IF a teacher of geography had stopped me at some street-corner, before I had decided to visit Holland, and abruptly asked me, "Where is Zealand?" I should have had nothing to say; and I believe I am not mistaken in the supposition that a great number of my fellow-citizens, if asked the same question, would find it difficult to answer. Zealand is somewhat mysterious even to the Dutch themselves; very few of them have seen it, and of those few the greater part have only passed through it by boat; hence it is mentioned only on rare occasions, and then as if it were a far-off country. From the few words I heard spoken by my fellow-voyagers, I learned that they had never been to the province; so we were all equally curious, and the ship had not weighed anchor ere we entered into conversation, and were exciting each other's curiosity by questions which none of us could answer.

The ship started at sunrise, and for a time we enjoyed the view of the spire of Antwerp Cathedral, wrought of Mechlin lace, as the enamoured Napoleon said of it.

After a short stop at the fort of Lillo and the village of Doel, we left Belgium and entered Zealand.

In passing the frontier of a country for the first time, although we know that the scene will not change suddenly, we always look round curiously as if we expect it to do so. In fact, all the passengers leaned over the rail of the boat, that they might be present when the apparition of Zealand should suddenly be revealed.

For some time our curiosity was not gratified: nothing was to be seen but the smooth green shores of the Scheldt, wide as an arm of the sea, dotted with banks of sand, over which flew flocks of screaming sea-gulls, while the pure sky did not seem to be that of Holland.

We were sailing between the island of South Beveland and the strip of land forming the left bank of the Scheldt, which is called Flanders of the States, or Flemish Zealand.

The history of this piece of land is very curious. To a foreigner the entrance of Holland is like the first page of a great epic entitled, The Struggle with the Sea. In the Middle Ages it was nothing but a wide gulf with a few small islands. At the beginning of the sixteenth century this gulf was no longer in existence; four hundred years of patient labor had changed it into a fertile plain, defended by embankments, traversed by canals, populated by villages, and known as Flemish Zealand. When the war of independence broke out the inhabitants of Flemish Zealand, opened their dykes rather than yield their land to the Spanish armies: the sea rushed in, again forming the gulf of the Middle Ages, and destroying in one day the work of four centuries. When the war of independence was ended they began to drain it, and after three hundred years Flemish Zealand once more saw the light, and was restored to the continent like a child raised from the dead. Thus in Holland lands rise, sink, and reappear, like the realms of the Arabian Nights at the touch of a magic wand. Flemish Zealand, which is divided from Belgian Flanders by the double barrier of politics and religion, and from Holland by the Scheldt, preserves the customs, the beliefs, and the exact impress of the sixteenth century. The traditions of the war with Spain are still as real and living as the events of our own times. The soil is fertile, the inhabitants enjoy great prosperity, their manners are severe; they have schools and printing-presses, and live peacefully on their fragment of the earth which appeared but yesterday, to disappear again on that day when the sea shall demand it for a third burial. One of my fellow-travellers, a Belgian lady, who gave me this information, drew my attention to the fact that the inhabitants of Flemish Zealand were still Catholics when they inundated their land, although they had already rebelled against the Spanish dominion, and consequently it occurred, strangely enough, that the province went down Catholic and came up Protestant.

Greatly to my surprise, the boat, instead of continuing down the Scheldt, and so making the circuit of the island of South Beveland, entered the island, when it reached a certain point, passing through a narrow canal that crosses or rather cuts the island apart, and so joins the two branches of the river that encircles it. This was the first Dutch canal through which I had passed: it was a new experience. The canal is bordered on either side by a dyke which hides the country. The ship glided on stealthily, as if it had taken some hidden road in order to spring out on some one unawares. There was not a single boat in the canal nor a living soul on the dykes, and the silence and solitude strengthened the impression that our course had the hidden air of a piratical incursion. On leaving the canal we entered the eastern branch of the Scheldt.

We were now in the heart of Zealand. On the right was the island of Tholen; on the left, the island of North Beveland; behind, South Beveland; in front, Schouven. Excepting the island of Walcheren, we could now see all the principal islands of the mysterious archipelago.

