Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Jen Haines and the Online
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Transcriber's Notes:
The following spelling/typographical errors have been changed.
p19--changed "defense" to "defence" for consistency with rest of book.
p74--changed "treschkuit" to "trekschuit".
p180--changed "cites" to "cities".
p194--changed "tactiturn" to "taciturn".
p210--changed "were" to "where" in 'the cell were (changed to where)
Philip II. died;'.
Other spelling, grammatical, punctuation and typographic errors have
been left as in the original book.
[Illustration: A Dutch Windmill.]
HOLLAND.
BY
EDMONDO DE AMICIS,
AUTHOR OF "SPAIN," "MOROCCO," ETC.
TRANSLATED FROM THE THIRTEENTH EDITION OF THE ITALIAN BY
HELEN ZIMMERN.
ILLUSTRATED.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
PHILADELPHIA
HENRY T. COATES & CO.
COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY
PORTER & COATES.
TO
PIETRO GROLIER.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
HOLLAND 9
ZEALAND 29
ROTTERDAM 57
DELFT 131
THE HAGUE 171
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
VOLUME I.
Photographs taken expressly for this edition of "Holland" by
Dr. CHARLES L. MITCHELL, Philadelphia.
Photogravures by A.W. ELSON & CO., Boston.
PAGE
A DUTCH WINDMILL _Frontispiece._
DUTCH FISHING-BOATS 26
DORDRECHT--CANAL WITH CATHEDRAL IN THE DISTANCE 48
IN ROTTERDAM 64
INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH OF ST. LAWRENCE 80
ON THE MEUSE, NEAR ROTTERDAM 94
THE STEIGER, ROTTERDAM 110
THE STATUE OF TOLLENS 126
NEAR THE ARSENAL, DELFT 134
MONUMENT OF ADMIRAL VAN TROMP 140
STAIRWAY WHERE WILLIAM THE SILENT WAS ASSASSINATED
IN THE PRINSENHOF, DELFT 150
REFECTORY OF THE CONVENT OF ST. AGATHA, DELFT 156
OLD DELFT 166
ON THE CANAL NEAR DELFT 174
THE BINNENHOF, THE HAGUE 184
PAUL POTTER'S BULL 198
ON THE ROAD TO SCHEVENINGEN 214
FISHERMAN'S CHILDREN, SCHEVENINGEN 228
THE MAIN DRIVE IN THE BOSCH, THE HAGUE 246
THE VYVER, THE HAGUE 262
HOLLAND.
One who looks for the first time at a large map of Holland must be
amazed to think that a country so made can exist. At first sight, it
is impossible to say whether land or water predominates, and whether
Holland belongs to the continent or to the sea. Its jagged and narrow
coast-line, its deep bays and wide rivers, which seem to have lost the
outer semblance of rivers and to be carrying fresh seas to the sea;
and that sea itself, as if transformed to a river, penetrating far
into the land, and breaking it up into archipelagoes; the lakes and
vast marshes, the canals crossing each other everywhere,--all leave an
impression that a country so broken up must disintegrate and
disappear. It would be pronounced a fit home for only beavers and
seals, and surely its inhabitants, although of a race so bold as to
dwell there, ought never to lie down in peace.
When I first looked at a large map of Holland these thoughts crowded
into my mind, and I felt a great desire to know something about the
formation of this singular country; and as what I learned impelled me
to make a book, I write it now in the hope that I may lead others to
read it.
Those who do not know a country usually ask travellers, "What sort of
place is it?"
Many have told briefly what kind of country Holland is.
Napoleon said: "It is an alluvium of French rivers, the Rhine, the
Scheldt, and the Meuse," and under this pretext he annexed it to the
Empire. One writer defined it as a sort of transition between the
earth and the sea. Another calls it "an immense surface of earth
floating on the water." Others speak of it as an annex of the old
continent, the China of Europe, the end of the earth and the beginning
of the ocean--a huge raft of mud and sand; and Philip II. called it
"the country nearest hell."
But on one point they were all agreed, and expressed themselves in the
same words: Holland is a conquest of man over the sea; it is an
artificial country; the Dutch made it; it exists because the Dutch
preserve it, and would disappear if they were to abandon it.
To understand these words we must picture to ourselves Holland as it
was when the first German tribes, wandering in search of a country,
came to inhabit it.
Holland was then almost uninhabitable. It was composed of lakes, vast
and stormy as seas, flowing into each other; marshes and morasses,
thickets and brushwood; of huge forests, overrun by herds of wild
horses; vast stretches of pines, oaks, and alder trees, in which,
tradition tells us, you could traverse leagues passing from trunk to
trunk without ever putting your foot to the ground. The deep bays
carried the northern storms into the very heart of the country. Once a
year certain provinces disappeared under the sea, becoming muddy
plains which were neither earth nor water, on which one could neither
walk nor sail. The large rivers, for lack of sufficient incline to
drain them into the sea, strayed here and there, as if uncertain which
road to take, and then fell asleep in vast pools amongst the
coast-sands. It was a dreary country, swept by strong winds, scourged
by continual rain, and enveloped in a perpetual fog, through which
nothing was heard save the moaning of the waves, the roaring of wild
beasts and the screeching of sea-fowl. The first people who had the
courage to pitch their tents in it were obliged to erect with their
own hands, hillocks of earth as a protection from the inundations of
the rivers and the invasions of the ocean, and they were obliged to
live on these heights like shipwrecked-men on lonely islands,
descending, when the waters withdrew, to seek nourishment by fishing,
hunting, and collecting the eggs which the sea-fowl had laid on the
sands. Caesar, when he passed by, gave the first name to this people.
