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Transcriber’s Note
Today a number of the Dutch spellings for place names, people’s
names and specific words have changed but the colloquial spellings
of the era have been retained, however where the name has been
spelt two or more different ways, the spellings have been altered
to the most prolific usage.
CHAPTER XV Utrecht and ’S Hertogenbosch. This chapter is the only
one with the word Chapter before it, and this has been
retained.
The spelling of the word æsophagus on p. 30, appears to be
acceptable in the late 1800’s, early 1900’s, so this spelling has
been retained.
Other changes made are noted at the end of the book.
[Illustration: The veterans of the fishing fleet are among the most
interesting inhabitants of Volendam, wearing fur hats in summer and
waistband buttons made of old Dutch coins]
WINDMILLS AND WOODEN SHOES
By Blair Jaekel, F.R.G.S. Author of The Lands of the Tamed Turk
NEW YORK McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY 1912
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY, 1912
TO MY AUNT KATE FISHER BLAIR
FOREWORD
To put before the prospective visitor the many delights and few
disadvantages of a territory with which he may be already more or less
familiar; to help him to form a comprehensive idea of the most of
Holland within a reasonably short space of travel time; to refocus the
lens, to readjust the vernier of his memory, providing he has already
been there, so that he may take a truer reading of the country upon a
second visit; to recant the praises of a people whose very existence
has been and ever will be one perpetual, indefatigable struggle
against the most ubiquitous of all of man’s enemies--an element of
the universe; to give a brief synopsis of what a vast amount there is
to see and learn in a country so rich in accomplishments, so poor in
area--these constitute the chief end of this book of travel through the
Netherlands. If it fails in its mission it is by no means the fault of
the Netherlands nor of whatever of interest is contained therein.
If the text and illustrations inclosed between these covers cause but a
single reader to live again a summer’s trip through Holland or prompt
him to go there, there will be at least the satisfaction that the work
has not been in vain.
The author takes this opportunity to express his appreciation to the
editors of _Travel_, New York City, for permission to reprint as a part
of the text of this book, together with the photographs pertaining to
the different subjects, certain special articles by the author which
have appeared in the pages of the magazine mentioned.
BLAIR JAEKEL
PHILADELPHIA, PA.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTORY 1
II. THE ISLAND OF WALCHEREN 14
III. FROM MIDDELBURG TO DORTRECHT 29
IV. ROTTERDAM 45
V. DELFT AND HER TRAGEDY 59
VI. THE HAGUE AND SCHEVENINGEN 75
VII. LEYDEN AND HAARLEM 91
VIII. THE CITY OF NINETY ISLANDS 108
IX. EXCURSIONS ABOUT AMSTERDAM 123
X. ALKMAAR AND THE HELDER 137
XI. FROM HOORN TO STAVOREN 150
XII. FRIESLAND AND ITS CAPITAL 165
XIII. THE HINTERLAND OF HOLLAND 176
XIV. GELDERLAND 189
XV. UTRECHT AND ’S HERTOGENBOSCH 202
INDEX 215
THE ILLUSTRATIONS
VETERANS OF THE FISHING FLEET OF VOLENDAM _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
WOODEN SHOES OF HOLLAND 1
THE DUTCH BUILD GOOD ROADS 12
LOOKING DOWN OVER THE ROOFS OF MIDDELBURG 20
THE OLD CHURCH TOWER AND LIGHTHOUSE OF WESTKAPELLE 24
BEHIND THE DIKE AT GOES 30
A PICTURESQUE CORNER OF DORTRECHT 40
THE ROMANCE OF ROTTERDAM SHIPPING 44
A CANAL STREET IN ROTTERDAM 50
THE EAST GATE OF DELFT 60
THE PRINSENHOF IN DELFT 68
DUTCH MAIDS AND WASHERWOMEN 76
THE KURHAUS AT SCHEVENINGEN 88
A STEAM TRAM ENGINE 92
INSIDE THE GROOTE KERK IN HAARLEM 104
THE ROYAL PALACE, AMSTERDAM 112
DIAMOND WORKERS IN AMSTERDAM 116
A WATERFRONT STREET IN VOLENDAM 124
A CANAL BACKYARD 132
CHEESE DAY IN ALKMAAR 140
THE DIKE AT THE HELDER 144
AN OLD STREET IN HOORN 152
HOORN’S RACETRACK ON THE MAIN STREET 156
THE METAL SKULL CAP OF FRISIAN WOMEN 164
LEEUWARDEN’S LEANING TOWER 168
THE TOWN HALL AND MARKET SQUARE IN GRONINGEN 180
THE BEST OF KAMPEN’S GATEWAYS 184
QUEEN WILHELMINA’S SUMMER PALACE AT HET LOO 188
THE MARKET AT ARNHEM 196
THE EUSIBIUSBINNENSINGEL OF ARNHEM 200
UTRECHT’S CATHEDRAL 204
THE OUDE GRACHT IN UTRECHT 210
[Illustration: Probably the majority of travelers go to Holland,
not for art, nor for scenery, nor for history, but for windmills and
wooden shoes--to epitomize the characteristics of the country and its
peoples]
_Windmills and Wooden Shoes_
INTRODUCTORY
Take, if you will, the state of Delaware, something less than half
of Maryland and the lower end of New Jersey; turn them upside down;
drive Delaware and Jersey and the most of Maryland below the level
of the sea; let the waters of the Atlantic and the Chesapeake Bay
seep in over the low-level territory; dike up the edges at the weak
and exposed parts along the coast; pump the country dry, and keep it
pumped dry, as far as possible--then, with a little less regularity of
contour, you will have almost a geographical counterpart of Holland,
both as to acreage and topography, although of but one fifth its total
population. The Chesapeake Bay would equal the Zuyder Zee; Baltimore,
if shifted to the other side of the Bay, might be substituted for
Amsterdam; Wilmington on the Delaware would displace Rotterdam on the
Maas; Hagerstown would fit the position of Arnhem; and, with the aid of
a little elasticity of the imagination, Cape May might be mistaken for
the Hook of Holland.
