Alkmaar--will find plenty of activity in the vicinity of the town
weigh-house. It is therefore advisable to reach the place the previous
Thursday evening, because the unloading of the cheeses and the stacking
of them upon the stone pavement of the market square during the early
hours of the following morning are among the most interesting phases of
the whole proceeding. And so, by daylight on Friday, gayly painted farm
wagons from the surrounding country already fringe three sides of the
market, and every one of them is disgorging, two at a time, its load of
golden cheeses. On the canal that bounds the fourth side of the square
lie berthed a double row of long, narrow boats, also loaded from keel
plate to hatch cover with the product of the district. From every point
of the compass cheeses are being tossed through the air from the wagons
and boats, only to have their flight checked with a smack by the men
who catch them and pile them upon the pavement in long, double-decked
rows, ten cheeses in width. Later, canvas is thrown over the piles to
protect the cheeses from the rays of the sun until it is time for the
cheese makers and the wholesale commission merchants from the cities,
soon to descend upon the scene, to commence their dickerings. All
through the early morning this unloading continues, its accompanying
smacks to be heard half a block away, until perhaps 250,000 cheeses
have been piled up in neat rows with alleyways between them, across the
market square from one edge to the other.
At half-past nine, half an hour before the market opens, the weighmen,
all garbed in immaculate white, meet in executive session in the
weigh-house and absorb a ceremonious talking-to by the superintendent
of the market--probably upon the subject of honest weights and the
penalties to be imposed upon the unfortunate man caught trifling with
the rules and regulations of the game.
[Illustration: Friday is cheese day in Alkmaar, and by daylight gaily
painted farm wagons are disgorging their loads of golden cheeses on the
pavement in front of the Town Weigh-house]
These weighmen constitute a distinct feature of every cheese market
in Holland. Their dress may seem ludicrous and their duties a bit
undignified, but they go about their calling with all the seriousness
of statesmen. Until recently they were divided, one might say, into
four colors: red, blue, green, and yellow, as distinguished by their
hat bands. Latterly, a fifth color, orange, has been added. In the
weigh-house there are five pairs of scales, each pair painted a
different color corresponding to the colors of the weighmen. The “red”
weighmen must weigh their barrowfuls of cheeses upon the “red” scales;
the “blue” weighmen, upon the “blue” scales, and so on. An Alkmaar
cheese weighman holds a life position, is elected by the community, and
receives in commissions a certain percentage, determined by the value
of the cheeses, of each hundred kilos weighed, or fraction thereof.
At ten o’clock promptly the heavy sheets of canvas are dragged from
the piles. The market is thus officially opened, and for the ensuing
two hours the visitor will be treated to some of the shrewdest of
shrewd Dutch bargaining. The stolid, unemotional makers of cheeses
stand doggedly by their respective piles, while the crafty wholesale
merchants flit hither and yon testing. Not a word passes between them
other than a surly “how d’ y’ do” in Dutch. The merchant selects
a cheese at random, jams into it an instrument that any competent
housewife might mistake for an apple corer, gives it a twist, pulls it
out slowly, and tastes the end of the sample thus taken. What remains
of the sample is drawn from the instrument, slipped back into the
parent cheese, and the tester moves along to attack another pile.
At the end of an hour every merchant on the ground will have tested
and tasted every pile of cheeses--in itself no small saporific
achievement. Not only will he have used the taste test on the different
piles, but he will have called upon his other four senses to confirm
or countervail its decision. He will have examined cheeses by sight;
he will have held them to his ear and shaken them, as we might an
egg; he will have felt of the weight and solidity of them; and he
will have taken long, knowing whiffs of their fragrance. At the end
of an hour, then, he is qualified to approach this or that particular
dealer and offer him so much per hundred kilos for his cheeses. Then
it is that Greek meets Greek. In a moment’s time the dull-looking,
uncommunicative, apparently unconcerned provincial maker of cheese
seems to be transformed into a cunning, canny, clear-headed man of
business. The two of them, merchant and maker, stand for a full minute
with their right hands outstretched, like a picture of Captain John
Smith sealing a treaty with the Indians. Suppose the maker finally
agrees to the price offered: without uttering a syllable he grips the
hand of the merchant, and the bargain is closed. If he does not agree,
he slaps the merchant’s hand a whack that resounds across the square.