The other Latin historians spoke with mingled pity and respect of
these intrepid barbarians who lived on "a floating country," exposed
to the inclemency of an unfeeling sky and to the fury of the
mysterious North Sea. Imagination can picture the Roman soldiers from
the heights of the utmost wave-washed citadels of the empire,
contemplating with sadness and wonder the wandering tribes of that
desolate country, and regarding them as a race accursed of Heaven.
Now, when we reflect that such a region has become one of the richest,
most fertile, and best-governed countries in the world, we understand
how justly Holland is called the conquest of man.
But it should be added that it is a continuous conquest.
To explain this fact,--to show how the existence of Holland,
notwithstanding the great works of defence built by its inhabitants,
still requires an incessant struggle fraught with perils,--it is
sufficient to glance rapidly at the greatest changes of its physical
history, beginning at the time when its people had reduced it to a
habitable country.
Tradition tells of a great inundation of Friesland in the sixth
century. From that period catastrophes are recorded in every gulf, in
every island, one may say, in almost every town, of Holland. It is
reckoned that through thirteen centuries one great inundation, besides
smaller ones, has taken place every seven years, and, since the
country is an extended plain, these inundations were very deluges.
Toward the end of the thirteenth century the sea destroyed part of a
very fertile peninsula near the mouth of the Ems and laid waste more
than thirty villages. In the same century a series of marine
inundations opened an immense gap in Northern Holland and formed the
Gulf of the Zuyder Zee, killing about eighty thousand people. In 1421
a storm caused the Meuse to overflow, and in one night buried in its
waters seventy-two villages and one hundred thousand inhabitants. In
1532 the sea broke the embankments of Zealand, destroyed a hundred
villages, and buried for ever a vast tract of the country. In 1570 a
tempest produced another inundation in Zealand and in the province of
Utrecht; Amsterdam was inundated, and in Friesland twenty thousand
people were drowned. Other great floods occurred in the seventeenth
century; two terrible ones at the beginning and at the end of the
eighteenth; one in 1825, which laid waste Northern Holland, Friesland,
Over-Yssel, and Gelderland; another in 1855, when the Rhine,
overflowing, flooded Gelderland and the province of Utrecht and
submerged a large part of North Brabant. Besides these great
catastrophes, there occurred in the different centuries innumerable
others which would have been famous in other countries, but were
scarcely noticed in Holland--such as the inundation of the large Lake
of Haarlem caused by an invasion of the sea. Flourishing towns of the
Zuyder Zee Gulf disappeared under water; the islands of Zealand were
repeatedly covered by the sea and then again left dry; the villages on
the coast from Helder to the mouths of the Meuse were frequently
submerged and ruined; and in each of these inundations there was an
immense loss of life of both man and beast. It is clear that miracles
of courage, constancy, and industry must have been wrought by the
Dutch people, first in creating, and then in preserving, such a
country.
The enemy against which the Dutch had to defend their country was
threefold--the sea, the rivers, and the lakes. The Dutch drained the
lakes, drove back the sea, and imprisoned the rivers.
To drain the lakes they called the air to their aid. The lakes and
marshes were surrounded with dykes, the dykes with canals and an army
of windmills; these, putting the suction-pumps in motion, poured the
waters into the canals, which conducted them into the rivers and to
the sea. Thus vast areas of ground which were buried under water saw
the light, and were transformed, as if by enchantment, into fertile
plains covered with villages and traversed by roads and canals. In the
seventeenth century, in less than forty years, twenty-six lakes were
emptied. In Northern Holland alone at the beginning of this century
more than six thousand hectares of land were delivered from the
waters, in Southern Holland, before 1844, twenty-nine thousand
hectares, and in the whole of Holland, from 1500 to 1858, three
hundred and fifty-five thousand hectares. By the use of steam pumps
instead of windmills, the great undertaking of draining the Lake of
Haarlem was completed in thirty-nine months. This lake, which
threatened the towns of Haarlem, Amsterdam, and Leyden with raging
storms, was forty-four kilometers in circumference. At present the
Hollanders are contemplating the prodigious enterprise of draining the
Gulf of the Zuyder Zee, which covers a space of more than seven
hundred square kilometers.
The rivers, another internal enemy of Holland, did not cost less
fatigue or fewer sacrifices. Some, like the Rhine, which loses itself
in the sand before reaching the ocean, had to be channelled and
protected from the tide at their mouths by immense locks; others, like
the Meuse, were flanked by large dykes, like those raised to force
back the sea; others were turned from their channels. The wandering
waters were gathered together, the course of the rivers was regulated,
the streams were divided with rigorous precision, and sent in
different directions to maintain the equilibrium of the enormous
liquid mass,--for the smallest deviation might cause the submersion of
whole provinces. In this manner all of the rivers, which originally
wandered unrestrained, swamping and devastating the whole country,
have been reduced to streams and have become the servants of man.