Such, in brief, are the physical dimensions of, perhaps, the most
unique, the most remunerative travel territory, acre for acre, in
Europe.
Holland, like ancient Gaul, is divided; but into two parts instead
of three. If we draw an imaginary line north and south bisecting
the Zuyder Zee, the country on the west side of this line may be
designated as the more be-traveled, therefore the more familiar part.
Hundreds of thousands of tourists, singly, in groups, in “personally
conducted” parties, annually make use of it as a playground. Its
unusual below-sea-level scenery, its historical buildings, its
marvelous waterways, its sandy bathing beaches, the life in its cities,
the poetic costuming of its rural inhabitants, its treasures and
masterpieces of art--all combine to fulfill every condition required by
the average sight-seer. In no other section of Europe are the distances
between places of interest so short; in no other section are the modes
and conveniences of reaching these places so varied. If the traveler
relies solely upon the railways to carry him from one point to another,
he may be compelled to wait two hours in order to ride ten minutes. A
happy combination of the steam tram lines, the railways, and the canal
packets, will enable him not only to get about without loss of time,
but to penetrate curious, out-of-the-way parts of the country which one
or the other of the different methods of transportation may overlook.
[Illustration: The shaded portions of this map of Holland and its
immediate surroundings represent land that would be under water if by
some inconceivable catastrophe all the dikes should break. The map
gives, therefore, some idea of the never-ending struggle that the
Hollander has faced and continues to face.]
The surface of the territory to the eastward of the imaginary
longitude is barely scratched by the searcher of the picturesque and
historical. Many of its towns are as interesting as any of those in
the west, but, as a general rule, their peoples have been more easily
influenced by German and Belgian methods, and, therefore, their
characteristics differ greatly from those of the natives of North and
South Holland and Zeeland, for example. What evidences of their history
and art these towns still possess they have in a great measure failed
to appreciate themselves, and it is this lack of self-confidence,
translated into a complete failure so far to advertise their own scenic
and historical virtues, that has bred the comparative aloofness with
respect to them in the manner of the tourist through Holland. Probably
the majority of travelers go to the Netherlands, not for art, nor for
scenery, nor even for history, but for windmills and wooden shoes (to
epitomize the characteristics of the country and its peoples), and for
that reason their wanderings are bound to be confined, for the most
part, to the exiguous territory bordered by the North Sea on the west
and the Zuyder Zee on the east.
The omnipresent story of Holland is the story of its fight against
the waters. Its other conquests pale before it. Its eighty years’
revolution against the Spaniards cannot compare with it. Water is
Holland’s perpetual and merciless enemy; so much so that if all the
dikes that protect her from the waters of the ocean burst to-night,
to-morrow there would be but a third of the country left. How she has
conquered would fill a book in itself. Since the Frisian monks first
commenced to dike in the country, successive inundations have blotted
out the lives of more of her people than all her conquests at arms put
together. But still the Dutch fought on, resolutely, unflinchingly,
persistently, until they dredged what land they needed from the bottom
of the sea and grew grass and flowers and vegetables where kelp and
cockle-shells thrived before. After hundreds of years of dredging and
diking, by 1833 Holland had attained an acreage of 8,768 square miles.
By 1877 she had added another four thousand.
Characteristic of the Dutch perseverance to conquer the menacing waters
is a part of the report of the commission appointed to superintend
the reclamation of the Haarlemermeer, an inland sea that once lapped
the very gates of Amsterdam herself and upon which a fleet of seventy
vessels once gave battle. “We have driven forever from the bosom of our
country a most dangerous enemy,” said the commission, after its task
had been completed; “we have at the same time augmented the means for
defending our capital in time of war. We have conquered a province in
combat without tears and without blood, where science and genius took
the place of generals, and where workmen were the worthy soldiers.”
Previous to 1836 the Dutch had tolerated the Haarlemermeer. In November
of that year a violent west wind lashed its waters into a fury and
poured them into the streets of Amsterdam. On Christmas day there came
an east wind that drove the waters from Amsterdam over into the streets
of Leyden. This was too much. This was the straw that broke the camel’s
back. This was what exhausted even the patience of the Dutch, and they
picked up the gauntlet. They contrived a plan of methodical, systematic
attack. They diked in the Lake with a high earthen cofferdam, installed
a series of powerful pumps that sucked a thousand cubic feet of water
at a single stroke of the piston, and they drew 800,000,000 tons of
lake water up into the surrounding canals to be carried off to the sea
with much the same complacency that you would imbibe a glass of soda
through a straw. It took more than four years to complete the process.
