It must be because the province of Zeeland seems too fearfully close to be interesting that the average traveler through Holland, if he enter by Flushing—one of the little country’s two principal sea gates—hurries from deck to dock like a somnambulist, and fights for his compartment in the four-something a.m. train, bound for Amsterdam or The Hague. Perhaps, after being wakened most unsympathetically, if not rudely, at three-thirty in the morning, he feels disagreeable enough to take the first train out, no matter whence it cometh nor whither it goeth. But in so doing the aforementioned average sight-seer will make his first mistake—and a grave one—with regard to Holland. Part of the best of the country, scenically and historically, is just at the other end of the gangplank.

This business of the arrival at Flushing of the night boat from Folkestone at the unheavenly hour of four in the morning, ought in itself be sufficient excuse to go first thing to the bedroom steward the evening of embarkation and whisper unto him casually but firmly that the odds might run as high as ten chances to one his name would be Dutch for Dennis if he dared to rap you out of your bunk earlier than six. The steamship company reserves the privilege of putting you off the boat at seven, at any rate; so, to arise at six will just give you time to array yourself in the proper regalia, indulge in a hurried breakfast of ham and eggs on board (at a shilling an egg), and climb into the seven-seven train for that capital of quaintness, not to mention the province of Zeeland—Middelburg. The four-something train ignores Middelburg with a passing snort.

And a word here to the wise is sufficient: don’t settle yourself for an all day train ride. Don’t even exert yourself to the extent of hoisting your grip to the baggage rack. If the compartment be crowded—which it never is, going to Middelburg—you might hold your suit case on your lap the entire journey without fatigue or even ennui. Middelburg is four miles from Flushing. If the engineer doesn’t slow down to blow the whistle it will take just eleven minutes to cover the distance.

I have anticipated the fact that the sum total of your baggage will consist of a suit case, because personally conducting a trunk through Holland would be just as incongruous as saddling a Shetland pony with an elephant howdah.

There are two methods of seeing the Island of Walcheren, equally fascinating, and the visitor can avail himself of both in one and the same day. The first is by climbing the two hundred and seventy-odd steps to the top of “Long John” in Middelburg, and the second by a drive around the Island, covering, perhaps, thirty miles, and touching the three principal places of interest: Veere, Domburg, and Westkapelle. To state here that the Island of Walcheren is not an island might seem a bit ambiguous, but it is true, nevertheless, and may be explained away as follows:

Long before our time, perhaps in the distant Paleozoic age, Walcheren was nothing more than shallow water. Along came the Dutch—who have a happy faculty of making their own geography as they need it—and, seeing prospects in its development, built a sort of cofferdam around it, pumped the place dry, and made it into an island. It made a fairly good island, and in later years they grafted it on to the parent land by a long embankment across an arm of the Scheldt, and made it into a peninsula. A peninsula it still remains, but its future is all a matter of conjecture.

“Long John,” or Lang Jan, if the sobriquet be translated into Dutch, is practically the Washington Monument of Walcheren. It is the two-hundred-and-eighty-foot tower of the Nieuwe Kerk in Middelburg, capped with a climax of forty-one bells that chime a quaint fragment of some familiar popular melody every seven-and-a-half minutes. On the hour Long John literally vibrates from foundation to weather vane in a frenzied endeavor to pour forth in toto the accumulation of more or less music administered in small doses during the previous sixty minutes.

It is up the middle of Long John you must climb in a spiral to obtain a first impression of Walcheren. It is a tedious task, and by the time you are halfway up you are blessing the memory of the man who twined the now much worn hand rope along the steep staircase. You may even be about to give up in disgust, when, of a sudden, you stumble in upon the lofty hermitage of old Hendrick Landman, the keeper of the bells.