But the fiercest struggle of all was the battle with the ocean.
Holland, as a whole, lies lower than the sea-level; consequently,
wherever the coast is not defended by downs it had to be protected by
embankments. If these huge bulwarks of earth, wood, and granite were
not standing like monuments to witness to the courage and perseverance
of the Dutch, it would be impossible to believe that the hand of man,
even in the course of many centuries, could have completed such an
immense work. In Zealand alone the dykes extend over an area of four
hundred kilometers. The western coast of the island of Walcheren is
protected by a dyke, the cost of whose construction and preservation
put out at interest would, it is calculated, have amounted to a sum
great enough to have paid for the building of the dyke of solid
copper. Round the town of Helder, at the northern extremity of
Northern Holland, there is a dyke made of blocks of Norwegian granite
which is ten kilometers long and stretches sixty meters into the sea.
The province of Friesland, which is eighty-eight kilometers long, is
protected by three rows of enormous palisades sustained by blocks of
Norwegian and German granite. Amsterdam, all the towns on the coast of
the Zuyder Zee, and all the islands which have been formed by
fragments of the land that has disappeared, forming a sort of circle
between Friesland and Northern Holland, are protected by dykes. From
the mouths of the Ems to the mouths of the Scheldt, Holland is an
impenetrable fort, in whose immense bastions the mills are the towers,
the locks the gates, the islands the advanced forts; of which, like a
real fortress, it shows to its enemy, the sea, only the tips of its
steeples and the roofs of its buildings, as though in derision or in
challenge.
In truth, Holland is a fortress, and the Dutch live as though they
were in a fort--always in arms against the sea. A host of engineers,
dependent on the minister of the interior, is scattered throughout the
land, disciplined like an army. These men are continually on the
alert, watching over the waters of the interior, anticipating the
rupture of the dykes, ordering and directing the works of defence. The
expenses of this warfare are distributed: one part is paid by the
state, the other by the provinces; every proprietor pays, besides the
general imposts, a special tax on the dykes in proportion to the
extent of his property and to its proximity to the waters. Any
accidental breach, any carelessness, may cause a flood: the danger is
ever present. The sentinels are at their posts on the ramparts, and at
the first attack of the sea, give the war-cry, whereupon Holland sends
out arms, materials, and money. And even when great battles are not in
progress, a slow, noiseless struggle is ever going on. Innumerable
windmills, even in the drained lakes, are continually working to
exhaust the rain-water and the water that oozes from the earth, and to
pump it into the canals. Every day the locks of the gulfs and rivers
shut their gigantic doors in face of the high tide, which attempts to
launch its billows into the heart of the country. Work is continually
going on to reinforce any weakened dykes, to fortify the downs by
cultivation, to throw up fresh embankments where the downs are
low--works towering like immense spears brandished in the midst of the
sea, ready to break the first onset of the waves. The sea thunders
eternally at the doors of the rivers, ceaselessly lashes their banks,
roars forth its eternal menace, raises the crests of its billows
curious to behold the contested ground, heaps banks of sand before the
doors to destroy the commerce of the cities it wishes to possess;
wastes, rasps, and undermines the coasts, and, unable to overthrow the
ramparts, against which its impotent waves break in angry foam, it
casts ships laden with corpses at the feet of the rebellious country
to testify to its fury and its strength.
Whilst this great struggle continues Holland is becoming transformed.
A map of the country as it was eight centuries ago would not at first
sight be recognized. The land is changed, the men are changed. The sea
in some parts has driven back the coast; it has taken portions of the
land from the continent, has abandoned and again retaken it; has
reunited some of the islands to the continent by chains of sand, as in
Zealand; has detached the borders of the continent and formed of them
new islands, such as Wieringen; has withdrawn from some provinces, and
has converted maritime cities into inland towns, as at Leeuwarden; it
has changed vast plains into archipelagoes of a hundred isles, such
as the Bies-Bosch; it has separated the city from the land, as at
Dordrecht. New gulfs two leagues wide have been formed, such as the
Gulf of Dollart; two provinces have been separated by a new
sea--namely, North Holland and Friesland. Inundations have caused the
level of the ground to be raised in some places, lowered in others;
unfruitful soil has been fertilized by the sediment of the overflown
rivers; fertile ground has been changed into deserts of sand. The
transformations of the waters have given rise to a transformation of
labor. Islands have been joined to the continent, as was the island of
Ameland; whole provinces are being reduced to islands, as is the case
with North Holland, which will be separated from South Holland by the
new canal of Amsterdam; lakes as large as provinces have been made to
disappear, like the Lake of Beemster. By the removal of the thick mud,
land has been converted into lakes, and these lakes are again
transformed into meadows. So the country changes, ordering and
altering its aspect in accordance with the violence of the waters and
the needs of man. As one glances over the latest map, he may be sure
that in a few years, it will be useless, because at the moment he is
studying it, there exist bays which will disappear little by little,
tracts of land which are on the point of detaching themselves from the
continent, and large canals which will open and carry life into
uninhabited regions.