When it was finally finished the Dutch struck a medal in commemoration
which bore in Latin the following matter-of-fact inscription: “Haarlem
Lake, after having for centuries assailed the surrounding fields to
enlarge itself by their destruction, conquered at last by the force of
machinery, has returned to Holland its 44,280 acres of invaded land.”
The significance of the Dutch _bon mot_, “God made the sea; we made
the shore,” will never be more apparent than when you look out from
the car window across the Zuidplaspolder near Rotterdam, with a minus
altitude of more than thirty feet below the level of the ocean at mean
tide.
Holland being, as a whole, the lowest country in the world, is
protected at the danger zones by the great dikes upon which almost
the entire kingdom depends for its safety from disastrous inundation,
and which require the annual cost of maintenance of approximately
$12,000,000 and the undivided attention of a whole department of
engineers. The mileage of the canals which intersect the country
in every direction is greater than the mileage of the railroads.
First and all the time, these canals, except those constructed for
special purposes, serve for conducting the superfluous water from the
cultivated areas. Second, they are highways for traffic. Travel on them
is cheaper than on the steam tram lines, which is cheaper, in turn,
than on the railways, for many of the latter are owned and operated by
private companies, as in England. Even some of the lines built by the
State are leased to a private concern. But unlike those of England,
there can be little doubt that an investment in their stocks is a
paying one, because railway building and railway up-keep in Holland
are comparative sinecures. Grades are unknown, curves are scarce as
the proverbial hen’s teeth, except in the approaches to a city, and I
failed to find a tunnel in the whole country.
But touring in Holland is not so cheap as it is either in Germany or
France. The unit basis of Dutch coinage is the _gulden_, of value equal
to slightly more than two _francs_ and just less than two _marks_.
There is even an oft repeated but exaggerated saying that a _gulden_ in
Holland will only go as far as a _mark_ in Germany. One of the reasons
for the expensiveness of travel through the Netherlands is that to stop
at any but the so-called first-class hostelries is a rather precarious
business. In spite of all the Dutchman’s reputation for cleanliness,
the less expensive hotels, unlike their ilk in Germany or Switzerland,
are often anything but scrupulous in this matter and sometimes
shockingly unsanitary.
The system of Dutch municipal government is almost identical with
that of Germany, the Burgomaster, or Mayor, being appointed by the
crown instead of being elected by the community, so that a man
may follow the profession of burgomastering as he would that of
engineering. It is, withal, a system that might well supplant that
in vogue in American cities, and if the experimental stages of
municipal government by commission--lately tentatively adopted in some
few cases as an expedient to do away with political bartering for
executive positions--if this form of government proves its worth, the
professional mayor may yet become with us a reality.
School attendance for children is compulsory in the Netherlands, but
not free. The equivalent of eight American cents is the charge imposed
by the State for one week’s tuition for one child in the primary
grades, with stipulated increments added to the fee as the pupil
advances. All schools are under the supervision of the State, and if a
family is found too poor to pay the school taxes on its children, the
fees are remitted. The trade school, however, of late inauguration, has
revolutionized the old-time classical education to a great degree.
Until the child attains the age of thirty years he or she is
subservient to parental authority and must even obtain, up until that
age, parental permission to marry--and the matter of marriage in
Holland is by no means the least interesting of the customs of the
country. Courtship is a protracted affair and follows the engagement
indefinitely. Two weeks prior to the date of the wedding the legal
declaration of the betrothal takes place, consisting of the “signing
on” of both parties involved. The bride, with apt acknowledgment that
an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, at once proceeds to
render herself immune from the usual deluge of cut glass and pie knives
by compiling a list of acceptable wedding presents for the consultation
of her relatives and friends, so that they may select such gifts as
are suited both to her needs and their pocketbooks.
Of the civil marriage ceremonies there are three classes, not at all
determined by the social positions of the contracting parties, but by
the time required to tie the knot and the corresponding fee imposed. A
first-class marriage may be performed on any day of the week, but the
second and third-class marriages are conducted upon certain days, the
different members of the City Council officiating by turns. Each of the
second-class ceremonies is performed separately and the ritual repeated
for each couple. A number of third-class marriages, however, may be
conducted at one and the same time, and practically at club rates. The
ceremony in this case is not altogether an impressive one but it serves
its purpose at a cheaper price and is more quickly over with. The
methods of procedure are somewhat as follows:
Brides and bridegrooms to be, friends, relatives, and witnesses are
ushered into a large room in the city hall. The member of Council in
charge takes his position upon the dais, and the clerk calls the names
of the contracting parties. They arise to acknowledge their identities,
which are duly vouched for by the various witnesses in each case. The
officer then proceeds to expatiate upon the duties of man and wife and
upon the holy bonds of matrimony, directing his awesome remarks to the
standing couples. In closing, he puts forth the question as to whether
each, in spite of all he has said, will take the other for better or
for worse, abide by the laws, and love and cherish each other until
death doth part, so help them. A loud and enthusiastic chorus in the
affirmative is followed by a banging of the table right soundly with
the official gavel, and the whole company is forthwith pronounced man
and wife. Of course it is assumed by the conspirators which maiden the
functionary has pronounced the wife of which young man; at all events,
there is nothing on record about the wrong husband decamping with the
wrong wife. Order comes out of apparent chaos and, as the story books
read, they all live happily ever after.