By eleven-fifteen the walls of the surrounding houses reverberate
with what a stranger around the corner might easily suppose to be the
premature explosion of a number of toy balloons--for cheese makers are
but human and would rather wait in the hope of being offered more for
their stock. Competition is the essence of trade, even in Holland.
When a bargain is negotiated, they call a pair of weighmen who load the
cheeses upon a barrow--a queer kind of barrow that resembles more a
stretcher on sled runners--and carry them to the scales to be weighed.
After being weighed and their sale recorded upon the books of the
superintendent, the cheeses are loaded back into the wagons and boats
to be transferred to the warehouse for shipment.
The cheese goes through no further preliminaries if intended for native
consumption. If destined for export, however, it must needs undergo
a peculiar, yet withal a simple process: it must be well scraped and
painted over with a thin aniline dye which rapidly turns as it dries
to a glorious vermilion. The scraping is done by machinery, but the
dyeing is done by hand and with almost incredible swiftness by the men
employed in some of the establishments in Alkmaar.
The question was asked if the dyeing assisted in the preservation of
the cheese or helped to keep it immune from mould or corrodings. Not
at all. The ultimate consumer across the seas would turn up his nose
at an un-dyed cheese and snub it as a cheap imitation. The foreign
public demands that the genuine North Holland cheese bear a distinctive
hall-mark. That hall-mark is its coat of red dye. Since this province
probably supplies a good three-fifths of the 55,000 tons of cheese
exported in a single year the reader can imagine what a deal of red dye
it takes to satisfy a foreign fancy.
A distance of thirty miles or more north of Alkmaar lies The Helder,
figuratively the top of the kingdom. Geographically, it is only in
the same latitude as the most northerly point of Newfoundland at
the Straits of Belle Isle, and so there are plenty of towns over in
Friesland and Groningen that lie still farther to the north, but these
do not have the conditions to contend with that does The Helder.
Surrounded on three sides by the waters of the Zuyder Zee and the
North Sea, The Helder assumes much of the responsibility of protecting
the whole province of North Holland from a general and disastrous
inundation. More than any other part of the province, indeed of all
Holland, it is exposed to the ravages of the most violent winds, which
kick the sea into a maelstrom and pound it with relentless fury upon
the coast line.
[Illustration: At The Helder may be seen the “big story” of
Holland--the dikes that represent the persistent, patient strife of the
Dutch to hold the land made out of the sea bottom]
Here at The Helder may be found the finest fruits of that “big story”
of Holland: the constant battle of mere man against an all but
omnipotent element--water; the romantic, persistent, patient strife of
the Hollander to insure as much as possible his own safety and that of
the land which he has weaned from the sea from utter and inexorable
annihilation. If for nothing else, it is for this “big story” that one
should go to The Helder. If the traveler through Holland has not been
already duly impressed with the silent, continuous fight of the Dutch
for mere existence, he will return from this northernmost promontory
of North Holland with augmented faith in the ingenuity and dogged
perseverance of the men who have made a country out of what once was
sea bottom.
The foregoing preamble is meant to prepare the traveler to appreciate
The Helder. If it fails in its mission, it may be all for the best,
because the unanticipated often strikes with the greatest degree of
accuracy and forcefulness and brands the experience upon the mind,
never to be obliterated.
Disembarking from the train, you will turn instinctively to the north
through a wide avenue--a veritable tunnel through the trees. After
crossing the drawbridge that spans the canal at the end of the avenue,
you must turn abruptly to the left. The first cross street--little
more than an alleyway between the houses--is barricaded at its farther
extremity by a steep, grass-grown embankment that towers almost to the
same altitude as the chimney pots of the house tops below. A flight of
thirty-one steps ascends to the top of this peculiar embankment and
you scramble up, expecting to behold on the other side a view of--you
scarcely know what. You are surprised to discover that the view is
a sea-scape, for, if you have failed to observe The Helder’s lofty
lighthouse, it has not been suggested to you that the sea is anywhere
in the neighborhood.
