century, being founded in 1609. Under the administration of the
Amsterdam Corporation, whose executives examined its specie annually
in order to verify the statements of its managers, the business world
became so confident of its solvency that its guaranteed certificates
were usually offered at a premium, and as much as $180,000,000 in
coin has been held against these certificates at one time. Ever since
its establishment it has retained its place as one of the strongest
financial institutions in the world.
IX
EXCURSIONS ABOUT AMSTERDAM
It is doubtful indeed if any other city in Holland than Amsterdam can
tempt the tourist with a greater number of pleasant day’s excursions.
Lying at the very feet of North Holland--a travel territory no larger
in area than the state of Rhode Island, but replete with picturesque
nooks and corners, congested with types and abounding in peculiar
customs--every part of the province is readily accessible to Amsterdam
by rail or by water. Back of its central railway station there is
a long line of docks which berth the boats that only await your
patronage. Here you may board the large river steamer that takes you
to Zaandam in half an hour for the price of one-half of one Dutch
cent a minute; here you may take the little excursion boats for ports
along the Zuyder Zee; here you may engage passage to Alkmaar or to The
Helder or even to Leeuwarden or Groningen or Zwolle, situated in that
unpenetrated part of the kingdom which may be termed the hinterland of
Holland; and here you may hire a private yacht or motor boat, master
and all, to carry you whither you will and for as long as you wish
for as little as five dollars a day inclusive. If you cross the arm
of the Zuyder Zee they call the Ij--much easier spelled Y--by ferry
to the Tolhuis you have only to board the steam tram to be rattled
across country to Alkmaar, Edam, or Volendam. To Haarlem is but fifteen
minutes’ ride by rail, while The Hague itself is only an hour’s trip in
the _schnell zug_. Zandvoort, on the North Sea, is served by electric
train direct from Amsterdam, stopping at Haarlem to break the short
journey.
A favorite excursion for a summer’s evening is from Amsterdam by
steamer to Zaandam, the most typically Dutch of all Dutch towns. The
course of the steamer leads up the North Sea Canal to a point a little
beyond the Petroleum Harbor and then turns off into the river Zaan.
[Illustration: A waterfront street in Volendam, which with Marken is
the most advertised showplace on the tourist’s beaten track]
It is in the North Sea Canal that Amsterdam places her only hope of
ever being able to compete with Rotterdam as a shipping port. With its
fifteen miles of length, its sixty-five to one hundred and ten yards of
width, and its thirty feet of depth, this canal pierces the one-time
peninsula of North Holland from the Zuyder Zee to its western boundary,
making an island out of part of the province and placing Amsterdam
in direct and easy communication with the North Sea. An “A.P.” gauge
along its bank would prove its water level to be about twenty inches
minus, that is, twenty inches below the mean level of the water at
Amsterdam--the bench mark of all water levels throughout Holland. To
cut such a canal across country from one sea to another and to protect
it at either end with immense breakwaters and lock gates has cost the
government in the neighborhood of $18,000,000 and consumed eleven years
of patient labor. Since 1895 its western terminus has been divided into
two outlets, the older being protected by a lock of three openings,
while the more recently completed branch, diverging a little to the
northward from the main canal, has but one opening, 245 yards long, 27
yards wide, and 33 feet deep.
Zaandam being the home and breeding ground of the windmill, a
bird’s-eye view of it would give the effect of four inverted centipedes
kicking in their death throes. It is the center of the Dutch lumber
trade, and since the windmill is the cheapest method of generating the
power that any lumber trade requires in order to operate its sawmills,
Zaandam draws from the breeze what we conjure from steam. There are
upwards of four hundred windmills in its immediate vicinity. Its
houses, brightly painted with green, red, or white, and surrounded with
pleasant little gardens, gayly reiterate the Dutchman’s delight in
contrasts, harmonious or otherwise.