But the mystery consists in this—the islands are not seen, they must be imagined. To the right and left of the wide river, before and behind the ship, nothing was to be seen but the straight line of the embankments, like a green band on a level with the water, and beyond this streak, here and there, were tips of trees and of steeples, and the red ridges of roofs that seemed to be peeping over to see us pass. Not one hill, not one rise in the ground, not one house, could be discovered anywhere: all was hidden, all seemed immersed in water; it seemed that the islands were on the point of sinking into the river, and we glanced stealthily at each other to make sure we were still there. It seemed like going through a country during a flood, and it was an agreeable thought that we were in a ship. Every now and then the vessel stopped and some passengers for Zealand got into a boat and went ashore. Although I was eager to visit the province, I nevertheless regarded them with a feeling of compassion, imagining that those unreal islands were only monster whales about to dive into the water at the approach of the boats.

The captain of our ship, a Hollander, stopped near me to examine a small map of Zealand which he held in his hand. I immediately seized the opportunity and overwhelmed him with questions. Fortunately, I had hit upon one of the few Dutchmen who, like us Italians, love the sound of their own voices.

"Here in Zealand, even more than in other provinces," said he, as seriously as if he were a master giving a lesson, "the dykes are a question of life and death. At high tide all Zealand is below sea-level. For every dyke that were broken, an island would disappear. The worst of it is, that here the dykes have to resist not only the direct shock of the waves, but another power which is even more dangerous. The rivers fling themselves toward the sea,—the sea casts itself against the rivers, and in this continual struggle undercurrents are formed which wash the foundations of the embankments, until they suddenly give way like a wall that is undermined. The Zealanders must be continually on their guard. When a dyke is in danger, they make another one farther inland, and await the assault of the water behind it. Thus they gain time, and either rebuild the first embankment or continue to recede from fortress to fortress until the current changes and they are saved."

"Is it not possible," I asked, introducing the element of poetry, "that some day Zealand may no longer exist?"

"On the contrary," he replied, to my sorrow: "the day may come in which Zealand will no longer be an archipelago, but terra firma. The Scheldt and the Meuse continually bring down mud, which is deposited in the arms of the sea, and, rising little by little, enlarges the islands, thus enclosing the towns and villages that were ports on the coast. Axel, Goes, Veer, Arnemuyden, and Middelburg were maritime towns, and are now inland cities. Hence the day will surely come in which the waters of the rivers will no longer pass between the islands of Zealand, and a network of railways will extend over the whole country, which will be joined to the continent, as has already happened in the island of South Beveland. Zealand grows in its struggle with the sea. The sea may gain the victory in other parts of Holland, but here it will be worsted. Are you familiar with the arms of Zealand: a lion in the act of swimming, above which is written, 'Luctor et emergo'?"

After these words he remained silent for some moments, while a passing glance of pride enlivened his face: then he continued with his former gravity:

"Emergo; but he did not always emerge. All the islands of Zealand, one after the other, have slept under the waters for longer or shorter periods of time. Three centuries ago the island of Schouwen was inundated by the sea, when all the inhabitants and cattle were drowned and it was reduced to a desert. The island of North Beveland was completely submerged shortly after, and for several years nothing was to be seen but the tips of the church-steeples peeping out of the water. The island of South Beveland shared the same fate toward the middle of the fourteenth century,—the island of Tholen suffered in the year 1825 of our century,—the island of Walcheren in 1808, and in the capital of Middelburg, although it is several miles distant from the coast, the water was up to the roofs."

As I listened to these stories of the water, of inundations and submerged districts, it seemed strange to me that I myself was not drowned, I asked the captain what sort of people lived in those invisible countries, with water underfoot and overhead.

