which intersects the long, straggling island of that name and of which
Goes is the capital. The canal was cut through by the Dutch engineers
in 1863–66 as a sort of apology to nature for their having deliberately
closed up an arm of the Scheldt called the Kreekerak--a body of water
that the Dutch never trusted since its contribution to the inundation
of the east coast of Flemish Zeeland. Previous to 1532 that east coast
was fertile farm land and populated by peace-loving peasants. But in
that year the dike burst. Three thousand inhabitants are alleged to
have perished, and the locality is still under water, it being known
to-day as Verdronken Land, or “Drowned Land.”
A little later your train will cross the Kreekerak on the embankment
they built, and Bergen-op-Zoom is the next stop.
They say Bergen-op-Zoom used to be one of the most flourishing towns in
the Netherlands. Doubtless that is true. The only flourishing parts to
be found about it now are its thousand and one rags flourished by its
thousand and one housemaids scrubbing its thousand and one doorsteps.
The latter are incessantly being cleaned and recleaned by the former
in the hands of the intermediate; so much so, indeed, that it appears
as if each maid were trying for a record. Bending double or down on
their knees--in every conceivable attitude they attack their front
doorsteps as many times a day as they think necessary, which is rather
more than often. I have never read a consular report that speaks of
Holland as a territory open for trade in mops. They may be on sale, but
I have yet to see one in action. For one cause or another the Dutch
seem to cling to the hand method of wringing the cloth over the bucket,
then bending double and sloshing it from side to side across the
pavement with a movement akin to that of a nervous captive elephant;
but perhaps for the reason that this Dutch method is not and never can
be thorough, do they deem it exigent to repeat the operation with such
frequence.
The lesson gleaned from all this is how the Dutch have beaten their
lifelong enemy, water, at its own game, ousted it, and then turned
round and made of it an humble and subjected medium for keeping the
country clean.
Most towns west of the Zuyder Zee are so notoriously clean that even
walking over the pavements is not encouraged. For reasons of his own a
householder will continue his property line out across his two or three
feet of pavement with the help of a chain or iron railing, more or less
decorative, so that the pedestrian, when he comes to the barrier, must
side-step into the street in order to pass it.
There are four or five other features of Bergen-op-Zoom that I
remember no less distinctly. One was the imposing old Gevangenpoort
with its massive brick archway. It dates from the fifteenth century
and constitutes one of the few remaining relics of the ancient
town fortifications. Another was the accomplished female at the
railway station, who served liquid refreshments to warm and weary
travelers and, by way of diversion for the sake of accumulating
a few extra absurd little ten cent pieces, handled the baggage
of arriving and departing visitors to the town with the ease and
strength of a full-blown _dientsmann_. If there happened to be too
many pieces of luggage to carry at once, she invariably remembered
where someone had hidden a wheelbarrow conveniently near the station.
This she would fetch, often without the knowledge or consent of its
owner, load the luggage upon it, and march off with a dignified,
“what-do-you-think-of-me” sort of an air.
Another feature was the glaring heat of the place--the day of my visit
being a rather humid one in July; and still another--the most important
of all--was a quiet, shady nook on the low portico of a little café
just back of the Groote Kerk, from which sheltered position I looked up
more than once over the tops of the trees and admired the lofty steeple
of the old house of worship through the bottom of a tall, slender
glass.
But a short ride from Bergen-op-Zoom brings you to Rosendaal, which,
from the apparent activity about the station, might be by long
odds the most important town in all Holland. It is the seat of the
Dutch customhouse and therefore the junction of many railway lines,
north, south, east, and west; or _vice versa_. All roads lead in the
Netherlands, not to Rome, but to Rosendaal. To explore the town is
scarcely worth the trouble, but the railway station itself deserves
especial notice. If you enter Holland from the Belgian frontier it
will be impossible not to notice it, for the train will stop long
enough at Rosendaal for the customs officials to question each and
every passenger personally about cigars, perfumery, and other dutiable
articles. If you come from the east or the west it is eleven chances
to one you will have to change cars at Rosendaal, in which latter
predicament you will at least enjoy a stroll up and down the long
station platform.