Another of Zaandam’s claims to the consideration of the tourist is a
little old house near the harbor, that belongs, not to any resident of
the town, nor to any man in Holland, but to the Czar of all the Russias
personally. It is the house which Peter the Great made his domestic
headquarters for a brief week in the year 1697 while, as tradition has
it, he studied shipbuilding incognito in Zaandam. If the villagers had
not made themselves so pestiferously inquisitive and penetrated his
disguise a few days after his arrival he might have learned a lot from
Mynheer Kalf, under whose competent tutelage he apprenticed himself as
a ship carpenter; but the idlers about town became too importunate for
Peter. He gave up his position at the end of a week and returned to
Amsterdam.
Volendam, on the west coast of the Zuyder Zee, and the little Island
of Marken, just opposite, are the two most advertised and, therefore,
the show places in the tourist territory of Holland and enjoy the
highest patronage. Both are being rapidly and ruthlessly spoiled in
consequence. However, as these are the towns easiest of access from
Amsterdam that have retained the costumes and customs which prevailed
hundreds of years ago, embellishing both to a certain degree as the
signs of the times dictate, one feels it his solemn duty, almost, to go
there. If the gentle reader has been to Amsterdam and has weathered the
many appeals to make a day’s trip to Volendam and Marken we should like
to have him raise his hand, please, so that we may inquire as to the
cause and effect of his superb indifference. It would be worth noting
in the minutes of any travel club.
The head porter of your hotel in Amsterdam--a sort of unproclaimed
passenger agent himself--will try to sell you a round trip ticket to
Volendam and Marken in one of the many parties, each attended by a
conductor, which leave every morning and return every evening during
the season. But, if you will bear a personal opinion, that which is
interesting under the guidance of the prosaic conductor is twice as
interesting to explore by yourself. Start as early as you choose, if
you can, and get back when you can, if you choose, is the best advice
I am able to utter with regard to travel through any country in the
world--and, on account of its many facilities for getting about and
the comparative meagerness of the territory involved, it is especially
applicable to Holland.
Except to obtain a comprehensive view of the great dam at the mouth of
the Y, a mile and a quarter in length, which protects the more delicate
construction of the North Sea Canal from the ravages of the Zuyder Zee,
the trip to Marken made by this route offers little compensation. The
same view can be had if you will take the electric car from in front
of the station in Amsterdam to the St. Anthonis Dyk and walk a short
distance across to the locks at the Oranjesluizen near the north end of
the embankment. The five openings at this point of the great breakwater
permit the entrance and exit of vessels and regulate the depth of water
in the canals. Out of a total of fifty-six lock gates twenty-two are
constructed of iron.
Then, too, there seems to be no stability about the weather in Holland,
and a voyage up the Zuyder Zee in a cold, drizzling rain does not
encourage a pleasant afterthought of the excursion. Upon one trip I
made up the Zee in the middle of summer the climate was of about the
same temperature as that of a Christmas in Spitzbergen.
A much more satisfactory route by which to tap these towns is the steam
tramway line through Monnikendam and Edam, the method of procedure in
this case being to take the ferry from the end of the Damrak near the
station in Amsterdam to the Tolhuis, or old customhouse, across the Y.
Here near the Tolhuis is the southern entrance to the North Holland
Canal, with its great lock gates--a channel which simplifies the boat
voyage between Amsterdam and The Helder, penetrating almost the entire
length of the province of North Holland, a distance of forty-five miles
or more, and dividing into two the island already made by the North Sea
Canal. A hundred and thirty feet in width and sixteen feet in depth, it
was constructed a half century before its North Sea predecessor at a
cost of about $4,000,000, and its water level at Buiksloot, the first
little station on the tram line, about a mile from the Tolhuis, is as
much as ten feet below that of the sea at half tide.
Broek, a little farther along near the tram line, is reputed to be the
cleanest town in the world, and I have not the least doubt that its
reputation is well deserved. But its motive is ill chosen: it is clean
for a purpose. By its cleanliness it attracts visitors, and so it can
scarcely be reckoned as a criterion by which to judge the other towns
of Holland. No doubt it was clean long before it ever had any visitors,
but since the tourists commenced to hear about its hypertrophied
spotlessness, they began to visit it; now the more visitors it has the
cleaner it becomes. Like a duck, it is preening itself continuously
from dawn till dark.