"Farmers and shepherds," he answered. "We call Zealand a group of forts defended by a garrison of farmers and shepherds. Zealand is the richest agricultural province in the Netherlands. The alluvial soil of these islands is a marvel of fertility. Few countries can boast such wheat, colza, flax, and madder as it produces. Its people raise prodigious cattle and colossal horses, which are even larger than those of the Flemish breed. The people are strong and handsome; they preserve their ancient customs, and live contentedly in prosperity and peace. Zealand is a hidden paradise."

While the captain was speaking the ship entered the Keeten Canal, which divides the island of Tholen from the island of Schouwen, and is famous for the ford across which the Spanish made their way in 1575, just as the eastern side of the Scheldt is famous for the passage they forced in 1572. All Zealand is full of memories of that war. Because of its intimate connection with William of Orange, the hereditary lord of a great part of the land in the islands, and by reason of the impediments of every kind that it could oppose to invaders, this little archipelago of sand, half buried in the sea, became the theatre of war and heresy, and the duke of Alva longed to possess it. Consequently terrible struggles raged on its shores, signalised by all the horrors of battles by land and sea. The soldiers forded the canals by night in a dense throng, the water up to their throats, menaced by the tide, beaten by the rain, with volleys of musketry pouring down the banks, their horses and artillery swallowed in the mud, the wounded swept away by the current or buried alive in the quagmires. The air resounded with German, Spanish, Italian, and Flemish voices. Torches illuminated the great arquebuses, the pompous plumes, the strange, blanched faces. The battles seemed to be fantastic funerals. They were, in fact, the funerals of the great Spanish monarchy, which was slowly drowned in Dutch waters, smothered with mud and curses. One who is weak enough to feel an excessive tenderness for Spain need only go to Holland if he wishes to do penance for this sin. Never, perchance, have there been two nations which have had better reasons than these to hate each other with all their strength, or which tried with greater fury to establish those reasons. I remember, to mention one alone of a thousand contrasts, how it impressed me to hear Philip II. spoken of in terms so different from those used in the Pyrenees a few months before. In Spain his lowest title was the great king: in Holland they called him a cowardly tyrant.

The ship passed between the island of Schouwen and the little island of St. Philipsland, and a few moments later entered the wide branch of the Meuse called Krammer, which divides the island of Overflakkee from the continent. We seemed to be sailing through a chain of large lakes. The distant banks presented the same appearance as those of the Scheldt. Dykes stretched as far as the eye could see, and behind the dykes appeared the tops of trees, the tips of steeples, and the roofs of houses, which were hidden from view, all lending the landscape an air of mystery and solitude. Only on some projection of the banks which formed a gap in the immense bulwarks of the island peeped forth, as it were, a sketch of a Dutch landscape—a painted cottage, a windmill, a boat—which seemed to reveal a secret created to arouse the curiosity of travellers, and to delude it directly it was aroused.

Suddenly, on approaching the prow of the ship, where were the third-class passengers, I made a most agreeable discovery. Here was a group of peasants, men and women, dressed in the costume of Zealand—I do not remember of which island, for the costume differs in each, like the dialect, which is a mixture of Dutch and Flemish, if one may so speak of two languages that are almost identical. The men were all dressed alike. They wore round felt hats trimmed with wide embroidered ribbons; their jackets were of dark cloth, close fitting, and so short as hardly to cover their hips, and left open to show a sort of waistcoat striped with red, yellow, and green, which was closed over the chest by a row of silver buttons attached to one another like the links of a chain. Their costume was completed by a pair of short breeches of the same color as the jacket, tied round the waist by a band ornamented by a large stud of chiselled silver,—a red cravat, and woollen stockings reaching to the knee. In short, below the waist their dress was that of a priest, and above it, that of a harlequin. One of them had coins for buttons, and this is not an unusual practice. The women wore very high straw hats in the form of a broken cone, which looked like overturned buckets, bound round with long blue ribbons fluttering in the wind; their dresses were dark-colored, open at the throat, revealing white embroidered chemisettes; their arms were bare to the elbow; and two enormous gold earrings of the most eccentric shape projected almost over their cheeks. Although in my voyage I tried to imitate Victor Hugo in admiring everything as a savage, I could not possibly persuade myself that this was a beautiful style of dress. But I was prepared for incongruities of this sort. I knew that we go to Holland to see novelty rather than beauty, and good things rather than new ones, so I was predisposed to observe rather than to be enthusiastic. If that first impression was not very pleasant to my artistic taste, I consoled myself by the thought that doubtless all those peasants could read and write, and that possibly on the previous evening they had learned by heart a poem of their great poet, Jacob Catz, and that they were probably on their way to some agricultural convention of which the programme was in their pockets, where with arguments drawn from their modest experience they would confute the propositions of some scientific farmer from Goes or Middelburg. Ludovico Guicciardini, a Florentine nobleman, the author of an excellent work on the Netherlands printed in Antwerp in the sixteenth century, says that there was hardly a man or woman in Zealand who did not speak French or Spanish, and that a great many spoke Italian. This statement, which was perhaps an exaggeration in his day, would now be a fable, but it is certain that amongst the rural inhabitants of Zealand there exists an extraordinary intellectual culture, far superior to that of the peasants of France, Belgium, Germany, and many other provinces of Holland.