The civil ceremony is all that is required by law, but, possibly to
moisten the already well executed knot in the tie that binds, many
couples later undergo the religious ceremony in the church. The
familiar wedding ring figures in neither the religious nor the civil
ceremony. Each member of an engaged couple presents the other with a
plain gold ring at the time of “plighting their troth,” as we observe
in the novels, which is worn upon the third finger of the left hand
until after the marriage, when it becomes a wedding ring and is
transferred to the right hand.
Until the advent of the little Princess Juliana Holland realized her
danger of being ultimately absorbed by Germany. A German Prince had
married the sovereign of the Dutch nation, and German journals were
not reticent in suggesting that, in the event of Queen Wilhelmina
leaving no direct issue, the succession should revert to the family
of the Prince Consort. Moreover, Germany had ever been jealous of
Holland’s possession of the mouth of the greatest of German rivers--the
Rhine, of which she sought the control from its source to the sea.
Germany also had an eye upon Holland’s possessions for her own
colonization--possessions that give this little country second place
among the colonial powers of the world and which, in the Far East
alone, aggregate in acreage fourteen times her own area. But the birth
of Juliana precluded all immediate possibility of German usurpation,
and the Hollanders didn’t convalesce from the effects of the joyous
news for a whole week.
The Dutch are an intensely patriotic people and have made heroic
sacrifices to maintain the independence now assured them by the powers
of the world--and the birth of Juliana. They are phlegmatic rather than
impetuous; stoical rather than demonstrative; impassive rather than
excitable. By virtue of their country’s unique maritime position it has
bred the naval heroes, navigators, discoverers, and engineers whose
names will remain synonymous for indomitable pluck so long as there
exists a history of unequal fighting. By reason of the wealth derived
from the foreign trade that these men made possible it has fostered
conspicuous groups of artists and scholars and scientists who in their
times were the leaders of their guilds.
[Illustration: The Dutch build good roads and beautiful ones. On the
left is one of the long shady avenues leading from Veere to Domburg; on
the right a typical brick-paved highway]
It is with keen appreciation of the characteristics of the Hollander
which enable him to offer to the traveling world so delightful a
handmade territory, that I turn to the pages of “The Traveler” by
Oliver Goldsmith and quote a short summary of Holland from the pen
of one who traveled and observed, and who, by his enviable powers of
description, analysis, and condensation, could epitomize a volume of
significance in a single word of syncope.
“To men of other minds my fancy flies,
Embosom’d in the deep where Holland lies.
Methinks her patient sons before me stand,
Where the broad ocean leans against the land,
And, sedulous to stop the coming tide,
Lift the tall rampire’s artificial pride.
Onward, methinks, and diligently slow,
The firm connected bulwark seems to grow;
Spreading its long arms amidst the watery roar,
Scoops out an empire and usurps the shore.
While the pent ocean, rising o’er the pile,
Sees an amphibious world beneath her smile;
The slow canal, the yellow blossom’d vale,
The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail,
The crowded mart, the cultivated plain,
A new creation rescued from his reign.”
II
THE ISLAND OF WALCHEREN
It must be because the province of Zeeland seems too fearfully close
to be interesting that the average traveler through Holland, if he
enter by Flushing--one of the little country’s two principal sea
gates--hurries from deck to dock like a somnambulist, and fights for
his compartment in the four-something A.M. train, bound for Amsterdam
or The Hague. Perhaps, after being wakened most unsympathetically,
if not rudely, at three-thirty in the morning, he feels disagreeable
enough to take the first train out, no matter whence it cometh nor
whither it goeth. But in so doing the aforementioned average sight-seer
will make his first mistake--and a grave one--with regard to Holland.
Part of the best of the country, scenically and historically, is just
at the other end of the gangplank.
This business of the arrival at Flushing of the night boat from
Folkestone at the unheavenly hour of four in the morning, ought in
itself be sufficient excuse to go first thing to the bedroom steward
the evening of embarkation and whisper unto him casually but firmly
that the odds might run as high as ten chances to one his name would
be Dutch for Dennis if he dared to rap you out of your bunk earlier
than six. The steamship company reserves the privilege of putting you
off the boat at seven, at any rate; so, to arise at six will just give
you time to array yourself in the proper regalia, indulge in a hurried
breakfast of ham and eggs on board (at a shilling an egg), and climb
into the seven-seven train for that capital of quaintness, not to
mention the province of Zeeland--Middelburg. The four-something train
ignores Middelburg with a passing snort.
And a word here to the wise is sufficient: don’t settle yourself for an
all day train ride. Don’t even exert yourself to the extent of hoisting
your grip to the baggage rack. If the compartment be crowded--which it
never is, going to Middelburg--you might hold your suit case on your
lap the entire journey without fatigue or even _ennui_. Middelburg is
four miles from Flushing. If the engineer doesn’t slow down to blow the
whistle it will take just eleven minutes to cover the distance.