Hendrick sits serenely in his armchair in an extremely well ventilated room at the top of the spiral and lets people pay a small fee for the privilege of climbing up to have him point out the view and exhibit his mechanical masterpiece a few ladder lengths higher up. Hendrick’s view alone is doubly worth the climb, and, after reimbursing him to the equivalent extent of about eight cents in American coinage, you will also have to admit that he can certainly keep bells. I know nothing of whatever else Hendrick can or cannot do, but he can certainly keep bells; and after all, a man can hope for nothing more than to achieve success in his chosen calling. Hendrick also takes just pride in the condition of the Gargantuan Swiss music box that is responsible for the two or three bars every seven-and-a-half minutes. He oils it and he winds it assiduously twice every day in the year.

Taken by and large, Hendrick is an unimpeachable bell keeper.

After having been duly and visibly impressed with the manner in which Hendrick keeps his bells and his garrulous music box, it might be well to tarry with him for a few moments at the foot of the ladder and attempt a squint or two through the old gentleman’s telescope, which, from the appearance of it, might be a lineal descendant of the first ones ever put together by Zacharias Jansen, all of three hundred years ago and not more than a few feet from the base of the tower you stand upon.

Jansen, the inventor of the telescope and the microscope, and Father Jacob Cats, the humorist-poet-philosopher, were contemporaries in Middelburg for a time, and the town claims them as its two most illustrious sons. The children of Jansen’s genius may still be viewed in the little Museum of the Zeeuwsch Genootschap der Watenschappen (don’t ask me to pronounce the name of that society; it is task enough to spell it correctly) in the Wagenaarstraat of Zeeland’s capital; Father Cats will live in Holland in book form until the end of all things.

If the atmosphere be clear, you would think that a strong wind from the north could topple Long John, including bells, music box, Hendrick Landman and his telescope, and all, upon the bathing beach of Flushing itself—the place seems so close below you. Flushing of to-day is nothing more than a pseudo bathing resort, much patronized by easily pleased Germans, and a handy terminus for ’cross-channel passenger boats. But the name of Flushing also means much in the history of Holland.

Here was born in 1607 that popular idol of the Dutch, Admiral de Ruyter, the son of a rope maker, although his mother, whose name he assumed, happened to be of noble birth. De Ruyter flourished at a particularly favorable time in the middle of the seventeenth century, when the navigation acts passed by Cromwell placed unbearable restrictions on trade with Holland. The ensuing war with England called into play de Ruyter’s talents, and a large majority of the thirteen great naval battles fought within a period of sixteen months were won by the Dutch. It was not, however, until a later war with England that de Ruyter performed his principal and culminating achievement. In 1667, at the age of sixty, he mustered his fleet and forced a fairway up the Thames to the very gates of London herself, demolishing fortifications and shipping as he went, and plunging London into a panic.

Flushing, too, was the scene of embarkation of the unhappy Charles V in 1556, and of Philip II three years later, neither of whom ever returned. As you look out upon the Scheldt from your coign of vantage at the top of Long John you can almost picture the scene on the deck of the vessel when Philip denounced the Prince of Orange as having thwarted his plans, declaring the innocent William an ingrate, and doubtless a host of other names unfit for publication.

It was Flushing that first hoisted the ensign of liberty against the Spaniard, Alva, and it was Flushing, during the Napoleonic wars of 1809, that the English fleet, with the ultimate capture of Antwerp at heart, bombarded so vigorously that the magnificent Town Hall, a couple of churches, and no less than two hundred private houses were razed to the ground.

From Long John one can see plainly the towns on the north and west coasts of Walcheren, and often even the spires of Antwerp are visible, while directly below—a mass of red roofs punctured here and there with patches of trees—stretches Middelburg. To the left is the market place, bounded on the north by the handsome Town Hall begun in the sixteenth century, the embellishment of whose faÇade by twenty-five ancient statues of the counts and countesses of Holland helps it to hold its place as one of the finest and most interesting late-Gothic edifices in the Netherlands. The tower of the Town Hall has a chime, too, and each time after Long John so insistently proclaims the hour of the day or night—for Long John takes the credit of giving standard time to Middelburg—it must get a bit on his nerves to have “Foolish Betsy” (Gekke Betje), up in the Town Hall tower, rattle off her cacophonous contradiction a minute or two earlier, or later, as the case may be.