The ship rounded the island of Philipsland, and we found ourselves outside of Zealand.

Thus this province, mysterious before we entered it, seemed doubly so when we had quitted it. We had traversed it and had not seen it, and we left it with our curiosity ungratified. The only thing we had perceived was that Zealand is a country hidden from view. But one is deceived who thinks it is mysterious for the sole reason that it is invisible—everything in Zealand is a mystery. First of all,—How was it formed? Was it a group of tiny alluvial islands, uninhabited and separated only by canals, which, as some believe, met and formed larger islands? Or was it, as others think, terra firma when the Scheldt emptied itself into the Meuse? But, even leaving its origin out of the question, in what other country in the world do things happen as they happen in Zealand? In what other country do the fishermen catch in their nets a siren whose husband, after vain prayers to have her restored, in vengeance throws up a handful of sand, prophesying that it will bury the gates of the town—and lo his prophecy is fulfilled? In what other country do the souls of those lost at sea come as they come to Walcheren, and awaken the fishermen with the demand that they be conducted to the coasts of England? In what other country do the sea-storms fling, as they do on the banks of the island of Schouwen, carcasses borne from the farthest north—monsters half men, half boats; mummies bound in the floating trunks of trees, of which an example is still to be seen at the guildhall of Zierikzee? In what country, as at Wemeldingen, does a man fall head foremost into a canal, where, remaining under water an hour, he sees his dead wife and children, who call to him from Paradise, and is then drawn out of the water alive, whereupon he relates this miracle to Victor Hugo, who believes it and comments on it, concluding that the soul may leave the body for some time and then return to it? Where, as near Domburg, at low water is it possible to draw up ancient temples and statues of unknown deities? In what other place does the sword of a Spanish captain, Mondragone, serve as a lightning-conductor, as at Wemeldingen? In what other country are unfaithful women made to walk naked through the streets of the town with two stones hung round the neck and a cylinder of iron on the head, as in the island of Schouwen? Now, really, this last marvel is no longer seen, but the stones still exist, and any one can see them in the guildhall at Brauwershaven.

Our ship now entered that part of the southern branch of the Meuse called Volkerak. The scene was just the same—dykes upon dykes, the tips of houses and church-steeples, a few boats here and there. One thing only was changed, the sky. I then saw for the first time the Dutch sky as it usually appears, and witnessed one of those battles of light peculiar to the Netherlands—battles which the great Dutch landscape-artists have painted with insuperable power. Previously the sky had been serene. It was a beautiful summer day: the waters were blue, the banks emerald green, the air warm, with not a breath of wind stirring. Suddenly a thick cloud hid the sun, and in less time than it takes to tell it everything was as different as if the season, the hour, and the latitude had all been changed in a moment. The waters became dark, the green of the banks grew dull, the horizon was hidden under a gray veil; everything seemed shrouded in a twilight which made all things lose their outline. An evil wind arose, chilling us to the bone. It seemed to be December; we felt the chill of winter and that restlessness which accompanies every sudden menace on the part of nature. All round the horizon small leaden-colored clouds began to collect, scudding rapidly along, as though searching impatiently for a direction and a shape. Then the waters began to ripple, and became streaked with rapid luminous reflections, with long stripes of green, violet, white, ochre, black. Finally this irritation of nature ended in a violent downpour, which confused sky, water, and earth in one gray mass, broken only by a lighter tone caused by the far-off banks, and by some sailing ships, which came into view here and there like upright shadows on the waters of the river.