From Monnikendam you may take steamer direct for the Island of Marken,
but it will be more to your comfort to join the steamer in Marken and
return through the canals to Amsterdam by way of Monnikendam. Such a
procedure, however, is dependent upon the steamer captain’s consent to
the proposition; for the boats that ply this route carry excursionists
exclusively, so that even if the captain can be induced to accept you
as a passenger you may have to pay the full fare for the trip from
Amsterdam to Marken and return.
Once--about three and a half centuries ago--Monnikendam was included
in the list of the most important towns in Holland. In its halcyon
days its money chests contained enough bullion to provide for the
outfitting of a fleet which it sent under spreading canvas up the
coast to Hoorn, to demonstrate to the skeptics that a Spanish admiral
_could_ be captured in battle, if only the scheme were handled in
the proper manner. Long since has Monnikendam been relegated to the
so-called “dead city” class. It is almost too sleepy to keep awake in
the daytime, arousing but once a year from its perennial slumber: when
Amsterdam comes on skates to hold an ice carnival.
Back somewhere in the fourteenth century, when the only maritime
means of access to Amsterdam was down the Zuyder Zee, Edam held the
strategical position of being its picket port. Since those good old
days its 25,000 population has depreciated four-fifths in numbers. Were
it not for its brand of cheese, flourishing before the gastronomic
world a perpetual advertisement of the place, Edam would soon find
itself mentioned in the same breath with Broek and Monnikendam. It has
a fourteenth century Gothic Groote Kerk, tremendous in comparison with
its population, and a Town Hall in which are preserved the portraits
of four or five erstwhile citizens of Edam, the respective virtues of
whom its present inhabitants still like to mention as if they bore some
weight upon the town’s past prosperity.
One of these local celebrities was a man of the name of Osterlen, who,
in the 1680’s, could boast about a merchant fleet of his own numbering
ninety-two sail. Three of the others were Trijntje, Peter, and Jan.
Trijntje (the diminutive in this case must have been merely a matter of
irony) was said to have been nine feet in height and of proportionate
width; Peter grew an ambiguous beard the dimensions of which required
it to be tied into a knot in order to save it from being stepped on by
its master; and Jan, an immigrant from Friesland who later procured
papers of naturalization in Edam--a “ringer” we should have called him
in small town baseball parlance--Jan’s net tonnage was four hundred
and fifty-four pounds on the date when he launched himself into the
forty-second year of his life.
At Edam you will scramble into a little sailboat to be propelled by
the breeze down the canal for a mile or more to Volendam. Each side of
the ditch--it isn’t much more, if judged by its width; neither is its
odor any sweeter--is bordered by low-lying fields populated with the
black and white bovines directly responsible for the principal industry
of that section. They look docile enough at a distance, these cows of
North Holland, and they probably are at close range, when it comes to
showing the proper deference due an unmolesting human being, but they
are notorious for their biased aversion to dogs. The dog seems to be
their time-honored and ancient enemy, and the mere presence of one in
the field can cause a deal of agitation. If its owner accompanies the
dog he may be expected to commence a Dutch Marathon almost any minute,
because, at sight of him, the cow will foreclose with the canine and
open speedy negotiations with the owner. I have been told that it is
unsafe even to walk along the canal bank with a dog, for only during
last summer one staid old burgher of Volendam, in so doing, was hooked
to death, and two ladies of Edam, while taking an evening walk, had to
be hustled into a passing sailboat and pushed out from shore to escape
a similar fate.
Every ten feet or so, it seems, someone will be fishing, for fishing,
more than any other, appears to be the national sport of Holland. No
self-respecting fish would live in some of the canals they fish in,
but certain species must be able to survive their density else the
proverbial Dutch patience would be soon exhausted.
