If the American traveler expects to stop off along the line from Middelburg at a little place called Goes, he will undergo his first operation with the Dutch language. Should he fail to catch sight of the signboard that proclaims in print the name of the station, or to compare his watch with his timetable in order to ascertain in this manner the exact bearings of the point of stoppage, he will probably be carried on through, for it will not occur to him that he had planned to detrain when the tin-horn-girdled conductor rattles up and down the platform shouting, “Whose.” But “Whose” is the way Goes is pronounced—and this is simply introductory.

Some there be who try to insist that we have nothing to brag about in the way of euphonic orthography, which is more or less of a cold fact. But then, we are used to it. The same may be said of the Dutch language, and it is to be hoped that the Dutch are used to it. They seem to get along with it passably well, at all events. But their ability to master the impossible does not alleviate our troubles in the least. Any nation that can spell “ice” y-s and i-j-s with equal complacency, and gather the same meaning from both methods, deserves to be misunderstood.

The Dutch letter g, to come back to Goes, strikes terror to the vocal organs of the most versatile linguist. It is treated with somewhat the same disrespect that the Spanish treat their j, only more so. The Dutch pronunciation of a word beginning with g is started somewhere in the anatomical vicinity of the diaphragm and allowed to percolate up through the Æsophagus, gathering harshness and strength until it comes in violent contact with the larynx, whence it is finally ejaculated with about the same sound as a bad attack of hay fever. I quote a passage from a certain work on Holland, the author of which infers that if any person not of Dutch descent can repeat the sentence correctly as to sound and emphasis, to him the mastery of the remainder of the language will seem like child’s play. The sentence follows: “Grietje, gooi geen goeje groente in de gracht.” The interlinear cribbing of it would be in English, “Gretchen, do not throw any good vegetables into the canal.”

But since the Dutch have made so many brave attempts to discover a goodly portion of the east coast of the United States, there may be found in any geography of America a number of proper names, originally of Dutch origin, but now Anglicized to meet our requirements. They thought so much of the beauties of the lower end of New York Bay that they promptly applied to it the term, “Beautiful Outlet,” or, in Dutch, Helle Gat. “Hell Gate” must obviously be a deal less difficult, although scarcely more poetic. For the same reason does the Americanized Cape Henlopen supplant the correct name of the Friesland town of Hindeloopen from which its discoverer hailed. The name of a certain street in lower Manhattan must also be of Dutch derivation, for our word “Bowery” may be found as bouwerij, which means a “peasant’s dwelling” in the vocabulary of the Netherlands. And these are but a few of the numerous words and syllables heard in America that may be attributed to Dutch influence.

Hard by the town of Goes the tourist will obtain a comprehensive idea of what a real polder looks like, although it is scarcely distinguishable from the fact that all of the scenery along the route from Flushing east is typical, below-sea-level Dutch, lavishly cut by canals into triangles, trapezoids, and parallelograms.

A polder, by way of explanation, is the reclaimed bed of a sheet of water; and since the greater part of Holland lies below the level of the sea, the most of it is polder. Land thus reclaimed is of extraordinary fertility by reason of the fact that the water under which it was once submerged, having been pumped into surrounding canals, is readily available for irrigation purposes in event of a dry season.

The initial move in this really marvelous process of making land while you wait consists of building a dike around the prospective polder to fortify it against future inundations. Next, they literally kick the water out of the inclosed area by means of a peculiarly constructed water wheel, formerly driven by a windmill, but latterly—the Dutch having become inoculated with twentieth century impatience—by the adaptation of steam or gasoline power to the task. Often, however, the bed of the marsh or lake to be reclaimed lies too deep to admit of its water being at once kicked into the main canals to be carried off to the ocean. Such a condition of affairs will necessitate the lake being surrounded with a veritable series of dikes, each higher than the one before, like the amphitheater of a clinic (a slightly exaggerated simile), and each with a canal on its farther side from the polder. The water is then pumped from a lower level to a higher one until, finally, it is forced to admit the utter uselessness of trying to compete with the Dutch. The polder near Goes, known as the Wilhelminapolder, is something like 4,000 acres in extent and was reclaimed from the sea the same year that Napoleon was undoing the history of ecclesiastical architecture in Veere.