To the right is the peaceful square inclosed by the famous old Abbey of St. Nicholas, founded as early as 1106, and later, in the sixteenth century, the scene of a memorable meeting of the Knights of the Golden Fleece.

Then, after a last good-by to Hendrick and his companionable telescope, you clatter down the tower steps, ignoring with consummate contempt the twining hand rope which, in the ascent, so forcibly appealed to your avoirdupois.

The road from Middelburg to Veere, a distance of three or four miles, is brick-paved and lined with trees, as is the habit of most highways in Holland; and if it is your first experience thoughts pertaining to the thoroughness of the Dutch will doubtless be in order. It may have taken more time and it may have cost more money to lay brick roads, but then the expense and labor of repair are minimum. The building of roads is but one of the many tasks that the Hollander does not believe in doing over again in a year or two; so he lays them in brick—and the comfort of passengers in vehicles is of no consideration. There is a road from Monnikendam to Edam which might give a horse spavin to look upon. The blame for the wearing out of the road, in this case, is placed upon the poor beast, and down the middle of it they have laid a brick-paved path, the sides being merely macadamized.

The landscape of Walcheren seems set as if for a theatrical performance. There is a place for everything, and everything is in its place. Left, a tree-encircled, thatch roofed farmhouse, built as an addition to the barn in the back, so as to save a wall; right, a line of willows, all twins, that fringe a road along the top of a dike; up stage, a windmill of methodical movements, and, perhaps, a sailboat passing slowly along a narrow canal—too narrow and too high above the eye for the audience to obtain a glimpse of any water at all—giving the effect of a mirage; down stage, a black and white cow. Of course it will be a black and white cow, because, figuratively, you might count the red cows in Holland on your fingers. And such a scene is not typical of the Island of Walcheren alone, but of the Netherlands in general. Any other type of scenery might become wearisome, but possibly the brevity of the train ride or the substitution of a boat or steam tram trip between one point of interest and another has a lot to do with relieving the monotony.

Of all Zeeland, the particular costume of that province can be observed to the best advantage on the island of Walcheren. A milkmaid of Middelburg, for example, is a joy to look upon. Her spotless white cap bristles at the temples with kurkenkrullen like the antennÆ of a prehistoric beetle. Her skirts are ankle-high and padded generously at the hips. If she be naturally rotund and the skirts need no padding, circumstantial evidence of the fact is sufficient to stamp her the belle of the community. The sleeves of her bodice are very short and very tight, pinching the arms above the elbows so that they might be mistaken for a pair of aggravated cases of inflammatory rheumatism. Of course the sun in all its glory strikes the backs of these arms, for she always walks with them akimbo, the better to balance the pails which dangle one from each end of a wooden yoke, enameled a vivid robin’s egg blue. But the redder the arms from the rays of the sun and the tighter the pinch of the sleeves, the flatter the chest and the broader the hips, the sooner will she cease to be a mere milkmaid through the medium of a simple marriage ceremony in the village kerk.

The only discordant note in the otherwise harmonious landscape on the road to Veere may be said to be a flitting one. It assumes the distended shape of a buxom village maiden in the full provincial costume—padded skirts and all—astride a bicycle, spinning townward or homeward over the bricks. For the bicycle, be it known, is the natural—and it has therefore become the national—means of locomotion in Holland. Everybody rides bicycles; and since the only hills are the approaches to the dikes or across the humpbacked span of a canal drawbridge, their invention has been no less a boon to the populace at large than it has been a bane to the sight-seer. In The Hague, for example, they have become a veritable pest, and to be constantly dodging them in the streets keeps a person very much on the jump.

By and by you will rattle into Veere. You can tell it is Veere by its church, for Veere’s church is something to remember. It is by far the biggest thing on the island of Walcheren. It is the first building of historical or architectural importance that you will pass on entering the town from Middelburg, and its immensity, so foreign to the Veere of to-day, may be able to convey to you some remote idea of what Veere used to be before the sea leaked in over the cofferdam and blotted out most of the place between suns.