You will be standing on the top of one of the greatest and strongest
dikes in Holland, its business side stretching away before you at
an angle of forty degrees for two hundred feet into the Strait of
Marsdiep. Extending a total distance of five miles in the arc of
a circle, this, then, is the sloping buttress that North Holland
relies upon for its very life. A severe storm will lash the water
of the strait into spray, and fling it across into the windows of
the bordering houses, but the highest of tides cannot come over the
backbone of the dike, while at all times the water laps restlessly at
its foundations. The top of the dike is mounted with a roadway twelve
feet in width. Some feet above the water line at low tide the tops of
great stone breakwaters, like the ribs of a dinosaur, stretch seaward
at regular intervals. The whole of this remarkable artificial coast is
constructed of Norwegian granite.
Upon the summits of a few sand dunes that raise themselves here and
there behind the dike the Dutch have completed the construction of
some rather crude military fortifications which Napoleon commenced in
1811. But improvements upon them are going on apace, for Holland is not
exactly anxious to suffer an experience with regard to her string of
islands in the north, in furthering German aggrandizement as did the
Danes of Helgoland before the gun muzzles of the British in 1807.
The single point of North Holland, however, most exposed to sea
encroachments is a few miles south of The Helder on the North Sea. Here
there is a chain of three great dikes, one beyond the other, named
significantly, beginning with the one farthest from the shore, “The
Waker,” “The Dreamer,” and “The Sleeper.” Still farther to the south,
on the same side of the province, are the great sand dunes, three miles
in width in some places, under the protection of which the freight
boats from Amsterdam creep to their destinations along the North Sea
Canal.
Off the northern dunes the combined English and French fleets of war
suffered defeat at the hands of the Dutch admirals, de Ruyter and
Tromp, two hundred thirty-eight years ago to the day, as I write (the
21st of August), and in September, 1799, two armies of 10,000 and
13,000, English and Russian troops respectively, commanded by the
Duke of York, landed here to try their luck at tempting the Dutch to
revolt against the French. The Russian forces lost their way and were
defeated by the French before they had advanced as far as Alkmaar, and
the British, bearing in mind the comforting old adage about discretion
being the best part of valor, retreated after having penetrated as far
south as Castricum, near Zaandam.
In the town of The Helder itself--why they refer to it as “The” Helder
I do not know, unless it be for the reason that the article makes of
it a pseudonym for a Dutch John o’ Groats--in the town itself there is
little of interest. One street I have in mind, however, which is of
rather peculiar construction. The north side of it, from the middle of
what ought to be the common roadway, is possibly three and a half feet
higher than its south side, the upper part built upon an embankment
faced with a brick wall.
The place is full of Dutch sailors and navy people, for about three
quarters of a mile down the dike lies Nieuwediep, the Dutch combination
of Hampton Roads, Annapolis, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Situated at
the mouth of the North Holland Canal, Nieuwediep is the most important
naval station in Holland, maintaining large wharves, docks, machine
shops, and a naval academy, the students of which, two, four, and six
abreast--Holland’s future Tromps and de Ruyters--can be seen strolling
up and down the great dike. A fraction of the country’s one hundred
vessels of war and of her 8,000 men that man them receive their orders
at the station at Nieuwediep.
Across the Strait of Marsdiep is the Island of Texel, the most
southerly unit of the long series of vertebræ that curve far to the
northeast, as if made to fit exactly the coast lines of the provinces
of Friesland and Groningen. A steamer plies to Texel from Nieuwediep
and returns four times daily; but you may profitably omit the island
from your itinerary unless you are particularly interested in natural
history and you happen to come upon Texel during the bird nesting
season. The northern extremity of the island, called Eyerland, or
“The Land of Eggs,” is infested with sea fowl, the eggs of which are
collected by the myriads and shipped to the large cities. Texel is
seventy-three square miles in area and supports one or two very plain
bathing places, but most of its six thousand inhabitants are chiefly
engaged in the business of sheep raising on the long, crater-like
pasture land hemmed in by the sand dunes.