I have anticipated the fact that the sum total of your baggage will
consist of a suit case, because personally conducting a trunk through
Holland would be just as incongruous as saddling a Shetland pony with
an elephant howdah.
There are two methods of seeing the Island of Walcheren, equally
fascinating, and the visitor can avail himself of both in one and the
same day. The first is by climbing the two hundred and seventy-odd
steps to the top of “Long John” in Middelburg, and the second by
a drive around the Island, covering, perhaps, thirty miles, and
touching the three principal places of interest: Veere, Domburg, and
Westkapelle. To state here that the Island of Walcheren is not an
island might seem a bit ambiguous, but it is true, nevertheless, and
may be explained away as follows:
Long before our time, perhaps in the distant Paleozoic age, Walcheren
was nothing more than shallow water. Along came the Dutch--who have
a happy faculty of making their own geography as they need it--and,
seeing prospects in its development, built a sort of cofferdam around
it, pumped the place dry, and made it into an island. It made a fairly
good island, and in later years they grafted it on to the parent land
by a long embankment across an arm of the Scheldt, and made it into a
peninsula. A peninsula it still remains, but its future is all a matter
of conjecture.
“Long John,” or _Lang Jan_, if the sobriquet be translated into
Dutch, is practically the Washington Monument of Walcheren. It is the
two-hundred-and-eighty-foot tower of the Nieuwe Kerk in Middelburg,
capped with a climax of forty-one bells that chime a quaint fragment
of some familiar popular melody every seven-and-a-half minutes. On the
hour Long John literally vibrates from foundation to weather vane in
a frenzied endeavor to pour forth _in toto_ the accumulation of more
or less music administered in small doses during the previous sixty
minutes.
It is up the middle of Long John you must climb in a spiral to obtain
a first impression of Walcheren. It is a tedious task, and by the time
you are halfway up you are blessing the memory of the man who twined
the now much worn hand rope along the steep staircase. You may even be
about to give up in disgust, when, of a sudden, you stumble in upon the
lofty hermitage of old Hendrick Landman, the keeper of the bells.
Hendrick sits serenely in his armchair in an extremely well ventilated
room at the top of the spiral and lets people pay a small fee for the
privilege of climbing up to have him point out the view and exhibit
his mechanical masterpiece a few ladder lengths higher up. Hendrick’s
view alone is doubly worth the climb, and, after reimbursing him to the
equivalent extent of about eight cents in American coinage, you will
also have to admit that he can certainly keep bells. I know nothing
of whatever else Hendrick can or cannot do, but he can certainly keep
bells; and after all, a man can hope for nothing more than to achieve
success in his chosen calling. Hendrick also takes just pride in the
condition of the Gargantuan Swiss music box that is responsible for
the two or three bars every seven-and-a-half minutes. He oils it and he
winds it assiduously twice every day in the year.
Taken by and large, Hendrick is an unimpeachable bell keeper.
After having been duly and visibly impressed with the manner in which
Hendrick keeps his bells and his garrulous music box, it might be well
to tarry with him for a few moments at the foot of the ladder and
attempt a squint or two through the old gentleman’s telescope, which,
from the appearance of it, might be a lineal descendant of the first
ones ever put together by Zacharias Jansen, all of three hundred years
ago and not more than a few feet from the base of the tower you stand
upon.
Jansen, the inventor of the telescope and the microscope, and Father
Jacob Cats, the humorist-poet-philosopher, were contemporaries in
Middelburg for a time, and the town claims them as its two most
illustrious sons. The children of Jansen’s genius may still be viewed
in the little Museum of the Zeeuwsch Genootschap der Watenschappen
(don’t ask me to pronounce the name of that society; it is task enough
to spell it correctly) in the Wagenaarstraat of Zeeland’s capital;
Father Cats will live in Holland in book form until the end of all
things.
If the atmosphere be clear, you would think that a strong wind from
the north could topple Long John, including bells, music box, Hendrick
Landman and his telescope, and all, upon the bathing beach of Flushing
itself--the place seems so close below you. Flushing of to-day is
nothing more than a pseudo bathing resort, much patronized by easily
pleased Germans, and a handy terminus for ’cross-channel passenger
boats. But the name of Flushing also means much in the history of
Holland.
Here was born in 1607 that popular idol of the Dutch, Admiral de
Ruyter, the son of a rope maker, although his mother, whose name
he assumed, happened to be of noble birth. De Ruyter flourished
at a particularly favorable time in the middle of the seventeenth
century, when the navigation acts passed by Cromwell placed unbearable
restrictions on trade with Holland. The ensuing war with England called
into play de Ruyter’s talents, and a large majority of the thirteen
great naval battles fought within a period of sixteen months were won
by the Dutch. It was not, however, until a later war with England that
de Ruyter performed his principal and culminating achievement. In 1667,
at the age of sixty, he mustered his fleet and forced a fairway up the
Thames to the very gates of London herself, demolishing fortifications
and shipping as he went, and plunging London into a panic.