Polder making is a specialty with the Dutch engineers, and the end of their ingenuity is not yet in sight. Even now they are making gigantic preparations to spend upwards of $80,000,000 in the reclamation of the whole lower half of the Zuyder Zee, two thirds of which is to be constructed into a polder having an area of 1,400 square miles. The dike will stretch across the Zee from the village of Ewyksluis in North Holland to Piaam in Friesland, the cost of which alone is estimated at about $18,000,000.

On any other day but Tuesday there can be no excuse for the traveler to take the least heed of the train conductor’s garglings and stop off at Goes; but the costumes of Zeeland, as seen at a Tuesday’s market, are well worth a break in the journey.

A few miles beyond Goes the train crosses the Zuid-Beveland Canal, which intersects the long, straggling island of that name and of which Goes is the capital. The canal was cut through by the Dutch engineers in 1863–66 as a sort of apology to nature for their having deliberately closed up an arm of the Scheldt called the Kreekerak—a body of water that the Dutch never trusted since its contribution to the inundation of the east coast of Flemish Zeeland. Previous to 1532 that east coast was fertile farm land and populated by peace-loving peasants. But in that year the dike burst. Three thousand inhabitants are alleged to have perished, and the locality is still under water, it being known to-day as Verdronken Land, or “Drowned Land.”

A little later your train will cross the Kreekerak on the embankment they built, and Bergen-op-Zoom is the next stop.

They say Bergen-op-Zoom used to be one of the most flourishing towns in the Netherlands. Doubtless that is true. The only flourishing parts to be found about it now are its thousand and one rags flourished by its thousand and one housemaids scrubbing its thousand and one doorsteps. The latter are incessantly being cleaned and recleaned by the former in the hands of the intermediate; so much so, indeed, that it appears as if each maid were trying for a record. Bending double or down on their knees—in every conceivable attitude they attack their front doorsteps as many times a day as they think necessary, which is rather more than often. I have never read a consular report that speaks of Holland as a territory open for trade in mops. They may be on sale, but I have yet to see one in action. For one cause or another the Dutch seem to cling to the hand method of wringing the cloth over the bucket, then bending double and sloshing it from side to side across the pavement with a movement akin to that of a nervous captive elephant; but perhaps for the reason that this Dutch method is not and never can be thorough, do they deem it exigent to repeat the operation with such frequence.

The lesson gleaned from all this is how the Dutch have beaten their lifelong enemy, water, at its own game, ousted it, and then turned round and made of it an humble and subjected medium for keeping the country clean.

Most towns west of the Zuyder Zee are so notoriously clean that even walking over the pavements is not encouraged. For reasons of his own a householder will continue his property line out across his two or three feet of pavement with the help of a chain or iron railing, more or less decorative, so that the pedestrian, when he comes to the barrier, must side-step into the street in order to pass it.

There are four or five other features of Bergen-op-Zoom that I remember no less distinctly. One was the imposing old Gevangenpoort with its massive brick archway. It dates from the fifteenth century and constitutes one of the few remaining relics of the ancient town fortifications. Another was the accomplished female at the railway station, who served liquid refreshments to warm and weary travelers and, by way of diversion for the sake of accumulating a few extra absurd little ten cent pieces, handled the baggage of arriving and departing visitors to the town with the ease and strength of a full-blown dientsmann. If there happened to be too many pieces of luggage to carry at once, she invariably remembered where someone had hidden a wheelbarrow conveniently near the station. This she would fetch, often without the knowledge or consent of its owner, load the luggage upon it, and march off with a dignified, “what-do-you-think-of-me” sort of an air.

Another feature was the glaring heat of the place—the day of my visit being a rather humid one in July; and still another—the most important of all—was a quiet, shady nook on the low portico of a little cafÉ just back of the Groote Kerk, from which sheltered position I looked up more than once over the tops of the trees and admired the lofty steeple of the old house of worship through the bottom of a tall, slender glass.

But a short ride from Bergen-op-Zoom brings you to Rosendaal, which, from the apparent activity about the station, might be by long odds the most important town in all Holland. It is the seat of the Dutch customhouse and therefore the junction of many railway lines, north, south, east, and west; or vice versa. All roads lead in the Netherlands, not to Rome, but to Rosendaal. To explore the town is scarcely worth the trouble, but the railway station itself deserves especial notice. If you enter Holland from the Belgian frontier it will be impossible not to notice it, for the train will stop long enough at Rosendaal for the customs officials to question each and every passenger personally about cigars, perfumery, and other dutiable articles. If you come from the east or the west it is eleven chances to one you will have to change cars at Rosendaal, in which latter predicament you will at least enjoy a stroll up and down the long station platform.