This Rosendaal station struck me as being about the cleanest, shiniest
place, for a railway station, at which I had ever changed cars. Not a
speck of soot or dust was visible to the naked eye, and it is possible
that one of old Zacharias Jansen’s microscopes wouldn’t be able to
find any either, although a certain few, larger and more grotesque
than their fellows, might be brought to notice under the lens of an
instrument of later model. Every doorway was guarded by a pair of
little boxwood or bay tree sentries, and flowers filled the boxes under
the windows. The leather tables and chairs in the waiting-rooms and
restaurant all but suggested a Spanish Renaissance influence, and their
great brass-topped tacks glittered as if they had never known what it
was to be tainted with stain or smirch--and this in a railway station.
But then, a Dutch locomotive is not nearly so offensive, I might
say, as one of the American breed; and if the proper legislation is
forthcoming we shall be sending experts to Holland soon to take notes
on how they do it. All railway locomotives in Holland are under the
supervision of an arm of the government service, and although the most
of them bear the shop-plate of Glasgow or Manchester, they must be
equipped with an apparatus, not only for consuming the smoke but for
the prevention of the emission of sparks and other combustible matter.
Descriptions and drawings showing the details and workings of these
contrivances must be submitted to the Supervising Board of Railways
before each new type of locomotive is purchased. Upon its delivery
every newly purchased locomotive must undergo a thorough test and be
approved by the inspector of the Board before it may be placed in
service.
The same regulations apply to stationary engines burning bituminous
coal, which would otherwise emit great clouds of black smoke, gases,
and soot. Restrictions, in some localities, are even placed upon
the particular kind of fuel locomotives may burn. The province of
Zuid-Holland, for example, has issued the eikon that only coke may be
used upon the locomotives that traverse its railway lines.
A few miles before you come to Dortrecht the railway crosses a long
bridge that spans an arm of the North Sea known as the Hollandsch Diep.
The actual breadth of the Diep is a mile and five-eighths, but its
projecting stone piers cut the length of the bridge down to slightly
less than a mile. This, the longest bridge in Holland, was completed
in November, 1871, after being more than three years in the building,
and its fourteen arches, with a span of 110 yards each, rest upon
stone buttresses, the foundations of some of which are sunk fifty or
sixty feet below low water mark. From the center of the structure you
may look out over the Hollandsch Diep on the left and, on the right,
the eastern end of the Biesbosch, or “reed forest”--a great, watery
district more than forty square miles in area and lately reclaimed. It
was formed in 1421, at the same time and under the same conditions as
the Hollandsch Diep, by a terrific overflow of the sea that blotted out
seventy-two towns and villages and the lives of 100,000 people.
Dortrecht, called Dordt by the Dutch, is practically a survivor of that
calamity. The town was founded away back in 1008 and, four hundred
years later, made an island by the obstreperous Merwede--the name given
to a short part of the river formed by the confluence of the Maas and
the Waal, which, beyond Dortrecht, is called De Noord and, by the time
it approaches Rotterdam, known as the Maas again.
By reason of a special privilege called The Staple--pure and simple
“graft,” plainly speaking--Dortrecht in the Middle Ages was the most
prosperous town in Holland, for the workings of The Staple were
far-reaching and marvelous. The Staple allowed Dortrecht, by royal
warrant, be it remembered, to act in the capacity of a kind of clearing
house for all goods, whether wines, grains, metals, or fabrics, that
entered the domains of Holland by way of the Rhine. Now the territory
punctured by these hundred and one apparently different and distinct
rivers that so muddle the geography of the southern part of Holland for
the tourist, is nothing more nor less than the wide-spreading estuary
of the one river, Rhine. As every cargo that came down the river had
necessarily to be unloaded at Dortrecht, municipal and private money
chests burst their stout iron hoops in their efforts to contain the
duties and taxes imposed. And in this kind of business buccaneering the
place reveled for centuries, until Rotterdam, overcome with jealousy in
1618, stopped the procedure at the point of the bayonet.
[Illustration: A picturesque corner of Dortrecht, called Dordt by the
Dutch. In the Middle Ages it was the most prosperous town in Holland]
If Wilmington, Delaware, although just twice as large in point of
population, could boast of a windmill or two and a few odoriferous
canals, bordered with numerous sixteenth century façades that slanted
out over them as if in imminent danger of toppling into them; and
if she had a narrow street of rather serpentine proclivities, like
the Wynstraat, down which the rolling stock of the local traction
company, in the shape and vintage of an ancient horse car, clanged
its weary way, she might be taken, dot and tittle, for Dortrecht.