The most odoriferous point along the canal from Edam to Volendam is
in the immediate vicinity of a duck farm just near the journey’s end.
These ducks are the amphibious flies in the amber of what is otherwise
transparently picturesque. They are farmed throughout Holland, but
only for their eggs, which, being too strong even for the Dutchman to
relish, are sent to the more cosmopolitan cities or exported into the
foreign pastry kitchens.
[Illustration: Land is so scarce in Holland that the pig-sty back of
the house on the right had to be built out over the canal on piles]
Volendam, by reason of the curious costuming of its inhabitants, its
quaint, narrow main street, high above the doorsteps of the bordering
brick houses, and its picturesque fishing fleet, is the haven of
artists of all nationalities. One of the most interesting picture
galleries in the Netherlands comprises the public rooms of the Hotel
Spaander, hung with sketches, more or less frivolous, and finished
works, more or less serious, done spontaneously by the hands of such
illustrators and painters as Phil May, Will Owen, Edward Penfield,
William Chase, and Burne-Jones. The back yard of the hotel, which,
without the least excuse, it advertises as an “attractive garden,” is
fringed with old buildings, each roof exchanged within the comparative
recent development of the town as an art center for the skylight of the
unmistakable studio.
Sunday, by all odds, is the most advantageous day of the week to visit
Volendam. Then are the dresses of its women folk and the breeches of
its men, copious as meal sacks, garnished with the jewelry and the
silver buckles respectively which have been handed down as heirlooms
from mother to daughter, from father to son, even unto the third and
fourth generations. Then is the fishing fleet jammed together in the
little harbor to spend its accustomed week end of lethargy, each
masthead flying its long, narrow pennant--a sight which from a distance
might be mistaken for a hibernating flock of wild fowl. You would have
to use a rifle with an elbow in its barrel to be able to shoot through
this patch of pine forest with its top cut off without puncturing one
mast at least. On other days of the week Volendam’s citizens are
preoccupied with whatever they have to attend to, but on Sunday they
stand around and pose gracefully and easily for the commendation of the
visiting public.
The garb of the male Volendamer is about as characteristic as any
regalia in Holland. His round, flat-crowned cap permits the exposure
of its owner’s bronzed and finely cut features. He wears a loosely
tied scarf about his neck, and his shirt or jersey usually displays a
large patch cut from another shirt or jersey regardless of any probable
ambition to match the patterns. Whenever and wherever the garment wears
out, then and there it is patched, and by their patches ye shall know
them; that is, you can come within measurable proximity of telling the
daily duties of every man by the position of his patches. One will
have a livid green patch down the collar bone of a dark maroon jersey;
another will display a different colored sleeve from the elbow down.
The Volendamer’s trousers extend in a southerly direction to the tops
of the ankles only, and are built with a voluminously exaggerated
peg-top effect, so much so that each cavernous side pocket must hold
at least a peck, and to be able to find with any degree of proficiency
such an insignificant article as a penknife in its depths, the wearer
would have to go into early training as a contortionist. Week days
he wears _klompen_, or the ordinary poplarwood shoes, which may be
used for as many different and distinct purposes as the owner’s
ingenuity may contrive--such as amusing the little tots by sailing a
_klomp_ across the canal as a boat, or tying one on the end of a rod
and offering it to the canal boat master as a receptacle in which to
drop the toll as he poles his barge through the locks. The _vrouw_
sees that her “man” removes his _klompen_ before he dares enter the
house, and upon each doorstep you will invariably behold one or more
pairs, including, perhaps, those of a visitor in the kitchen paying his
respects in his stocking feet. On Sundays, however, the more fastidious
Volendamer will break the monotony by changing the _klompen_ for the
more genteel-looking low, leather, pump-like slippers.