"Now we are really in Holland," said the captain of the ship, approaching a group of passengers who were contemplating the spectacle. "Such sudden changes of scene," he continued, "are never seen anywhere else."

Then, in answer to a question from one of us, he ran on:

"Holland has a meteorology quite her own. The winter is long, the summer short, the spring is only the end of the winter, but nevertheless, you see, every now and then, even during the summer, we have a touch of winter. We always say that in Holland the four seasons may be seen in one day. Our sky is the most changeable in the world. This is the reason why we are always talking of the weather, for the atmosphere is the most variable spectacle we have. If we wish to see something that will entertain us, we must look upward. But it is a dull climate. The sea sends us rain on three sides: the winds break loose over the country even on the finest days; the ground exhales vapors that darken the horizon; for several months the air has no transparency. You should see the winter. There are days when you would say it would never be fine again: the darkness seems to come from above like the light; the north-east wind brings us the icy air from the North Pole, and lashes the sea with such fury and roaring that it seems as though it would destroy the coasts." Here he turned to me and said, smiling, "You are better off in Italy." Then he grew serious and added, "However, every country has its good and bad side."

The boat left the Volkerak, passed in front of the fortress of Willemstadt, built in 1583 by the Prince of Orange, and entered Hollandsdiep, a wide branch of the Meuse which separates South Holland from North Brabant. All that we saw from the ship was a wide expanse of water, two dark stripes to the right and left, and a gray sky. A French lady, breaking the general silence, exclaimed with a yawn,

"How beautiful is Holland!"

All of us laughed excepting the Dutch passengers.

"Ah, captain," began a little old Belgian, one of those pillars of the coffee-house who are always thrusting their politics in the faces of their fellows, "there is a good and a bad side to every country, and we Belgians and Dutchmen ought to have been persuaded of this truth, and then we should have been indulgent toward each other and have lived in harmony. When one thinks that we are now a nation of nine millions of inhabitants,—we with our industries and you with your commerce, with two such capitals as Amsterdam and Brussels, and two commercial towns like Antwerp and Rotterdam, we should count for something in this world, eh, captain?"

The captain did not answer. Another Dutchman said:

"Yes, with a religious war twelve months in the year."

The little old Belgian, somewhat put out, now addressed his remarks to me in a low tone: "It is a fact, sir. It was stupid, especially on our part. You will see Holland. Amsterdam is certainly not Brussels; it is as flat and wearisome a country as can well be; but as to prosperity it is far beyond us. Assure yourself that they spend a florin, which is two and a half francs, where we spend a franc. You will see it in your hotel bills. They are twice as rich as we are. It was all the fault of William the First, who wished to make a Dutch Belgium and has pushed us to extremes. You know how it happened"—and so on.

In Hollandsdiep we began to see big barges, small-fishing-boats, and some large ships that had come from Hellevoetsluis, an important maritime port on the right bank of the Haringvliet, a branch of the Meuse, near its mouth, where nearly every vessel from India stops. The rain ceased. The sky, gradually, unwillingly, became serene, and on a sudden the waters and the banks were clothed once more in fresh glowing colors: it was summer again.

In a little while the vessel reached the village of Moerdyk, where one of the largest bridges in the world is to be seen.