Since the forced abolition of The Staple, the most of Dortrecht’s
40,000 inhabitants have gone into the more legitimate business of
shipbuilding. But Wilmington, to achieve this, would also have to
level off her hills to a certain depth below the sea, which might then
necessitate the diking of the Delaware. It would be a mighty task and,
after all is said and done, she would gain little but history.
Here in Dortrecht were born the brothers De Witt, Cornelius and John,
whose equal as councilors and statesmen Holland has not been able to
reproduce. The dome of the ancient Groothoofdpoort, one of the town
gates of the sixteenth century that stands at the harbor end of the
Wynstraat, contains, among other relics, a collection of medals, many
of which were struck in commemoration of the tragedy of the Binnenhof
at The Hague. Nicolas Maes, Albert Cuyp, and Ary Scheffer are the three
most famous Dutch painters that Dortrecht takes pride in claiming as
her own.
Like Leyden, Dortrecht experienced her period of siege in the hands
of the Spaniards, although of not nearly so long duration, and relief
was effected in much the same manner. Her coat of arms, consisting of
a milkmaid _couchant_ under her docile bovine on a field of--garlic,
we’ll say, strikes forever the keynote of the town’s relief.
It seems that a milkmaid in the employ of a certain wealthy farmer
living near the city, having gone into the fields in pursuit of her
daily duties, discovered the Spaniards hidden behind the hedges.
Probably out of pure reticence, bashfulness, timidity, downright
scared-to-death-ness--what you will--she took no notice of the ambushed
members of the opposite sex, but went as gleefully as possible at
her task, and, having completed it, shouldered her yoke and started
homeward. It cannot be held against her if she did hasten a bit, for
a consultation of the records will prove that a thunderstorm was
gathering on the horizon.
Arriving at the farmhouse, she told her employer of what she had seen,
and he told the Burgomaster. The Burgomaster dispatched a spy, who,
in turn, discovered that the milkmaid related no myth but a cold and
brittle fact. Soldiers were mustered forthwith, and the dikes were cut,
allowing the merciless river to rush in and catch the cruel Castilians
unawares at their bloody job. It is alleged that Spaniards galore were
drowned in the raging torrent, and many were “utterly disappointed in
their design.” At all events, the town was saved and the States issued
orders to the effect that the farmer be reimbursed for the loss of his
cattle, real estate, and personal property, and that the milkmaid’s
likeness, together with that of her faithful and nonplussible cow,
be impressed upon the new coinage of the city. “And she had, during
her life, and hers forever,” according to a medieval historian, “an
allowance of fifty pounds per annum--a noble requital for a virtuous
service.”
The first glimpse of Dortrecht that you get as you emerge from its
railway station will put you at once in sympathy with it. Prefaced
by an open, sunny, brick-paved space, a long avenue of great trees
stretches away directly in front, while back in their shade stands
the peripatetic horse car, as if loath to attempt the transfer of
passengers in the heat of the day. On either side of the avenue are
beautiful residences, their lawns encircled, not by the inappropriate
and unsightly fence, but with a narrow canal, like a miniature moat,
which is bridged only at the front and the rear entrances to the
grounds. Everything seems so peaceful, so conducive to comfort and
leisure, that you will wish you had the time to stay in Dortrecht
indefinitely and take up your abode near the station--a wish that even
in your wildest flights of fancy would never apply to Wilmington,
Delaware.
Import a treacherous-looking Italian in a vivid pink shirt and let
him stir up the aroma by poling his mournful gondola up and down a
certain canal in Dortrecht, and you will have a scene in Venice itself.
This canal, spanned at intervals by narrow bridges and bordered with
three-story houses that hang over it menacingly, is obviously the
reason why so much good stout canvas and so many tubes of excellent
paint have been used up by Dutch artists in picturing Dortrecht; for a
little of Venice, they must have thought, is better than none at all.