Built in 1348, this church weathered even the terrible encroachment of the sea; but along came Napoleon in 1812. Napoleon, being accustomed to move, lock, stock and barrel, into the most sumptuous quarters of every town he visited, took a particular liking to Veere’s church and promptly made a barracks of it. There is no more complete method of demolishing the interior of a building than to turn it into a barracks, especially a Napoleonic barracks, and since the Little Corsican’s unwelcome visit to Veere the old church has remained ravaged, mildewed, and decayed. In a corner of the east end, however, the people of Veere still gather for spiritual worship. Twelve years ago they started to restore the church, but if the receipt of funds is not a little more prompt in the future they may some day have to restore the restorations.

Several quaint old houses of the sixteenth century; an impressive tower at the mouth of the harbor, whose mate lies buried under the sea; and the Town Hall, containing an unimportant museum save for a few royal documents and a richly enameled goblet, presented to the town in 1551 by Maximilian of Burgundy, the first marquis of Veere—these and the church are the sole relics of Veere’s previous prosperity not claimed by the ocean.

A rapid succession of long, shady, hedge-fringed avenues lead from Veere to Domburg, the curious little bathing resort on the northwest coast of the island. Approximately halfway, at West Hove, there stands a famous old castle, once the residence of the Abbots of Middelburg, which remains in such a perfect state of preservation—although modernized, of course, to a certain degree—that in the summer it is used as a sanatorium for the poor children of the Flushing and Middelburg districts. Just across the road an attractive modern building, more like a country home in design, does duty as a full-fledged hospital.

The town of Domburg gives not the least evidence of being situated on the seaside, as do the most of our Atlantic Coast resorts by their bleakness, but seems rather an inland village, thickly sprinkled with and all but completely surrounded by trees. At its back and just a few steps behind the sand dunes, lies the sea, while a stretch of well formed, sandy beach, which entices to Domburg each summer a goodly number of Dutch people and the few foreigners who know of its charms, slopes away beyond the dunes.

For five miles farther, to Westkapelle, the road lies first behind the dunes and then behind the giant dike for which this, one of the most exposed and at the same time one of the lowest sections of Holland, is famous. Presently you find yourself bowling along on top of the dike, with the sea lapping restlessly at its thick, beveled-stone hide on the right, and the village of Westkapelle, nestling some feet below the water level even at low tide, yet secure behind the backbone of its protector, on the left. This dike, being of necessity one of the largest and strongest along the Dutch coast, receives the tenderest of care in the hands of the Government, for, in case of a break in it, the Island of Walcheren would be reduced to its former state of shallow sea water in less time than it would take to set the type of the “scare-head” in the newspapers to tell of the catastrophe. The laborers who are constantly employed at work upon it are supposed to be the direct descendants of the Danish fishermen who dragged these waters with their nets far back in Norman times.

Aside from its dike the most conspicuous object in the vicinity of Westkapelle is the lofty, square, Gothic tower, belonging originally to a fifteenth-century church burned down in 1831. This tower the Dutch have aptly turned into practical service by making a lighthouse of it. The powerful reflectors at its top have a radius of twenty-five miles or more and, even in the daytime, the tower is as much of a landmark along the west coast of the island as the church at Veere is along the north.

Driving from Westkapelle back to Middelburg you scarcely pass out from the throes of one tollgate until you are enmeshed in those of another. You are assumed to be honest in Zeeland and expected to march right up to the door of the tollhouse, pass a cordial time of day with the character who keeps it, and pay your little five or six Dutch cents without even so much as giving vent to the time-honored conjecture that the farmers thereabouts must be too well off to work out their taxes on the roadway.

Nor is it only the tollhouse keeper who has a pleasant word of greeting for you, but every native you pass, man, woman, or child, will have a nod and a smile and a cheery “Good evening”—although you may not recognize the verbiage. The sturdy truck farmer, with gold earrings and cropped hair, trudging homeward in the wake of his push-cart; the thickly padded maiden with her dangling milk pails; the tiny boys and girls, diminutive counterparts of their parents as regards a costume which wavers not with the change of fashion—all seem to think it their especial assignment to treat the tourist on Walcheren as a visitor and not an invader.