But Hollanders did more than defend themselves from the water; they
became its masters. The water was their scourge; it became their
defence. If a foreign army invades their territory, they open the
dykes and loose the sea and the rivers, as they loosed them on the
Romans, the Spanish, and the army of Louis XIV., and then defend the
inland towns with their fleets. Water was their poverty; they have
made it riches. The whole country is covered with a network of canals,
which irrigate the land and are at the same time the highways of the
people. The towns communicate with the sea by means of the canals;
canals lead from town to town, binding the towns to the villages, and
uniting the villages themselves, as they lie with their homesteads
scattered over the plain. Smaller canals surround the farms, the
meadows, and the kitchen-gardens, taking the place of walls and
hedges; every house is a little port. Ships, barges, boats, and rafts
sail through the villages, wind round the houses, and thread the
country in all directions, just as carts and carriages do in other
places.
And here, too, Holland has accomplished many gigantic works, such as
the William Canal in North Brabant, which, more than eighty kilometers
long and thirty meters wide, crosses the whole of Northern Holland and
unites Amsterdam to the North Sea: the new canal, the largest in
Europe, which will join Amsterdam to the ocean, across the downs, and
another, equally large, which will unite the town of Rotterdam to the
sea. The canals are the veins of Holland, and the water is its blood.
But, aside from the canals, the draining of the lakes, and the works
of defence, as one passes rapidly through Holland he sees on every
side indications of marvellous labor. The ground,--in other countries
the gift of nature,--is here the result of industry. Holland acquired
the greater part of its riches through commerce, but the earth had to
yield its fruits before commerce could exist; and there was no
earth--it had to be created. There were banks of sand, broken here and
there by layers of peat, and downs which the wind blew about and
scattered over the country; large expanses of muddy land, destined, as
it seemed, to eternal barrenness. Iron and coal, the first elements of
industry, were lacking; there was no wood, for the forests had already
been destroyed by storms before agriculture began; there was neither
stone nor metal. Nature, as a Dutch poet has said, had denied all its
gifts to Holland, and the Dutch were obliged to do everything in spite
of her. They began by fertilizing the sand. In some places they made
the ground fruitful by placing on it layers of soil brought from a
distance, just as a garden is formed; they spread the rubble from the
downs over the sodden meadows; they mixed bits of the peat taken from
the water with the earth that was too sandy; they dug up clay to give
a fresh fertility to the surface of the ground; they strove to till
the downs; and thus, by a thousand varied efforts, as they continually
warded off the threatening waters, they succeeded in cultivating
Holland as highly as other countries more favored by Nature. The
Holland of sands and marshes, which the ancients considered barely
habitable, now sends abroad, year by year, agricultural products to
the value of a hundred million francs, possesses about a million three
hundred thousand head of cattle, and may be rated in proportion to its
size among the most populous countries in Europe.
Now, it is obvious that in a country so extraordinary the inhabitants
must be very different from those of other lands. Indeed, few peoples
have been more influenced by the nature of the country they inhabit,
than the Dutch. Their genius is in perfect harmony with the physical
character of Holland. When one contemplates the memorials of the great
warfare which this nation has waged with the sea, one understands that
its characteristics must be steadfastness and patience, conjoined with
calm and determined courage. The glorious struggle, and the knowledge
that they owe everything to themselves, must have infused and
strengthened in them a lofty sense of their own dignity and an
indomitable spirit of liberty and independence. The necessity for a
continual struggle, for incessant work, and for continual sacrifices
to protect their very existence, confronts them perpetually with
realities, and must have helped to make them an extremely practical
and economical nation. Good sense necessarily became their most
prominent quality; economy was perforce one of their principal
virtues. This nation was obliged to excel in useful works, to be sober
in its enjoyments, simple even in its greatness, and successful in all
things that are to be attained by tenacity of purpose and by activity
springing from reflection and precision. It had to be wise rather than
heroic, conservative rather than creative; to give no great architects
to the edifice of modern thought, but many able workmen, a legion of
patient and useful laborers. By virtue of these qualities of prudence,
phlegmatic activity, and conservatism the Dutch are ever advancing,
although step by step. They acquire slowly, but lose none of their
acquisitions;--they are loth to quit ancient usages, and, although
three great nations are in close proximity to them, they retain their
originality as if isolated. They have retained it through different
forms of government, through foreign invasions, through the political
and religious wars of which Holland was the theatre--in spite of the
immense crowd of foreigners from every country who have taken refuge
in their land, and have lived there at all times. They are, in short,
of all the northern nations, that one which has retained its ancient
typical character as it advanced on the road toward civilization. One
recalling the conformation of this country, with its three and a half
millions of inhabitants, can easily understand that although fused
into a solid political union, and although recognizable amongst the
other northern nations by certain traits peculiar to the inhabitants
of all its provinces, it must nevertheless present a great variety.