In view, therefore, of the length, tediousness, and expense of a trip
to Venice in those days, many of the best of the Dutch painters stayed
home and exercised their talents on that canal in Dortrecht. All of
which we may consider a boon to the art of the Netherlands as well as
to the picture-loving public.
[Illustration: “He who claims that the romance of shipping has
succumbed under the pressure of modern methods has never been to
Rotterdam”]
IV
ROTTERDAM
He who says the romance of the West is dead has never mingled much with
the “eight-section man” down in the southwestern corner of Texas. He
who avers that the romance of steel is played out and defunct has never
straddled an I-beam of a New York skyscraper in the building high above
the vortexes of street traffic, above the flirt of a housemaid hanging
out clothes on a lower roof. He who claims that the romance of shipping
has succumbed under the pressure of modern methods has never been to
Rotterdam.
They have a pretty park in that San Francisco of Holland that fringes
the bank of the Maas. On its river side, near the entrance, there is a
café, where, in the evening, the less romantic Rotterdamer basks and
imbibes in the throes of a virulent orchestra. Farther along under the
trees, past the café and overlooking the river, numerous benches invite
the lover of the sea and its ships to sit him down and gaze upon the
great steel hulls--and wooden ones, too--that have just returned from,
or are about to depart for, a lengthy and uncertain argument with
Father Neptune.
The view from here is several times more magnetic than it is from the
neighborhood of the café, and so here, about dusk, come those wizened
warriors upon whom the sea has cast her spell once and for all time,
to sit and smoke their pipes upside down and dream, perhaps, of other
days, of other ships, of other seas. Three or four may occupy a single
bench, but it will be an hour before a word is passed between them. It
is their only method of rejuvenation, and they are loath to be reminded
that their day is almost done. A certain sort of reverence pervades the
place; it would seem a blasphemy even to speak aloud.
On one of these wooden benches I sat one evening at sunset, looking
out across to the docks on the opposite side of the river. Busy little
motor boats were sputtering hither and thither between the shipping,
bent upon the fulfillment of their last missions of the day. A few
hundred yards farther up, a couple of gloomy-looking steam ferries,
built like Rhine river tugs, transferred their deck loads of workmen
from the different docks and machine shops on the Feijenoord to the
Westplein landing in Rotterdam. From out in the stream came the rattle
of chain through hawse pipe, as a Portuguese tramp, having entered the
harbor too late for a stranger to dock, was preparing an anchorage
for the night. Close by lay a Norwegian “wind jammer”--so close that
the two of them might easily have rubbed figure-heads. A big cargo
boat, bound out, preceded by a tiny tug to herald her approach and
followed by its twin to help keep her straight while passing, an exact
fit, through the draw to one of the many “havens,” bayed sonorously
for the less conspicuous craft to get out of her way; while alongside
the Wilhelminakade the upper decks of a great passenger-carrying
leviathan, already electric lighted, showed through the rigging of the
intermediate vessels. Out of respect for the tide, she was to sail at
three the next morning, and her passengers, when they awakened, would
find themselves well down the English Channel on their way back to New
York after a summer in Europe.
Presently, two young women, pushing a baby-coach between them, came
strolling along, and took up positions at the railing just in front of
me. Plainly they were English, and, although I strained every nerve
to overhear their conversation (which was mean of me), but could not,
I divined the reason for their coming. The same thing occurs a dozen
times a day in Liverpool, in ’Frisco, in Sydney, in Valparaiso, in
every port of any consequence in the world. One was the wife, and the
other perhaps the sister, or her sister, or maybe a close friend. And
there was also the kiddy.
Their vigil was not long in being rewarded, for during the three weeks’
absence--three months’, more likely, if the voyage had been a long
one--they had perused the Lloyd reports daily and diligently, and with
the additional aid of a letter or two, had calculated the time of
arrival to a nicety.
Soon a great black hull appeared far down the river. Darkness was
gathering fast, but they knew the lines of that ship as they knew their
little gardens at home. They un-reticuled their handkerchiefs and waved
and giggled and giggled and waved. For full twenty minutes they waved
and giggled, and then they held the kiddy up. The ship turned off to
enter a dock on the opposite side of the stream and, as she turned her
port beam to us, someone--it would not have been difficult to guess
whom--on her bridge held up a navigator’s three-foot telescope, it
having been doubtless already very much in hand, and waved a brief
but significant, “All’s well; see you in two hours”--or waves to that
effect.