It is an iron structure a mile and a half long, over which passes the railway to Dordrecht and Rotterdam. From a distance it looks like fourteen enormous edifices put in line across the river: each one of the fourteen high arches supporting the tracks is in truth a huge edifice. In passing over it, as I did a few months later on my return to Holland, I saw nothing but sky and water, so wide is the river at this point, and I felt almost afraid the bridge might suddenly come to an end, and plunge the train into the water.

The boat turned to the left, passing in front of the bridge, and entered a very narrow branch of the Meuse called Dordsche Kil, which had dykes on either side, and hence looked more like a canal than a river. It was already the seventh turn we had made since we crossed the frontier.

Passing down the Dordsche Kil, we began to see signs of the proximity of a large town. There were long rows of trees on the banks, bushes, cottages, canals to the right and left, and much moving of boats and barges. The passengers became more animated, and here and there were heard exclamations of "Dordrecht! we shall see Dordrecht." All seemed preparing themselves for some extraordinary scene.

The spectacle was not long delayed, and was extraordinary indeed.

The boat turned for the eighth time, to the right, and entered the Oude Maas or Old Meuse.

In a few moments the first houses of the suburbs around Dordrecht came into view. It was a sudden apparition of Holland, a gratification of our curiosity immediate and complete, a revelation of all the mysteries which were tormenting our brains: we seemed to be in a new world.

Immense windmills with revolving arms were to be seen on every side; houses of a thousand extraordinary shapes were dotted along the banks: some were like villas, others like pavilions, kiosks, cottages, chapels, theatres,—their roofs red, their walls black, blue, pink, and gray, their doors and windows encircled with white borders like drifts of snow. Canals little and big were leading in every direction; in front of the houses and along the canals were groups and rows of trees; ships glided among the cottages and boats were moored before the doors; sails shone in the streets—masts, pennons, and the arms of windmills projected in confusion above the trees and roofs. Bridges, stairways, gardens on the water, a thousand corners, little docks, creeks, openings, crossways on the canals, hiding-places for the boats, men, women, and children passing each other on the ways from the river to the bank, from the canals to their houses, from the bridges to the barges, -all these made the scene one of motion and variety. Everywhere was water,—color, new forms, childish figures, little details, all glossy and fresh,—an ingenuous display of prettiness—a mixture of the primitive and the theatrical, of grace and absurdity, which was partly European, partly Chinese, partly belonging to no land,—and over all a delightful air of peace and innocence.

So Dordrecht flashed upon me for the first time, the oldest and at the same time the freshest and brightest town of Holland, the queen of Dutch commerce in the Middle Ages—the mother of painters and scholars. Honored in 1572 by the first meeting within its walls of the deputies of the United Provinces, it was also at different times the seat of memorable synods, and was particularly famous for that meeting of the protestant theologians in 1618, the Ecumenical Council of the Reformation, which decided the terrible religious dispute between Arminians and Gomarists, established the form of national worship, and gave rise to that series of disturbances and persecutions which ended with the unfortunate murder of Barneveldt and the sanguinary triumph of Maurice of Orange. Dordrecht, because of its easy communication with the sea, with Belgium, and with the interior of Holland, is still one of the most flourishing commercial towns of the United Provinces. To Dordrecht come the immense supplies of wood which are brought down the Rhine from the Black Forest and Switzerland—the Rhine wines, the lime, the cement and the stone; in its little port there is a continual movement of snowy sails and of smoking steamers, while little flags bring greetings from Arnhem, Bois-le-Duc, Nimeguen, Rotterdam, Antwerp, and from all their mysterious sisters in Zealand.

The boat stopped for a few minutes at Dordrecht, and I unexpectedly observed near by a number of fresh little cottages which were purely Dutch, and which aroused in me the greatest desire to land and make their acquaintance. But I conquered my curiosity by the thought that at Rotterdam I should see many such sights. The boat started, turned to the left (it was the ninth turning), and entered a narrow branch of the Meuse called De Noord, one of the numerous threads of that inextricable network of the waters which covers Southern Holland.