Such, indeed, is the case. Between Zealand and Holland proper, between
Holland and Friesland, between Friesland and Gelderland, between
Groningen and Brabant, although they are closely bound together by
local and historical ties, there is a difference as great as that
existing between the most distant provinces of Italy and France. They
differ in language, in costume and in character, in race and in
religion. The communal _regime_ has impressed on this nation an
indelible stamp, because nowhere else has it so conformed to the
nature of things. The interests of the country are divided into
various groups, of whose organization the hydraulic system is an
example. Hence association and mutual help against the common enemy,
the sea, but freedom of action in local institutions. The monarchical
_regime_ has not extinguished the ancient municipal spirit, which
frustrated the efforts of all those great states that tried to absorb
Holland. The great rivers and deep gulfs serve both as commercial
roads which constitute a national bond between the various
provinces, and as barriers which defend their ancient traditions and
provincial customs. In this land, which is apparently so uniform, one
may say that everything save the aspect of nature changes at every
step--changes suddenly, too, as does nature itself, to the eye of one
who crosses the frontier of this state for the first time.
[Illustration: Dutch Fishing Boats.]
But, however wonderful the physical history of Holland may be, its
political history is even more marvellous. This little country,
invaded first by different tribes of the Germanic race, subdued by the
Romans and by the Franks, devastated by the Danes and by the Normans,
and wasted for centuries by terrible civil wars,--this little nation
of fishermen and merchants preserved its civil freedom and liberty of
conscience by a war of eighty years' duration against the formidable
monarchy of Philip II., and founded a republic which became the ark of
salvation for the freedom of all peoples, the adopted home of the
sciences, the exchange of Europe, the station of the world's commerce;
a republic which extends its dominion to Java, Sumatra, Hindostan,
Ceylon, New Holland, Japan, Brazil, Guiana, the Cape of Good Hope, the
West Indies, and New York; a republic that conquered England on the
sea, that resisted the united armies of Charles II. and of Louis XIV.,
that treated on terms of equality with the greatest nations, and for a
time was one of the three powers that ruled the destinies of Europe.
It is no longer the grand Holland of the eighteenth century, but it is
still, next to England, the greatest colonizing state of the world. It has
exchanged its former grandeur for a quiet prosperity; commerce has been
limited, agriculture has increased; the republican government has lost its
form rather than its substance, for a family of patriotic princes, dear to
the people, govern peaceably in the midst of the ancient and the newer
liberties. In Holland are to be found riches without ostentation, freedom
without insolence, taxes without poverty. The country goes on its way
without panics, without insurrections,--preserving, with its fundamental
good sense, in its traditions, customs, and freedom, the imprint of its
noble origin. It is perhaps amongst all European countries that nation in
which there is the best public instruction and the least corruption.
Alone, at the extremity of the continent, occupied with its waters and
its colonies, it enjoys the fruits of its labors in peace without
comment, and can proudly say that no nation in the world has purchased
freedom of faith and liberty of government with greater sacrifices.
Such were the thoughts that stimulated my curiosity one fine summer
morning at Antwerp, as I was stepping into a ship that was to take me
from the Scheldt to Zealand, the most mysterious province of the
Netherlands.
ZEALAND.
If a teacher of geography had stopped me at some street-corner, before
I had decided to visit Holland, and abruptly asked me, "Where is
Zealand?" I should have had nothing to say; and I believe I am not
mistaken in the supposition that a great number of my fellow-citizens,
if asked the same question, would find it difficult to answer. Zealand
is somewhat mysterious even to the Dutch themselves; very few of them
have seen it, and of those few the greater part have only passed
through it by boat; hence it is mentioned only on rare occasions, and
then as if it were a far-off country. From the few words I heard
spoken by my fellow-voyagers, I learned that they had never been to
the province; so we were all equally curious, and the ship had not
weighed anchor ere we entered into conversation, and were exciting
each other's curiosity by questions which none of us could answer.
The ship started at sunrise, and for a time we enjoyed the view of the
spire of Antwerp Cathedral, wrought of Mechlin lace, as the enamoured
Napoleon said of it.
After a short stop at the fort of Lillo and the village of Doel, we
left Belgium and entered Zealand.
In passing the frontier of a country for the first time, although we
know that the scene will not change suddenly, we always look round
curiously as if we expect it to do so. In fact, all the passengers
leaned over the rail of the boat, that they might be present when the
apparition of Zealand should suddenly be revealed.
For some time our curiosity was not gratified: nothing was to be seen
but the smooth green shores of the Scheldt, wide as an arm of the sea,
dotted with banks of sand, over which flew flocks of screaming
sea-gulls, while the pure sky did not seem to be that of Holland.
We were sailing between the island of South Beveland and the strip of
land forming the left bank of the Scheldt, which is called Flanders of
the States, or Flemish Zealand.