Yes, there is still romance in shipping, and Rotterdam, being first,
last, and all the time a shipping town, there is romance in Rotterdam.
The most satisfactory way of approaching Rotterdam is by water, and the
most satisfactory water way is from Dortrecht. By this route you obtain
not only the most characteristic views of Rotterdam and the bustle
and business about her water front, but you get also the glimpse of
Dortrecht that Albert Cuyp availed himself of so often, for the water
front of Dortrecht doesn’t seem to have changed much, according to
Cuyp, except in the item of steam for sail.
It is a pleasant trip of an hour and a half duration down the Maas,
past numerous shipyards that are capable of building anything from a
canal boat to an ocean-going cargo carrier; past great suction dredges
assigned to the perennial duty of keeping the river conquered; past
fishers for salmon, who, by treaty, may lower their nets only upon
certain days in order to give the German fishers, higher up the stream,
an equal opportunity to make a living; past little hamlets whose river
docks and picturesque dock tenders serve in lieu of railway stations
and the more prosaic red-capped and frock-coated station masters.
But Rotterdam, by reason of her trade, does not coincide with the
general idea of Holland. She is more or less cosmopolitan, to be
sure, but this phase strikes the traveler less forcibly than her
ardent activity. What with her electric cranes and machine shops
and sugar refineries and tobacco factories and shipbuilding yards
and distilleries, she gives one the impression of a thriving German
seaport. The home port claimed by the greater number of the seven
hundred or more steam and sailing vessels that make up the merchant
marine of Holland, is Rotterdam, and through this port passes at least
one-half the country’s total imports by sea and almost as much of her
exports, together with four-fifths of Holland’s trade with the Rhine.
But Baltimore, in the matter of population, would make two of this, the
most active, the most important seaport of the Netherlands.
Still, Rotterdam is essentially Dutch, in fact if not in first
appearances. She has her Groote Kerk, the Church of St. Lawrence,
begun in 1412; she has her Town Hall, without which, it seems, no town
in Holland could survive; she has her picture gallery, although a
mediocre one, in the Boymans Museum; she has her old market and her new
church; and she has her fish market, where women of the most uncertain
antiquity sit and gossip and knit and sell sole between stitches. Here
and there, too, she has her old windmill, thatch covered, browbeaten
by the weather, massive and ponderous-looking, that, in the very midst
of twentieth century hurry and scurry, waves its stiff arms as if
depicting in pantomime a scene of other days. And then, in striking
contrast, right at the very edge of the old harbor, stands the tallest
building in the Netherlands. It must be as sky-scraping as eight or
ten stories, and high up under its eaves it displays the advertisement
of an American breakfast food. Its builders probably thought that a
photographer would be the only mortal who could be induced to rent the
top story, so they made the building’s sloping roof into one glorious
skylight, under which rural Holland might sit and have its picture
taken for the family album.
[Illustration: In spite of its up-to-date spirit, Rotterdam is
essentially Dutch, with the canals much in evidence]
It was while waiting for a car at the beginning of The Oosterkade and
just across the old harbor from this Metropolitan Tower of Rotterdam
that the more nearly general of all Dutch customs was brought home to
me.
The car had approached its terminus and I was about to mount, when the
conductor, more forcibly than politely, requested that I discontinue
the attempt and take up my position where I belonged, with the rest
of the crowd, in the vicinity of a certain lamp-post a few steps
beyond--the Dutch being most precise and systematic. I ambled thither
and was standing in the more or less protecting umbrage of the
lamp-post, with sarcastic but not envious mien, watching the traction
company partake of a large slab of black bread and cheese (until the
disappearance of which the car refused to continue) when I was accosted
by a small street urchin of about the tender age of seven, who was
armed with an immense cigar. I happened to be smoking at the time,
and this was what brought the boy in my direction. He wanted a light
and wasted no words in asking for it. Being somewhat shocked that a
youth of such tender years should be so faithful a slave to the vile,
pernicious weed, I submitted to his plea under mental protest. But
he seemed not in the least embarrassed, for he saluted and marched
off, apparently enjoying the thing as if it had been his fifth since
breakfast.