Flushing, too, was the scene of embarkation of the unhappy Charles
V in 1556, and of Philip II three years later, neither of whom ever
returned. As you look out upon the Scheldt from your coign of vantage
at the top of Long John you can almost picture the scene on the deck
of the vessel when Philip denounced the Prince of Orange as having
thwarted his plans, declaring the innocent William an ingrate, and
doubtless a host of other names unfit for publication.
It was Flushing that first hoisted the ensign of liberty against the
Spaniard, Alva, and it was Flushing, during the Napoleonic wars of
1809, that the English fleet, with the ultimate capture of Antwerp at
heart, bombarded so vigorously that the magnificent Town Hall, a couple
of churches, and no less than two hundred private houses were razed to
the ground.
[Illustration: Looking down over the roofs of Middelburg from the
bell tower of Long John. From here one can see most of the Island of
Walcheren]
From Long John one can see plainly the towns on the north and west
coasts of Walcheren, and often even the spires of Antwerp are visible,
while directly below--a mass of red roofs punctured here and there
with patches of trees--stretches Middelburg. To the left is the market
place, bounded on the north by the handsome Town Hall begun in the
sixteenth century, the embellishment of whose façade by twenty-five
ancient statues of the counts and countesses of Holland helps it to
hold its place as one of the finest and most interesting late-Gothic
edifices in the Netherlands. The tower of the Town Hall has a chime,
too, and each time after Long John so insistently proclaims the hour
of the day or night--for Long John takes the credit of giving standard
time to Middelburg--it must get a bit on his nerves to have “Foolish
Betsy” (_Gekke Betje_), up in the Town Hall tower, rattle off her
cacophonous contradiction a minute or two earlier, or later, as the
case may be.
To the right is the peaceful square inclosed by the famous old Abbey
of St. Nicholas, founded as early as 1106, and later, in the sixteenth
century, the scene of a memorable meeting of the Knights of the Golden
Fleece.
Then, after a last good-by to Hendrick and his companionable telescope,
you clatter down the tower steps, ignoring with consummate contempt the
twining hand rope which, in the ascent, so forcibly appealed to your
avoirdupois.
The road from Middelburg to Veere, a distance of three or four miles,
is brick-paved and lined with trees, as is the habit of most highways
in Holland; and if it is your first experience thoughts pertaining to
the thoroughness of the Dutch will doubtless be in order. It may have
taken more time and it may have cost more money to lay brick roads,
but then the expense and labor of repair are minimum. The building of
roads is but one of the many tasks that the Hollander does not believe
in doing over again in a year or two; so he lays them in brick--and
the comfort of passengers in vehicles is of no consideration. There
is a road from Monnikendam to Edam which might give a horse spavin to
look upon. The blame for the wearing out of the road, in this case, is
placed upon the poor beast, and down the middle of it they have laid a
brick-paved path, the sides being merely macadamized.
The landscape of Walcheren seems set as if for a theatrical
performance. There is a place for everything, and everything is in its
place. Left, a tree-encircled, thatch roofed farmhouse, built as an
addition to the barn in the back, so as to save a wall; right, a line
of willows, all twins, that fringe a road along the top of a dike; up
stage, a windmill of methodical movements, and, perhaps, a sailboat
passing slowly along a narrow canal--too narrow and too high above the
eye for the audience to obtain a glimpse of any water at all--giving
the effect of a mirage; down stage, a black and white cow. Of course
it will be a black and white cow, because, figuratively, you might
count the red cows in Holland on your fingers. And such a scene is not
typical of the Island of Walcheren alone, but of the Netherlands in
general. Any other type of scenery might become wearisome, but possibly
the brevity of the train ride or the substitution of a boat or steam
tram trip between one point of interest and another has a lot to do
with relieving the monotony.
Of all Zeeland, the particular costume of that province can be observed
to the best advantage on the island of Walcheren. A milkmaid of
Middelburg, for example, is a joy to look upon. Her spotless white
cap bristles at the temples with _kurkenkrullen_ like the antennæ of a
prehistoric beetle. Her skirts are ankle-high and padded generously at
the hips. If she be naturally rotund and the skirts need no padding,
circumstantial evidence of the fact is sufficient to stamp her the
belle of the community. The sleeves of her bodice are very short and
very tight, pinching the arms above the elbows so that they might be
mistaken for a pair of aggravated cases of inflammatory rheumatism.
Of course the sun in all its glory strikes the backs of these arms,
for she always walks with them akimbo, the better to balance the pails
which dangle one from each end of a wooden yoke, enameled a vivid
robin’s egg blue. But the redder the arms from the rays of the sun
and the tighter the pinch of the sleeves, the flatter the chest and
the broader the hips, the sooner will she cease to be a mere milkmaid
through the medium of a simple marriage ceremony in the village _kerk_.
The only discordant note in the otherwise harmonious landscape on
the road to Veere may be said to be a flitting one. It assumes the
distended shape of a buxom village maiden in the full provincial
costume--padded skirts and all--astride a bicycle, spinning townward
or homeward over the bricks. For the bicycle, be it known, is the
natural--and it has therefore become the national--means of locomotion
in Holland. Everybody rides bicycles; and since the only hills are
the approaches to the dikes or across the humpbacked span of a canal
drawbridge, their invention has been no less a boon to the populace
at large than it has been a bane to the sight-seer. In The Hague,
for example, they have become a veritable pest, and to be constantly
dodging them in the streets keeps a person very much on the jump.