The history of this piece of land is very curious. To a foreigner the
entrance of Holland is like the first page of a great epic entitled,
The Struggle with the Sea. In the Middle Ages it was nothing but a
wide gulf with a few small islands. At the beginning of the sixteenth
century this gulf was no longer in existence; four hundred years of
patient labor had changed it into a fertile plain, defended by
embankments, traversed by canals, populated by villages, and known as
Flemish Zealand. When the war of independence broke out the
inhabitants of Flemish Zealand, opened their dykes rather than yield
their land to the Spanish armies: the sea rushed in, again forming the
gulf of the Middle Ages, and destroying in one day the work of four
centuries. When the war of independence was ended they began to drain
it, and after three hundred years Flemish Zealand once more saw the
light, and was restored to the continent like a child raised from the
dead. Thus in Holland lands rise, sink, and reappear, like the realms
of the Arabian Nights at the touch of a magic wand. Flemish Zealand,
which is divided from Belgian Flanders by the double barrier of
politics and religion, and from Holland by the Scheldt, preserves the
customs, the beliefs, and the exact impress of the sixteenth century.
The traditions of the war with Spain are still as real and living as
the events of our own times. The soil is fertile, the inhabitants
enjoy great prosperity, their manners are severe; they have schools
and printing-presses, and live peacefully on their fragment of the
earth which appeared but yesterday, to disappear again on that day
when the sea shall demand it for a third burial. One of my
fellow-travellers, a Belgian lady, who gave me this information, drew
my attention to the fact that the inhabitants of Flemish Zealand were
still Catholics when they inundated their land, although they had
already rebelled against the Spanish dominion, and consequently it
occurred, strangely enough, that the province went down Catholic and
came up Protestant.
Greatly to my surprise, the boat, instead of continuing down the
Scheldt, and so making the circuit of the island of South Beveland,
entered the island, when it reached a certain point, passing through a
narrow canal that crosses or rather cuts the island apart, and so
joins the two branches of the river that encircles it. This was the
first Dutch canal through which I had passed: it was a new experience.
The canal is bordered on either side by a dyke which hides the
country. The ship glided on stealthily, as if it had taken some hidden
road in order to spring out on some one unawares. There was not a
single boat in the canal nor a living soul on the dykes, and the
silence and solitude strengthened the impression that our course had
the hidden air of a piratical incursion. On leaving the canal we
entered the eastern branch of the Scheldt.
We were now in the heart of Zealand. On the right was the island of
Tholen; on the left, the island of North Beveland; behind, South
Beveland; in front, Schouven. Excepting the island of Walcheren, we
could now see all the principal islands of the mysterious archipelago.
But the mystery consists in this--the islands are not seen, they must
be imagined. To the right and left of the wide river, before and
behind the ship, nothing was to be seen but the straight line of the
embankments, like a green band on a level with the water, and beyond
this streak, here and there, were tips of trees and of steeples, and
the red ridges of roofs that seemed to be peeping over to see us pass.
Not one hill, not one rise in the ground, not one house, could be
discovered anywhere: all was hidden, all seemed immersed in water; it
seemed that the islands were on the point of sinking into the river,
and we glanced stealthily at each other to make sure we were still
there. It seemed like going through a country during a flood, and it
was an agreeable thought that we were in a ship. Every now and then
the vessel stopped and some passengers for Zealand got into a boat and
went ashore. Although I was eager to visit the province, I
nevertheless regarded them with a feeling of compassion, imagining
that those unreal islands were only monster whales about to dive into
the water at the approach of the boats.
The captain of our ship, a Hollander, stopped near me to examine a
small map of Zealand which he held in his hand. I immediately seized
the opportunity and overwhelmed him with questions. Fortunately, I had
hit upon one of the few Dutchmen who, like us Italians, love the sound
of their own voices.
"Here in Zealand, even more than in other provinces," said he, as
seriously as if he were a master giving a lesson, "the dykes are a
question of life and death. At high tide all Zealand is below
sea-level. For every dyke that were broken, an island would
disappear. The worst of it is, that here the dykes have to resist not
only the direct shock of the waves, but another power which is even
more dangerous. The rivers fling themselves toward the sea,--the sea
casts itself against the rivers, and in this continual struggle
undercurrents are formed which wash the foundations of the
embankments, until they suddenly give way like a wall that is
undermined. The Zealanders must be continually on their guard. When a
dyke is in danger, they make another one farther inland, and await the
assault of the water behind it. Thus they gain time, and either
rebuild the first embankment or continue to recede from fortress to
fortress until the current changes and they are saved."
"Is it not possible," I asked, introducing the element of poetry,
"that some day Zealand may no longer exist?"
"On the contrary," he replied, to my sorrow: "the day may come in
which Zealand will no longer be an archipelago, but terra firma. The
Scheldt and the Meuse continually bring down mud, which is deposited
in the arms of the sea, and, rising little by little, enlarges the
islands, thus enclosing the towns and villages that were ports on the
coast. Axel, Goes, Veer, Arnemuyden, and Middelburg were maritime
towns, and are now inland cities. Hence the day will surely come in
which the waters of the rivers will no longer pass between the
islands of Zealand, and a network of railways will extend over the
whole country, which will be joined to the continent, as has already
happened in the island of South Beveland. Zealand grows in its
struggle with the sea. The sea may gain the victory in other parts of
Holland, but here it will be worsted. Are you familiar with the arms
of Zealand: a lion in the act of swimming, above which is written,
'_Luctor et emergo_'?"