The most distinguishable feature of the Volendam feminine attire from
that found on the Island of Walcheren or at Scheveningen, for example,
is the immaculate white cap, somewhat of the shape of a miniature
miter, terminating at the sides in two stiffly starched points that
curl out from the ears like the horns of a water buffalo. The hair is
cropped close and, according to the prevailing rules of decorum, only
a fringe of it is allowed to be visible. Never under any conditions
should a man see an unmarried member of Volendam’s gentler sex with her
head uncovered.
Over in Marken the proper thing to do to complete the delusion is to
allow one of the many children who pester the passengers upon landing
from the boat to lead you to his home, reimbursing him financially to
the extent demanded--not a very vast sum, in any event. It will be a
scrupulously clean little place of one, and not often more than two
rooms. It will contain the usual amount of brass-work and a nondescript
collection of Delft ware. The floor will be brick, the fireplace will
have its ingle nooks, and its pot of whatever-it-is suspended over the
fire from a crane, will be simmering gently. In the side walls will be
built the sleeping accommodations, like bunks on a ship, draped with
curtains at night and closed to view--and air--in the daytime by means
of paneled wooden doors. This will be about all to see in Marken, and
you will be happy enough to be led back to the boat to escape further
mercenary moves on the part of the populace.
The shirt of the male Markener can show as many patches as that of the
male Volendamer, but instead of the little round cap he sees fit to
favor a sort of derby hat having a two-inch crown. His breeches are
of the knickerbocker type, but still very much peg-topped, and his
_klompen_ are sometimes varnished yellow and carved in more or less
delicate tracery. Unlike those of Volendam, the women of Marken let the
hair grow, plaiting it into two braids which hang down, one from each
ear, in defiance to any custom that may obtain across on the mainland.
X
ALKMAAR AND THE HELDER
It is as imperative that the traveler through Holland should journey
from Amsterdam to Alkmaar by canal as it is that he should not overlook
the steam tram trip between The Hague and Leyden.
The twenty-four and a half miles between the commercial metropolis
and the cheese capital of North Holland is made in a little less than
three hours. Taking all things into consideration, it is one of the
most enjoyable steamboat excursions in the kingdom. Bearing up through
the North Sea Canal and the River Zaan, the packet makes its first
stop at Zaandam; then on up the river it winds between the bristling
windmills, turns from one canal into another, crosses a small lake, and
finally negotiates the waterway that leads eventually to Alkmaar. The
_polders_ on either hand are far below the level of the water you are
steaming over, so that you see no more than the tops of the farmhouses.
Although the wake of the passing boat rattles the reeds along the
banks, the fishermen concealed here and there among them seem not the
least perturbed, but continue to fish with all their might and main,
allowing the steamer to play what havoc it will with the movements and
inclinations of their prey.
Alkmaar, and not Edam, is the geographical and industrial center
of the cheese trade of North Holland, and the cheese market is the
geographical and industrial center of Alkmaar. To give some idea of the
length of time they have been marketing cheeses in Alkmaar you will be
told upon inquiry that the town weigh-house was constructed in 1582,
and for no other purpose than to weigh the cheeses bought and sold at
the weekly market. To give some idea of the town’s importance as a
cheese center, the astonishing number of forty-odd million pounds of
round, golden cheeses are bargained for at the side of the weigh-house
in every twelve months.
In addition to the weigh-house the town boasts of but few historically
remunerative objects of interest. There is the old Church of St.
Lawrence, built in 1470, the surrounding walls and buttresses of which
protect a part of the eminent remains of Floris V, Count of Holland and
builder of the Hall of the Knights at The Hague, although why they were
interred at such a distance to the north of the scenes of his activity
is a matter of some conjecture; there are a few relics and mediocre
paintings on show in the Municipal Museum; and there is the old water
gate that seems to forbid any farther penetration into the town on the
part of the packet from Amsterdam. In history Alkmaar played its solemn
rôle by making a stubborn and ultimately successful resistance against
the besieging Spaniards in 1573. Five to one were the odds against
which the burghers fought and, as at Leyden, the water of the ocean
was the all-powerful lever that rewarded the besieged and routed the
besiegers.