By and by you will rattle into Veere. You can tell it is Veere by its
church, for Veere’s church is something to remember. It is by far the
biggest thing on the island of Walcheren. It is the first building of
historical or architectural importance that you will pass on entering
the town from Middelburg, and its immensity, so foreign to the Veere
of to-day, may be able to convey to you some remote idea of what Veere
used to be before the sea leaked in over the cofferdam and blotted out
most of the place between suns.
[Illustration: This picturesque tower at Westkapelle belonged
originally to a fifteenth-century church that was burned in 1831. It is
now used as a lighthouse]
Built in 1348, this church weathered even the terrible encroachment of
the sea; but along came Napoleon in 1812. Napoleon, being accustomed
to move, lock, stock and barrel, into the most sumptuous quarters of
every town he visited, took a particular liking to Veere’s church and
promptly made a barracks of it. There is no more complete method of
demolishing the interior of a building than to turn it into a barracks,
especially a Napoleonic barracks, and since the Little Corsican’s
unwelcome visit to Veere the old church has remained ravaged, mildewed,
and decayed. In a corner of the east end, however, the people of
Veere still gather for spiritual worship. Twelve years ago they started
to restore the church, but if the receipt of funds is not a little more
prompt in the future they may some day have to restore the restorations.
Several quaint old houses of the sixteenth century; an impressive tower
at the mouth of the harbor, whose mate lies buried under the sea; and
the Town Hall, containing an unimportant museum save for a few royal
documents and a richly enameled goblet, presented to the town in 1551
by Maximilian of Burgundy, the first marquis of Veere--these and the
church are the sole relics of Veere’s previous prosperity not claimed
by the ocean.
A rapid succession of long, shady, hedge-fringed avenues lead from
Veere to Domburg, the curious little bathing resort on the northwest
coast of the island. Approximately halfway, at West Hove, there stands
a famous old castle, once the residence of the Abbots of Middelburg,
which remains in such a perfect state of preservation--although
modernized, of course, to a certain degree--that in the summer it
is used as a sanatorium for the poor children of the Flushing and
Middelburg districts. Just across the road an attractive modern
building, more like a country home in design, does duty as a
full-fledged hospital.
The town of Domburg gives not the least evidence of being situated
on the seaside, as do the most of our Atlantic Coast resorts by their
bleakness, but seems rather an inland village, thickly sprinkled with
and all but completely surrounded by trees. At its back and just a few
steps behind the sand dunes, lies the sea, while a stretch of well
formed, sandy beach, which entices to Domburg each summer a goodly
number of Dutch people and the few foreigners who know of its charms,
slopes away beyond the dunes.
For five miles farther, to Westkapelle, the road lies first behind the
dunes and then behind the giant dike for which this, one of the most
exposed and at the same time one of the lowest sections of Holland, is
famous. Presently you find yourself bowling along on top of the dike,
with the sea lapping restlessly at its thick, beveled-stone hide on
the right, and the village of Westkapelle, nestling some feet below
the water level even at low tide, yet secure behind the backbone of
its protector, on the left. This dike, being of necessity one of the
largest and strongest along the Dutch coast, receives the tenderest of
care in the hands of the Government, for, in case of a break in it, the
Island of Walcheren would be reduced to its former state of shallow
sea water in less time than it would take to set the type of the
“scare-head” in the newspapers to tell of the catastrophe. The laborers
who are constantly employed at work upon it are supposed to be the
direct descendants of the Danish fishermen who dragged these waters
with their nets far back in Norman times.
Aside from its dike the most conspicuous object in the vicinity of
Westkapelle is the lofty, square, Gothic tower, belonging originally to
a fifteenth-century church burned down in 1831. This tower the Dutch
have aptly turned into practical service by making a lighthouse of it.
The powerful reflectors at its top have a radius of twenty-five miles
or more and, even in the daytime, the tower is as much of a landmark
along the west coast of the island as the church at Veere is along the
north.
Driving from Westkapelle back to Middelburg you scarcely pass out from
the throes of one tollgate until you are enmeshed in those of another.
You are assumed to be honest in Zeeland and expected to march right
up to the door of the tollhouse, pass a cordial time of day with the
character who keeps it, and pay your little five or six Dutch cents
without even so much as giving vent to the time-honored conjecture that
the farmers thereabouts must be too well off to work out their taxes on
the roadway.
Nor is it only the tollhouse keeper who has a pleasant word of greeting
for you, but every native you pass, man, woman, or child, will have
a nod and a smile and a cheery “Good evening”--although you may not
recognize the verbiage. The sturdy truck farmer, with gold earrings
and cropped hair, trudging homeward in the wake of his push-cart; the
thickly padded maiden with her dangling milk pails; the tiny boys and
girls, diminutive counterparts of their parents as regards a costume
which wavers not with the change of fashion--all seem to think it their
especial assignment to treat the tourist on Walcheren as a visitor and
not an invader.