After these words he remained silent for some moments, while a passing
glance of pride enlivened his face: then he continued with his former
gravity:
"_Emergo_; but he did not always emerge. All the islands of Zealand,
one after the other, have slept under the waters for longer or shorter
periods of time. Three centuries ago the island of Schouwen was
inundated by the sea, when all the inhabitants and cattle were drowned
and it was reduced to a desert. The island of North Beveland was
completely submerged shortly after, and for several years nothing was
to be seen but the tips of the church-steeples peeping out of the
water. The island of South Beveland shared the same fate toward the
middle of the fourteenth century,--the island of Tholen suffered in
the year 1825 of our century,--the island of Walcheren in 1808, and in
the capital of Middelburg, although it is several miles distant from
the coast, the water was up to the roofs."
As I listened to these stories of the water, of inundations and
submerged districts, it seemed strange to me that I myself was not
drowned, I asked the captain what sort of people lived in those
invisible countries, with water underfoot and overhead.
"Farmers and shepherds," he answered. "We call Zealand a group of
forts defended by a garrison of farmers and shepherds. Zealand is the
richest agricultural province in the Netherlands. The alluvial soil of
these islands is a marvel of fertility. Few countries can boast such
wheat, colza, flax, and madder as it produces. Its people raise
prodigious cattle and colossal horses, which are even larger than
those of the Flemish breed. The people are strong and handsome; they
preserve their ancient customs, and live contentedly in prosperity and
peace. Zealand is a hidden paradise."
While the captain was speaking the ship entered the Keeten Canal,
which divides the island of Tholen from the island of Schouwen, and is
famous for the ford across which the Spanish made their way in 1575,
just as the eastern side of the Scheldt is famous for the passage they
forced in 1572. All Zealand is full of memories of that war. Because
of its intimate connection with William of Orange, the hereditary lord
of a great part of the land in the islands, and by reason of the
impediments of every kind that it could oppose to invaders, this
little archipelago of sand, half buried in the sea, became the
theatre of war and heresy, and the duke of Alva longed to possess it.
Consequently terrible struggles raged on its shores, signalised by all
the horrors of battles by land and sea. The soldiers forded the canals
by night in a dense throng, the water up to their throats, menaced by
the tide, beaten by the rain, with volleys of musketry pouring down
the banks, their horses and artillery swallowed in the mud, the
wounded swept away by the current or buried alive in the quagmires.
The air resounded with German, Spanish, Italian, and Flemish voices.
Torches illuminated the great arquebuses, the pompous plumes, the
strange, blanched faces. The battles seemed to be fantastic funerals.
They were, in fact, the funerals of the great Spanish monarchy, which
was slowly drowned in Dutch waters, smothered with mud and curses. One
who is weak enough to feel an excessive tenderness for Spain need only
go to Holland if he wishes to do penance for this sin. Never,
perchance, have there been two nations which have had better reasons
than these to hate each other with all their strength, or which tried
with greater fury to establish those reasons. I remember, to mention
one alone of a thousand contrasts, how it impressed me to hear Philip
II. spoken of in terms so different from those used in the Pyrenees a
few months before. In Spain his lowest title was _the great king_: in
Holland they called him a _cowardly tyrant_.
The ship passed between the island of Schouwen and the little island
of St. Philipsland, and a few moments later entered the wide branch of
the Meuse called Krammer, which divides the island of Overflakkee from
the continent. We seemed to be sailing through a chain of large lakes.
The distant banks presented the same appearance as those of the
Scheldt. Dykes stretched as far as the eye could see, and behind the
dykes appeared the tops of trees, the tips of steeples, and the roofs
of houses, which were hidden from view, all lending the landscape an
air of mystery and solitude. Only on some projection of the banks
which formed a gap in the immense bulwarks of the island peeped forth,
as it were, a sketch of a Dutch landscape--a painted cottage, a
windmill, a boat--which seemed to reveal a secret created to arouse
the curiosity of travellers, and to delude it directly it was aroused.
Suddenly, on approaching the prow of the ship, where were the
third-class passengers, I made a most agreeable discovery. Here was a
group of peasants, men and women, dressed in the costume of Zealand--I
do not remember of which island, for the costume differs in each, like
the dialect, which is a mixture of Dutch and Flemish, if one may so
speak of two languages that are almost identical. The men were all
dressed alike. They wore round felt hats trimmed with wide embroidered
ribbons; their jackets were of dark cloth, close fitting, and so short
as hardly to cover their hips, and left open to show a sort of
waistcoat striped with red, yellow, and green, which was closed over
the chest by a row of silver buttons attached to one another like the
links of a chain. Their costume was completed by a pair of short
breeches of the same color as the jacket, tied round the waist by a
band ornamented by a large stud of chiselled silver,--a red cravat,
and woollen stockings reaching to the knee. In short, below the waist
their dress was that of a priest, and above it, that of a harlequin.