XI
FROM HOORN TO STAVOREN
In the matter of ancient buildings, Hoorn is one of the gems of all
the towns of Holland. Its fine old harbor tower, its Town Hall, its
weigh-house, its Oosterpoort--the most prominent remaining factor of
the walls that once surrounded the town--its assortment of quaint old
gateways and entrances, its steep-roofed dwellings and warehouses that
lean forward or backward at more acute angles than even the oldest
buildings in Amsterdam--all combine in contributing to Hoorn a medieval
charm that is puissant and irresistible.
But whatever Hoorn may be noted for as she stands to-day, her name has
gone down in history as that of the mother of Dutch navigators. Three
of them were famous in their day: Schouten, Tasman, and Coen; and,
in the eye of the Dutch nation, the greatest of these was Coen--Jan
Pieters Coen, the founder of the Dutch dominions in the East Indies
and the creator of Batavia as their capital. A statue of him in bronze
stands in the Kaasmarkt of the town of his birth.
Tasman was numbered among the foremost discoverers of the seventeenth
century. In the year 1639 he was assigned to a voyage of exploration by
Van Dieman, the governor general of the Dutch East Indies at the time,
his cruise leading him to the Western Pacific. After exploring part of
the coast of Luzon in the Philippine Islands, he sailed farther to the
northward and around Japan, but, discovering no land not already nailed
to the flag of some nation, he set sail again for home on October 15th
of the same year.
The Hollanders having already discovered and explored a part of the
west coast of Australia, the Dutch East India Company was desirous of
obtaining fuller and more accurate information about the territory with
a view of exploiting its natural resources and whatever others the
company itself might develop. Accordingly, on August 14, 1642, Tasman
was dispatched from Batavia in command of two ships and intrusted with
the task of bringing back a full and authentic account of whatever he
saw and conquered. Owing to the inaccuracy of his sailing charts, head
winds that blew him from his prescribed course, and what not, he went
south of his mark, and came upon a hitherto undiscovered country which
he promptly named Van Dieman’s Land, in honor of his sponsor. But being
unaware that what is now known as Tasmania was an island by its own
right, he hoisted his flag and set to work exploring what he thought
at the time to be the most of Australia. He set sail again from the
newly discovered territory, bearing to the eastward with a vague idea
of reaching the Solomon Islands. On the 13th of December he discovered
a “high, mountainous country,” which he noted in his log book as
“Staatenland.” For some unaccountable reason the English have allowed
its name to remain as New Zealand, neglecting to change it when they
took it over, as they did that of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam.
William Schouten, having had an earlier relapse under the spell of the
spray, was the first to sail round the southern extremity of South
America, his goal being one and the same with that of Henry Hudson, who
attempted a supposed route to China from Amsterdam, first by way of
the Chesapeake Bay, and later, the Hudson River. Schouten, in passing,
christened the point “Cape Hoorn,” latterly contracted to “Horn,” in
honor of his birthplace.
In addition to these, Hoorn refers proudly to the exploits of another
of her sons, John Haring by name, a Dutch Horatius whose signal
courageous achievement consisted in holding in check, single-handed, a
round thousand of Spaniards, while his compatriots gathered themselves
together in order to retreat in a systematic manner at least.
[Illustration: An old street in Hoorn. In the matter of ancient
buildings the town is one of the gems of Holland]
It took place before Amsterdam in 1573, when the city was held in the
grip of the Dons. The Prince of Orange had taken up a position to the
south of the city, and Sonoy, his general, was encamped to the
north. The operations of both were hampered by the lack of sufficient
forces. Sonoy having gone to Edam for the purpose of gathering
reinforcements, the Spaniards in his absence made a concentrated attack
upon his division entrenched behind the Diemer Dike. Seeing the fight
was going against his fellows, Haring of Hoorn, as Motley relates,
“planted himself entirely alone upon the dike, where it was so narrow
between the Y on the one side and the Diemer Lake on the other that
two men could hardly stand abreast. Here, armed with a sword and a
shield, he had actually opposed and held in check one thousand of the
enemy, during a period long enough to enable his own men, if they had
been willing, to rally and effectually to repel the attack. It was too
late--the battle was too far lost to be restored; but still the brave
soldier held his post, till, by his devotion, he enabled all those of
his compatriots who still remained in the entrenchments to make good
their retreat. He then plunged into the sea, and, untouched by spear or
bullet, effected his escape.”