This Rosendaal station struck me as being about the cleanest, shiniest place, for a railway station, at which I had ever changed cars. Not a speck of soot or dust was visible to the naked eye, and it is possible that one of old Zacharias Jansen’s microscopes wouldn’t be able to find any either, although a certain few, larger and more grotesque than their fellows, might be brought to notice under the lens of an instrument of later model. Every doorway was guarded by a pair of little boxwood or bay tree sentries, and flowers filled the boxes under the windows. The leather tables and chairs in the waiting-rooms and restaurant all but suggested a Spanish Renaissance influence, and their great brass-topped tacks glittered as if they had never known what it was to be tainted with stain or smirch—and this in a railway station.

But then, a Dutch locomotive is not nearly so offensive, I might say, as one of the American breed; and if the proper legislation is forthcoming we shall be sending experts to Holland soon to take notes on how they do it. All railway locomotives in Holland are under the supervision of an arm of the government service, and although the most of them bear the shop-plate of Glasgow or Manchester, they must be equipped with an apparatus, not only for consuming the smoke but for the prevention of the emission of sparks and other combustible matter. Descriptions and drawings showing the details and workings of these contrivances must be submitted to the Supervising Board of Railways before each new type of locomotive is purchased. Upon its delivery every newly purchased locomotive must undergo a thorough test and be approved by the inspector of the Board before it may be placed in service.

The same regulations apply to stationary engines burning bituminous coal, which would otherwise emit great clouds of black smoke, gases, and soot. Restrictions, in some localities, are even placed upon the particular kind of fuel locomotives may burn. The province of Zuid-Holland, for example, has issued the eikon that only coke may be used upon the locomotives that traverse its railway lines.

A few miles before you come to Dortrecht the railway crosses a long bridge that spans an arm of the North Sea known as the Hollandsch Diep. The actual breadth of the Diep is a mile and five-eighths, but its projecting stone piers cut the length of the bridge down to slightly less than a mile. This, the longest bridge in Holland, was completed in November, 1871, after being more than three years in the building, and its fourteen arches, with a span of 110 yards each, rest upon stone buttresses, the foundations of some of which are sunk fifty or sixty feet below low water mark. From the center of the structure you may look out over the Hollandsch Diep on the left and, on the right, the eastern end of the Biesbosch, or “reed forest”—a great, watery district more than forty square miles in area and lately reclaimed. It was formed in 1421, at the same time and under the same conditions as the Hollandsch Diep, by a terrific overflow of the sea that blotted out seventy-two towns and villages and the lives of 100,000 people.

Dortrecht, called Dordt by the Dutch, is practically a survivor of that calamity. The town was founded away back in 1008 and, four hundred years later, made an island by the obstreperous Merwede—the name given to a short part of the river formed by the confluence of the Maas and the Waal, which, beyond Dortrecht, is called De Noord and, by the time it approaches Rotterdam, known as the Maas again.

By reason of a special privilege called The Staple—pure and simple “graft,” plainly speaking—Dortrecht in the Middle Ages was the most prosperous town in Holland, for the workings of The Staple were far-reaching and marvelous. The Staple allowed Dortrecht, by royal warrant, be it remembered, to act in the capacity of a kind of clearing house for all goods, whether wines, grains, metals, or fabrics, that entered the domains of Holland by way of the Rhine. Now the territory punctured by these hundred and one apparently different and distinct rivers that so muddle the geography of the southern part of Holland for the tourist, is nothing more nor less than the wide-spreading estuary of the one river, Rhine. As every cargo that came down the river had necessarily to be unloaded at Dortrecht, municipal and private money chests burst their stout iron hoops in their efforts to contain the duties and taxes imposed. And in this kind of business buccaneering the place reveled for centuries, until Rotterdam, overcome with jealousy in 1618, stopped the procedure at the point of the bayonet.