III
FROM MIDDELBURG TO DORTRECHT
If the American traveler expects to stop off along the line from
Middelburg at a little place called Goes, he will undergo his first
operation with the Dutch language. Should he fail to catch sight of
the signboard that proclaims in print the name of the station, or to
compare his watch with his timetable in order to ascertain in this
manner the exact bearings of the point of stoppage, he will probably
be carried on through, for it will not occur to him that he had
planned to detrain when the tin-horn-girdled conductor rattles up and
down the platform shouting, “Whose.” But “Whose” is the way Goes is
pronounced--and this is simply introductory.
Some there be who try to insist that we have nothing to brag about
in the way of euphonic orthography, which is more or less of a cold
fact. But then, we are used to it. The same may be said of the Dutch
language, and it is to be hoped that the Dutch are used to _it_. They
seem to get along with it passably well, at all events. But their
ability to master the impossible does not alleviate our troubles in
the least. Any nation that can spell “ice” y-s and i-j-s with equal
complacency, and gather the same meaning from both methods, deserves to
be misunderstood.
The Dutch letter _g_, to come back to Goes, strikes terror to the vocal
organs of the most versatile linguist. It is treated with somewhat the
same disrespect that the Spanish treat their _j_, only more so. The
Dutch pronunciation of a word beginning with _g_ is started somewhere
in the anatomical vicinity of the diaphragm and allowed to percolate
up through the æsophagus, gathering harshness and strength until
it comes in violent contact with the larynx, whence it is finally
ejaculated with about the same sound as a bad attack of hay fever. I
quote a passage from a certain work on Holland, the author of which
infers that if any person not of Dutch descent can repeat the sentence
correctly as to sound and emphasis, to him the mastery of the remainder
of the language will seem like child’s play. The sentence follows:
“_Grietje, gooi geen goeje groente in de gracht._” The interlinear
cribbing of it would be in English, “Gretchen, do not throw any good
vegetables into the canal.”
[Illustration: Behind the dike near Goes--a typical Dutch scene, with
the black and white cattle and the milkmaid]
But since the Dutch have made so many brave attempts to discover a
goodly portion of the east coast of the United States, there may be
found in any geography of America a number of proper names, originally
of Dutch origin, but now Anglicized to meet our requirements. They
thought so much of the beauties of the lower end of New York Bay
that they promptly applied to it the term, “Beautiful Outlet,” or,
in Dutch, _Helle Gat_. “Hell Gate” must obviously be a deal less
difficult, although scarcely more poetic. For the same reason does the
Americanized Cape Henlopen supplant the correct name of the Friesland
town of Hindeloopen from which its discoverer hailed. The name of a
certain street in lower Manhattan must also be of Dutch derivation,
for our word “Bowery” may be found as _bouwerij_, which means a
“peasant’s dwelling” in the vocabulary of the Netherlands. And these
are but a few of the numerous words and syllables heard in America
that may be attributed to Dutch influence.
Hard by the town of Goes the tourist will obtain a comprehensive
idea of what a real _polder_ looks like, although it is scarcely
distinguishable from the fact that all of the scenery along the route
from Flushing east is typical, below-sea-level Dutch, lavishly cut by
canals into triangles, trapezoids, and parallelograms.
A _polder_, by way of explanation, is the reclaimed bed of a sheet
of water; and since the greater part of Holland lies below the level
of the sea, the most of it is _polder_. Land thus reclaimed is of
extraordinary fertility by reason of the fact that the water under
which it was once submerged, having been pumped into surrounding
canals, is readily available for irrigation purposes in event of a dry
season.
The initial move in this really marvelous process of making land while
you wait consists of building a dike around the prospective _polder_ to
fortify it against future inundations. Next, they literally kick the
water out of the inclosed area by means of a peculiarly constructed
water wheel, formerly driven by a windmill, but latterly--the Dutch
having become inoculated with twentieth century impatience--by the
adaptation of steam or gasoline power to the task. Often, however,
the bed of the marsh or lake to be reclaimed lies too deep to admit
of its water being at once kicked into the main canals to be carried
off to the ocean. Such a condition of affairs will necessitate the
lake being surrounded with a veritable series of dikes, each higher
than the one before, like the amphitheater of a clinic (a slightly
exaggerated simile), and each with a canal on its farther side from
the _polder_. The water is then pumped from a lower level to a higher
one until, finally, it is forced to admit the utter uselessness of
trying to compete with the Dutch. The _polder_ near Goes, known as
the Wilhelminapolder, is something like 4,000 acres in extent and was
reclaimed from the sea the same year that Napoleon was undoing the
history of ecclesiastical architecture in Veere.
_Polder_ making is a specialty with the Dutch engineers, and the end of
their ingenuity is not yet in sight. Even now they are making gigantic
preparations to spend upwards of $80,000,000 in the reclamation of
the whole lower half of the Zuyder Zee, two thirds of which is to be
constructed into a _polder_ having an area of 1,400 square miles. The
dike will stretch across the Zee from the village of Ewyksluis in North
Holland to Piaam in Friesland, the cost of which alone is estimated at
about $18,000,000.
[Illustration: Dutch engineers are planning a stupendous project to
reclaim the shaded portions that are now part of the Zuyder Zee.]
On any other day but Tuesday there can be no excuse for the traveler to
take the least heed of the train conductor’s garglings and stop off at
Goes; but the costumes of Zeeland, as seen at a Tuesday’s market, are
well worth a break in the journey.