it does not do any good, for she immediately begins again, and tells me the whole story all over again, trying to speak plainer than ever. I suppose she thinks that any body can understand Dutch, if she only speaks it plain enough to them.

"When I want any thing of them, I always tell them by signs. The other evening, uncle George and I wanted some candles. So I rang the bell, and a woman came. I went to the door of the room, and made believe that I had two candlesticks in my hand, and that I was bringing them in. I made believe put them on the table, and then sat down and opened a book, and pretended that I was reading by the light of them. She understood me immediately. She laughed, and said, 'Ya, ya!' and went off out of the room to get the candles.

"Ya, ya, means yes, yes.

"Another time we wanted a fire. So when the woman came in, I shivered, and made believe that I was very cold, and then I went to the fireplace, and made believe warm myself. Then I pointed to the fireplace, and made a sign for her to go away and bring the fire to put there. But instead of going, she told me something in Dutch, and shook her head; and when I said I could not understand it, she told me over again; and finally she went away, and sent the landlady. The landlady could speak a little English. So she told me that we could not have any fire except in foot stoves, for the fireplace stoves were not put up.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BOAT FAMILY.]

"It is very curious to walk about the streets, and see the boats on the ca.n.a.ls, and what the people are carrying back and forth in them. I watch them sometimes from the windows of the hotel, especially when it rains, and we cannot go out. They have every thing in these boats. They use some of them instead of houses; and the man who owns them lives in them with his wife and children, and sometimes with his ducks and chickens.

"I often see the little children playing on the decks of the boat. Once I saw one that had a dog, and he was trying to teach him to cipher on a slate. His mother and the other children were on the boat too.

"The people use their dogs here to draw carts. They have three or four sometimes harnessed in together. The dogs look pretty poor and lean, but they draw like good fellows. You would be surprised to see what great loads they draw. They draw loads of vegetables to market, and then, when the vegetables are sold, they draw the market women home in the empty carts.

"Only they don't mind very well, when they are told which way to go. I saw a boy yesterday riding along in a cart, with a good big dog to draw him, and when he came to a street where he wanted him to turn down, the dog would not turn. The boy hallooed out to him in Dutch a good many times, and finally the boy had to jump down out of the cart, and run and seize him by the collar, and _pull_ him round.

"It is not a great deal that they use dog carts to bring things to market, for generally they bring them in boats. They take almost every thing to and fro along the ca.n.a.ls in boats; and it is very curious to stand on a bridge and look down on the boats that pa.s.s under, and see how many different kinds of boats there are, and how many different kinds of things they have in them. This morning, I saw one that had the bottom of it divided into three pens for animals. In the first pen were two great cows, lying down on the straw; in the second pen were several sheep; and in the third there were as many as a dozen small pigs, just big enough to be roasted. I suppose it was a farmer bringing in his stock to market.

"Sometimes they row the boats along the ca.n.a.l, and sometimes they push them with setting poles. They have the longest setting poles in some of the boats that I ever saw. There is an iron pike at one end of the pole, and a wooden k.n.o.b at the other. When they are pushing the boat by means of one of these poles, they run the ironed end of it down to the bottom, and then the man puts his shoulder to the little k.n.o.b at the other end and pushes. As the boat goes on, he walks along the boat from the bow to the stern, pushing all the way as hard as he can push.

"When they are out of town the men pull the boats along the ca.n.a.ls by means of a long cord, which is fastened to a strap over their shoulders.

With this strap they walk along on the tow-path of the ca.n.a.l, pulling in this way--so that if the cord should break, I should think they would fall headlong on the ground.

"I saw a man and a woman the other day pulling a double boat, loaded with hay, along a ca.n.a.l. The hay was loaded across from one boat to the other. It made as much as five or six of the largest cart loads of hay that I ever saw. I was surprised to see that a man and a woman could draw so much. They drew it by long lines, and by straps over their shoulders. The woman's line was fastened to one of the boats, and the man's to the other.

"The people travel a great deal in boats in these parts of the country, where there are no railroads. Uncle George and I took a little journey in one, the other day. I wanted to go very much, but uncle George was afraid, he said, that they might take us somewhere where there would be n.o.body that could talk English, and so we might get into some serious difficulty. But he said that he would go with me a few miles, if I could find a ca.n.a.l boat going to some place that we knew. So I found one going to a town called Delft. We knew that place, because we had come through it, or close by it, by the railway.

"Uncle George said that it was an excellent plan to go there, for then, if we got tired of the ca.n.a.l boat in going, we could come home by a railroad train.

"So we went; and we had a very pleasant time, indeed. I found the ca.n.a.l boat by going to the place where the boats all were, and saying, _Delft, Delft_, to the people; and then they pointed me to the right boat. So we got in. When the captain came for the fare, I took out a handful of money, and said _Delft_, and also pointed to uncle George. So he took out enough to pay for uncle George and me to go to Delft. At least I suppose he thought it was enough, though I thought it was very little.

"We had a very pleasant sail to Delft. The banks of the ca.n.a.l are beautiful. They are green and pretty every where, and in some places there were beautiful gardens, and summer houses, and pavilions close upon the sh.o.r.e.

"But now I begin to be tired of writing. I should have been tired a great while ago, only I have stopped to rest pretty often, and to look out the window, and see what is going by on the ca.n.a.l.

"There is a boat coming now with a mast, and I don't see what they are going to do, for there is a bridge here, and it is not a draw bridge.

Almost all the bridges are draw bridges, but this one is not. So I don't see how he is going to get by.

"Ah, I see how it is! The mast is on a hinge, so that it can turn down backward, and lie along flat on the deck of the boat. It is going down now.

"Now it is down, and the boat is going under the bridge.

"But good by, mother, for it is time for me to stop.

"Your affectionate and dutiful son, "ROLLO.