But John Haring survived only to suffer death in the attempt of an
equally valiant feat a few months later before the sea-gates of his own
native town.
The siege of Alkmaar having terminated unhappily for the Spaniards,
they dispatched a fleet from Amsterdam under Count Bossu, to effect
the surrender of Hoorn and Enkhuizen. No sooner had the project been
contemplated than the Dutch got wind of it; Admiral Dirkzoon sailed in
command of a fleet of twenty-five vessels, and, having had favorable
winds and weather, bore down upon the Spanish armada near Hoorn.
“After a short and general engagement,” according to Motley, “nearly
all the Spanish fleet retired with precipitation, closely pursued
by most of the patriot Dutch vessels. Five of the King’s ships were
eventually taken--the rest effected their escape. Only the Admiral
remained, who scorned to yield, although his forces had thus basely
deserted him. His ship, the _Inquisition_, for such was her insolent
appellation, was far the largest and best manned of both fleets. Most
of the enemy had gone in pursuit of the fugitives, but four vessels
of inferior size had attacked the _Inquisition_ at the commencement
of the action. Of these, one had soon been silenced, while the other
three had grappled themselves inextricably to her sides and prow.
The four drifted together, before wind and tide, a severe and savage
action going on incessantly, during which the navigation of the
ships was entirely abandoned. No scientific gunnery, no military or
naval tactics, were displayed or required in such a conflict. It
was a life-and-death combat, such as always occurred when Spaniard
and Netherlander met, whether on land or water. Bossu and his men,
armed with bullet-proof coats of mail, stood with shield and sword
on the deck of the _Inquisition_, ready to repel all attempts to
board. The Hollanders, as usual, attacked with pitch hoops, boiling
oil, and molten lead. Repeatedly they effected their entrance to the
Admiral’s ship, and as often they were repulsed and slain in heaps,
or hurled into the sea. The battle began at three in the afternoon,
and continued without intermission throughout the whole night. The
vessels, drifting together, struck on the shoal called the Nek, near
Wydeness. In the heat of the action the occurrence was hardly heeded.
In the morning twilight, John Haring of Hoorn, the hero who had kept
one thousand soldiers at bay upon the Diemer dike, clambered on
board the _Inquisition_, and hauled her colors down. The gallant but
premature achievement cost him his life. He was shot through the body,
and died on the deck of the ship, which was not quite ready to strike
her flag.... At eleven o’clock Admiral Bossu surrendered, and with
three hundred prisoners was carried into Holland. Bossu was himself
imprisoned at Hoorn, in which city he was received, on his arrival,
with great demonstrations of popular hatred.”
It was on a feast-day that I came upon Hoorn, and the place was garbed
in gala attire. Throughout the morning the hotel stableboys were kept
busy tending the horses of rural arrivals, and every stable-yard was
congested with wagonettes and carts. Never have I seen such a variety
of vehicles. There was the painted produce wagon with its white
canvas cover; there was the gayly decorated antique “two-wheeler,”
its body swung upon heavy straps held fore and aft at the ends of
great protruding springs; there was the commodious, shapely cart of
plum-colored upholstery, belonging to the “gentleman farmer”; and there
was a host of others too numerous to describe in detail.
Hoorn’s main street had been roped off, and the bricks covered with a
thick layer of sand, in preparation for the series of horse races that
was soon to take place up and down its length. Along about noon the
Dutch David Harums led their horses down to the improvised race track
behind the village band in all its glory, and the festivities were on.
[Illustration: Hoorn on a feast-day. The main street has been roped off
and its brick paving covered with sand in preparation for a series of
horse races]
Running races were of necessity tabooed on account of the danger to
life and property--the actions of the horse being restricted to such
an extent by the limited fairway of the course that, in event of the
horse’s losing its head, even the side ropes along the street could
not restrain it from dashing through the crowd and into the window of
the nearest cheese shop. But there were sulky races between the Hal
Pointers and the Palo Altos of the district, driven with rope reins by
erstwhile jockeys, some of the costumes of whom were no less curious
than the harness of the horses. Breeches, in some cases, and blouses,
in others, looked as if they might have been recently redeemed from
many years of confinement in Amsterdam’s municipal pawnshop, their
public sale having been repeatedly overlooked.