One of them had coins for buttons, and this is not an unusual
practice. The women wore very high straw hats in the form of a broken
cone, which looked like overturned buckets, bound round with long blue
ribbons fluttering in the wind; their dresses were dark-colored, open
at the throat, revealing white embroidered chemisettes; their arms
were bare to the elbow; and two enormous gold earrings of the most
eccentric shape projected almost over their cheeks. Although in my
voyage I tried to imitate Victor Hugo in admiring everything as a
savage, I could not possibly persuade myself that this was a beautiful
style of dress. But I was prepared for incongruities of this sort. I
knew that we go to Holland to see novelty rather than beauty, and good
things rather than new ones, so I was predisposed to observe rather
than to be enthusiastic. If that first impression was not very
pleasant to my artistic taste, I consoled myself by the thought that
doubtless all those peasants could read and write, and that possibly
on the previous evening they had learned by heart a poem of their
great poet, Jacob Catz, and that they were probably on their way to
some agricultural convention of which the programme was in their
pockets, where with arguments drawn from their modest experience they
would confute the propositions of some scientific farmer from Goes or
Middelburg. Ludovico Guicciardini, a Florentine nobleman, the author
of an excellent work on the Netherlands printed in Antwerp in the
sixteenth century, says that there was hardly a man or woman in
Zealand who did not speak French or Spanish, and that a great many
spoke Italian. This statement, which was perhaps an exaggeration in
his day, would now be a fable, but it is certain that amongst the
rural inhabitants of Zealand there exists an extraordinary
intellectual culture, far superior to that of the peasants of France,
Belgium, Germany, and many other provinces of Holland.
The ship rounded the island of Philipsland, and we found ourselves
outside of Zealand.
Thus this province, mysterious before we entered it, seemed doubly so when
we had quitted it. We had traversed it and had not seen it, and we left it
with our curiosity ungratified. The only thing we had perceived was that
Zealand is a country hidden from view. But one is deceived who thinks it
is mysterious for the sole reason that it is invisible--everything in
Zealand is a mystery. First of all,--How was it formed? Was it a group of
tiny alluvial islands, uninhabited and separated only by canals, which, as
some believe, met and formed larger islands? Or was it, as others think,
terra firma when the Scheldt emptied itself into the Meuse? But, even
leaving its origin out of the question, in what other country in the world
do things happen as they happen in Zealand? In what other country do the
fishermen catch in their nets a siren whose husband, after vain prayers to
have her restored, in vengeance throws up a handful of sand, prophesying
that it will bury the gates of the town--and lo his prophecy is fulfilled?
In what other country do the souls of those lost at sea come as they come
to Walcheren, and awaken the fishermen with the demand that they be
conducted to the coasts of England? In what other country do the
sea-storms fling, as they do on the banks of the island of Schouwen,
carcasses borne from the farthest north--monsters half men, half boats;
mummies bound in the floating trunks of trees, of which an example is
still to be seen at the guildhall of Zierikzee? In what country, as at
Wemeldingen, does a man fall head foremost into a canal, where, remaining
under water an hour, he sees his dead wife and children, who call to him
from Paradise, and is then drawn out of the water alive, whereupon he
relates this miracle to Victor Hugo, who believes it and comments on it,
concluding that the soul may leave the body for some time and then return
to it? Where, as near Domburg, at low water is it possible to draw up
ancient temples and statues of unknown deities? In what other place does
the sword of a Spanish captain, Mondragone, serve as a lightning-conductor,
as at Wemeldingen? In what other country are unfaithful women made to walk
naked through the streets of the town with two stones hung round the neck
and a cylinder of iron on the head, as in the island of Schouwen? Now,
really, this last marvel is no longer seen, but the stones still exist,
and any one can see them in the guildhall at Brauwershaven.
Our ship now entered that part of the southern branch of the Meuse
called Volkerak. The scene was just the same--dykes upon dykes, the
tips of houses and church-steeples, a few boats here and there. One
thing only was changed, the sky. I then saw for the first time the
Dutch sky as it usually appears, and witnessed one of those battles of
light peculiar to the Netherlands--battles which the great Dutch
landscape-artists have painted with insuperable power. Previously the
sky had been serene. It was a beautiful summer day: the waters were
blue, the banks emerald green, the air warm, with not a breath of wind
stirring. Suddenly a thick cloud hid the sun, and in less time than it
takes to tell it everything was as different as if the season, the
hour, and the latitude had all been changed in a moment. The waters
became dark, the green of the banks grew dull, the horizon was hidden
under a gray veil; everything seemed shrouded in a twilight which made
all things lose their outline. An evil wind arose, chilling us to the
bone. It seemed to be December; we felt the chill of winter and that
restlessness which accompanies every sudden menace on the part of
nature. All round the horizon small leaden-colored clouds began to
collect, scudding rapidly along, as though searching impatiently for a
direction and a shape. Then the waters began to ripple, and became
streaked with rapid luminous reflections, with long stripes of green,
violet, white, ochre, black. Finally this irritation of nature ended
in a violent downpour, which confused sky, water, and earth in one
gray mass, broken only by a lighter tone caused by the far-off banks,
and by some sailing ships, which came into view here and there like
upright shadows on the waters of the river.
"Now we are really in Holland," said the captain of the ship,
approaching a group of passengers who were contemplating the
spectacle. "Such sudden changes of scene," he continued, "are never
seen anywhere else."