If Wilmington, Delaware, although just twice as large in point of population, could boast of a windmill or two and a few odoriferous canals, bordered with numerous sixteenth century faÇades that slanted out over them as if in imminent danger of toppling into them; and if she had a narrow street of rather serpentine proclivities, like the Wynstraat, down which the rolling stock of the local traction company, in the shape and vintage of an ancient horse car, clanged its weary way, she might be taken, dot and tittle, for Dortrecht. Since the forced abolition of The Staple, the most of Dortrecht’s 40,000 inhabitants have gone into the more legitimate business of shipbuilding. But Wilmington, to achieve this, would also have to level off her hills to a certain depth below the sea, which might then necessitate the diking of the Delaware. It would be a mighty task and, after all is said and done, she would gain little but history.

Here in Dortrecht were born the brothers De Witt, Cornelius and John, whose equal as councilors and statesmen Holland has not been able to reproduce. The dome of the ancient Groothoofdpoort, one of the town gates of the sixteenth century that stands at the harbor end of the Wynstraat, contains, among other relics, a collection of medals, many of which were struck in commemoration of the tragedy of the Binnenhof at The Hague. Nicolas Maes, Albert Cuyp, and Ary Scheffer are the three most famous Dutch painters that Dortrecht takes pride in claiming as her own.

Like Leyden, Dortrecht experienced her period of siege in the hands of the Spaniards, although of not nearly so long duration, and relief was effected in much the same manner. Her coat of arms, consisting of a milkmaid couchant under her docile bovine on a field of—garlic, we’ll say, strikes forever the keynote of the town’s relief.

It seems that a milkmaid in the employ of a certain wealthy farmer living near the city, having gone into the fields in pursuit of her daily duties, discovered the Spaniards hidden behind the hedges. Probably out of pure reticence, bashfulness, timidity, downright scared-to-death-ness—what you will—she took no notice of the ambushed members of the opposite sex, but went as gleefully as possible at her task, and, having completed it, shouldered her yoke and started homeward. It cannot be held against her if she did hasten a bit, for a consultation of the records will prove that a thunderstorm was gathering on the horizon.

Arriving at the farmhouse, she told her employer of what she had seen, and he told the Burgomaster. The Burgomaster dispatched a spy, who, in turn, discovered that the milkmaid related no myth but a cold and brittle fact. Soldiers were mustered forthwith, and the dikes were cut, allowing the merciless river to rush in and catch the cruel Castilians unawares at their bloody job. It is alleged that Spaniards galore were drowned in the raging torrent, and many were “utterly disappointed in their design.” At all events, the town was saved and the States issued orders to the effect that the farmer be reimbursed for the loss of his cattle, real estate, and personal property, and that the milkmaid’s likeness, together with that of her faithful and nonplussible cow, be impressed upon the new coinage of the city. “And she had, during her life, and hers forever,” according to a medieval historian, “an allowance of fifty pounds per annum—a noble requital for a virtuous service.”

The first glimpse of Dortrecht that you get as you emerge from its railway station will put you at once in sympathy with it. Prefaced by an open, sunny, brick-paved space, a long avenue of great trees stretches away directly in front, while back in their shade stands the peripatetic horse car, as if loath to attempt the transfer of passengers in the heat of the day. On either side of the avenue are beautiful residences, their lawns encircled, not by the inappropriate and unsightly fence, but with a narrow canal, like a miniature moat, which is bridged only at the front and the rear entrances to the grounds. Everything seems so peaceful, so conducive to comfort and leisure, that you will wish you had the time to stay in Dortrecht indefinitely and take up your abode near the station—a wish that even in your wildest flights of fancy would never apply to Wilmington, Delaware.

Import a treacherous-looking Italian in a vivid pink shirt and let him stir up the aroma by poling his mournful gondola up and down a certain canal in Dortrecht, and you will have a scene in Venice itself. This canal, spanned at intervals by narrow bridges and bordered with three-story houses that hang over it menacingly, is obviously the reason why so much good stout canvas and so many tubes of excellent paint have been used up by Dutch artists in picturing Dortrecht; for a little of Venice, they must have thought, is better than none at all. In view, therefore, of the length, tediousness, and expense of a trip to Venice in those days, many of the best of the Dutch painters stayed home and exercised their talents on that canal in Dortrecht. All of which we may consider a boon to the art of the Netherlands as well as to the picture-loving public.