The captain approached me as I was looking for him to explain the position of Dordrecht on the map, for it seemed to me very singular. In fact, it is singular. Dordrecht is situated at the extremity of a piece of ground separated from the continent, and forming in the midst of the land an island crossed and recrossed by numerous streams, some of which are natural, some the work of man, rivers made half by man, half by nature—a bit of Holland encircled and imprisoned by the waters, like a battalion overcome by an army. It is bounded on the four sides by the river Merwede, the ancient Mosa, the Dordsche Kil, and the archipelago of Bies-Bosch, and is crossed by the New Merwede, a large artificial water-course. The imprisonment of this piece of land on which Dordrecht lies is an episode in one of the great battles fought by Holland with the waters. The archipelago of Bies-Bosch did not exist before the fifteenth century. In its place there was a beautiful plain covered with populous villages. During the night of the 18th of November, 1431, the waters of the Waal and the Meuse broke the dykes, destroyed more than seventy villages, drowned almost a hundred thousand souls, and broke up the plain into a thousand islands, leaving in the midst of this ruin one upright tower called Merwede House, the ruins of which are still visible. Thus was Dordrecht separated from the continent, and the archipelago of Bies-Bosch made its appearance, which, as though to show its right of existence, provides hay, reeds, and rushes to a little village which hangs like a swallow's nest on one of the neighboring dykes. But this is not all that is remarkable in the history of Dordrecht. Tradition relates, many believe, and some uphold, that at the time of this remarkable inundation Dordrecht—yes, the whole town of Dordrecht, with its houses, mills, and canals—made a short journey, like an army moving camp; that is to say, it was transported from one place to another with its foundations intact: in consequence whereof the inhabitants of the neighboring villages, coming to the town after the catastrophe, found nothing where it had been. One can imagine their consternation. This prodigy is explained by the fact that Dordrecht is founded on a stratum of clay, which had slipped on to the mass of turf which forms the basis of the soil. Such is the story as I heard it.

Before the vessel left the Noord Canal the hope of seeing my first Dutch sunset was disappointed by another sudden change in the weather. The sky was obscured, the waters became livid, and the horizon disappeared behind a thick veil of mist.

The ship entered the Meuse, and turned for the tenth time, to the left. At this point the Meuse is very wide, as it carries away and imprisons the waters of the Waal, the largest branch of the Rhine, and the waters of the Leck and Yssel also empty themselves into it. Its banks are flanked on either side by long rows of trees, and are dotted with houses, workshops, manufactories, and arsenals, which grow thicker as Rotterdam is approached.

However little acquainted one may be with the physical history of Holland, the first time one sees the Meuse and thinks of its memorable overflowings, of the thousand calamities and innumerable victims of that capricious and terrible river, one regards it with a sort of uneasy curiosity, much as one looks at a famous brigand. The eye rests on the dykes with a feeling almost of satisfaction and gratitude, as on the brigand when he is safely handcuffed and in the hands of the police.

While my eyes were roving in search of Rotterdam, a Dutch passenger told how, when the Meuse is frozen, the currents, coming unexpectedly from warmer regions, strike the ice that covers the river, break it, upheave enormous blocks with a terrific crash, and hurl them against the dykes, piling them in immense heaps which choke the course of the river and make it overflow. Then begins a strange battle. The Dutch answer the threats of the Meuse with cannonade. The artillery is called out, volleys of grape-shot break the towers and barricades of ice which oppose the current, into a storm of splinters and briny hail. "We Hollanders," concluded the passenger, "are the only people who have to take up arms against the rivers."

When we came in sight of Rotterdam it was growing dark and drizzling. Through the thick mist I could barely see a great confusion of ships, houses, windmills, towers, trees, and moving figures on dykes and bridges. There were lights everywhere. It was a great city different in appearance from any I had seen before, but fog and darkness soon hid it from my view. By the time I had taken leave of my fellow-travellers and had gathered my luggage together, it was night. "So much the better," I said getting into a cab. "I shall see for the first time a Dutch city by night; this must indeed be a novel spectacle." In fact, Bismarck, when at Rotterdam, wrote to his wife that at night he saw "phantoms on the roofs."