CORRESPONDENCE.
One day, when Mr. George and Rollo were at the town of Leyden, it began
to rain while they were eating their breakfast.
"Never mind," said Rollo. "We can walk about the town if it does rain."
"Yes," said Mr. George, "we can; but we shall get tired of walking about
much sooner if it rains, than if it were pleasant weather. However, I am
not very sorry, for I should like to write some letters."
"I've a great mind to write a letter, too," said Rollo. "I'll write to
my mother. Don't you think that would be a good plan?"
"Why,--I don't know,"--said Mr. George, speaking in rather a doubtful
tone. "It seems to me that it would be hardly worth while."
"Why not?" asked Rollo.
"Why, the postage is considerable," said Mr. George, "and I don't
believe the letter would be worth what your father would have to pay for
it; that is, if it is such a letter as I suppose you would write."
"Why, what sort of a letter do you suppose I should write?" asked Rollo.
"O, you would do as boys generally do in such cases," replied his uncle.
"In the first place you would want to take the biggest sheet that you
could find to write the letter upon. Then you would take up as much of
the space as possible writing the date, and _My dear mother_. Then you
would go on for a few lines, saying things of no interest to any body,
such as telling what day you came to this place, and what day to that.
Perhaps you'd say that to-day is a rainy day, and that yesterday was
pleasant--just as if your mother, when she gets your letter, would care
any thing about knowing what particular days were rainy and what
pleasant, in Holland, a week back. Then, after you had got about two
thirds down the page, you would stop because you could not think of any
thing more to say, and subscribe your name with ever so many scrawl
flourishes, and as many affectionate and dutiful phrases as you could
get to fill up the space.
"And that would be a letter that your father, like as not, would have to
pay one and sixpence or two shillings sterling for, to the London
postman."
Rollo laughed at this description of the probable result of his proposed
attempt to write a letter; but he laughed rather faintly, for he well
recollected how many times he had written letters in just such a way. He
secretly resolved, however, that when they came in from their walk, and
Mr. George sat down to his writing, he would write too, and would see
whether he could not, for once, produce a letter that should be at least
worth the postage.
After they came in from their walk, they asked the landlady to have a
fire made in their room; but she said they could not have any fire, for
the stoves were not put up. She said it was the custom in Holland not to
put the stoves up until October; and so nobody could have a fire in any
thing but foot stoves until that time. The foot stoves, she said, would
make it very comfortable for them.
So she brought in two foot stoves. They consisted of small, square
boxes, with holes bored in the top, and a little fire of peat in an
earthen vessel within. Rollo asked Mr. George to give him two sheets of
thin note paper, and he established himself at a window that looked out
upon a canal. He intended to amuse himself in the intervals of his
writing in watching the boats that were passing along the canal.
He took two sheets of note paper instead of one sheet of letter paper,
in order that, if he should get tired after filling one of them, he
could stop, and so send what he had written, without causing his father
to pay postage on any useless paper.
"Then," thought he, "if I do _not_ get tired, I will go on and fill the
second sheet, and my mother will have a double small letter. A double
small letter will be just as good as a single large one."
This was an excellent plan.
Rollo also took great pains to guard against another fault which boys
often fall into in writing their letters; that is, the fault of growing
careless about the writing as they go on with the work, by which means a
letter is produced which looks very neat and pretty at the beginning,
but becomes an ill-looking and almost illegible scrawl at the end.
"I'll begin," said he, "as I think I shall be able to hold out; and I'll
hold out to the end just as I begin."
Rollo remained over his letter more than three hours. He would have
become exceedingly tired with the work if he had written continuously
all this time; but he stopped to rest very often, and to amuse himself
with observing what was passing before him in the street and on the
canal.
Mr. George was occupied all this time in writing _his_ letter, and each
read what he had written to the other that same evening, after dinner.
The two letters were as follows:--
MR. GEORGE'S LETTER.
"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 shores. 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 canals, which are also higher than
the land on each side of them. Thus the whole country is covered with a
great network of canals, 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 canals 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 canals 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 canals
running through them in every direction, and crossing each other at
right angles. These canals, 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 canals and drains, which run
across the polders, cannot flow out into the large canals, 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 canal 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 canals 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,
accumulate, 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 canals
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 circumference. 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 space
between for a canal. 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 quantity 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 space in
rain. You may judge that the amount is very large that falls on a
district thirty miles round. They calculate that the quantity 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 quantity
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
space 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 there being so
many canals. The water is all smooth and still in all the canals,
(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.
[Illustration: THE BOAT FAMILY.]
"It is very curious to walk about the streets, and see the boats on the
canals, 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 canals in boats; and it is very curious to
stand on a bridge and look down on the boats that pass 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 canal, 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 knob 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 knob 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 canals 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 canal, 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 canal. 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
nobody 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 canal 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 canal 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 canal
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 canal 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 shore.
"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 canal.
"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.
"P. S. This is the longest letter that I ever wrote."