It is doubtful indeed if any other city in Holland than Amsterdam can tempt the tourist with a greater number of pleasant day’s excursions. Lying at the very feet of North Holland—a travel territory no larger in area than the state of Rhode Island, but replete with picturesque nooks and corners, congested with types and abounding in peculiar customs—every part of the province is readily accessible to Amsterdam by rail or by water. Back of its central railway station there is a long line of docks which berth the boats that only await your patronage. Here you may board the large river steamer that takes you to Zaandam in half an hour for the price of one-half of one Dutch cent a minute; here you may take the little excursion boats for ports along the Zuyder Zee; here you may engage passage to Alkmaar or to The Helder or even to Leeuwarden or Groningen or Zwolle, situated in that unpenetrated part of the kingdom which may be termed the hinterland of Holland; and here you may hire a private yacht or motor boat, master and all, to carry you whither you will and for as long as you wish for as little as five dollars a day inclusive. If you cross the arm of the Zuyder Zee they call the Ij—much easier spelled Y—by ferry to the Tolhuis you have only to board the steam tram to be rattled across country to Alkmaar, Edam, or Volendam. To Haarlem is but fifteen minutes’ ride by rail, while The Hague itself is only an hour’s trip in the schnell zug. Zandvoort, on the North Sea, is served by electric train direct from Amsterdam, stopping at Haarlem to break the short journey.

A favorite excursion for a summer’s evening is from Amsterdam by steamer to Zaandam, the most typically Dutch of all Dutch towns. The course of the steamer leads up the North Sea Canal to a point a little beyond the Petroleum Harbor and then turns off into the river Zaan.

It is in the North Sea Canal that Amsterdam places her only hope of ever being able to compete with Rotterdam as a shipping port. With its fifteen miles of length, its sixty-five to one hundred and ten yards of width, and its thirty feet of depth, this canal pierces the one-time peninsula of North Holland from the Zuyder Zee to its western boundary, making an island out of part of the province and placing Amsterdam in direct and easy communication with the North Sea. An “A.P.” gauge along its bank would prove its water level to be about twenty inches minus, that is, twenty inches below the mean level of the water at Amsterdam—the bench mark of all water levels throughout Holland. To cut such a canal across country from one sea to another and to protect it at either end with immense breakwaters and lock gates has cost the government in the neighborhood of $18,000,000 and consumed eleven years of patient labor. Since 1895 its western terminus has been divided into two outlets, the older being protected by a lock of three openings, while the more recently completed branch, diverging a little to the northward from the main canal, has but one opening, 245 yards long, 27 yards wide, and 33 feet deep.

Zaandam being the home and breeding ground of the windmill, a bird’s-eye view of it would give the effect of four inverted centipedes kicking in their death throes. It is the center of the Dutch lumber trade, and since the windmill is the cheapest method of generating the power that any lumber trade requires in order to operate its sawmills, Zaandam draws from the breeze what we conjure from steam. There are upwards of four hundred windmills in its immediate vicinity. Its houses, brightly painted with green, red, or white, and surrounded with pleasant little gardens, gayly reiterate the Dutchman’s delight in contrasts, harmonious or otherwise.

Another of Zaandam’s claims to the consideration of the tourist is a little old house near the harbor, that belongs, not to any resident of the town, nor to any man in Holland, but to the Czar of all the Russias personally. It is the house which Peter the Great made his domestic headquarters for a brief week in the year 1697 while, as tradition has it, he studied shipbuilding incognito in Zaandam. If the villagers had not made themselves so pestiferously inquisitive and penetrated his disguise a few days after his arrival he might have learned a lot from Mynheer Kalf, under whose competent tutelage he apprenticed himself as a ship carpenter; but the idlers about town became too importunate for Peter. He gave up his position at the end of a week and returned to Amsterdam.

Volendam, on the west coast of the Zuyder Zee, and the little Island of Marken, just opposite, are the two most advertised and, therefore, the show places in the tourist territory of Holland and enjoy the highest patronage. Both are being rapidly and ruthlessly spoiled in consequence. However, as these are the towns easiest of access from Amsterdam that have retained the costumes and customs which prevailed hundreds of years ago, embellishing both to a certain degree as the signs of the times dictate, one feels it his solemn duty, almost, to go there. If the gentle reader has been to Amsterdam and has weathered the many appeals to make a day’s trip to Volendam and Marken we should like to have him raise his hand, please, so that we may inquire as to the cause and effect of his superb indifference. It would be worth noting in the minutes of any travel club.

The head porter of your hotel in Amsterdam—a sort of unproclaimed passenger agent himself—will try to sell you a round trip ticket to Volendam and Marken in one of the many parties, each attended by a conductor, which leave every morning and return every evening during the season. But, if you will bear a personal opinion, that which is interesting under the guidance of the prosaic conductor is twice as interesting to explore by yourself. Start as early as you choose, if you can, and get back when you can, if you choose, is the best advice I am able to utter with regard to travel through any country in the world—and, on account of its many facilities for getting about and the comparative meagerness of the territory involved, it is especially applicable to Holland.

Except to obtain a comprehensive view of the great dam at the mouth of the Y, a mile and a quarter in length, which protects the more delicate construction of the North Sea Canal from the ravages of the Zuyder Zee, the trip to Marken made by this route offers little compensation. The same view can be had if you will take the electric car from in front of the station in Amsterdam to the St. Anthonis Dyk and walk a short distance across to the locks at the Oranjesluizen near the north end of the embankment. The five openings at this point of the great breakwater permit the entrance and exit of vessels and regulate the depth of water in the canals. Out of a total of fifty-six lock gates twenty-two are constructed of iron.

Then, too, there seems to be no stability about the weather in Holland, and a voyage up the Zuyder Zee in a cold, drizzling rain does not encourage a pleasant afterthought of the excursion. Upon one trip I made up the Zee in the middle of summer the climate was of about the same temperature as that of a Christmas in Spitzbergen.

A much more satisfactory route by which to tap these towns is the steam tramway line through Monnikendam and Edam, the method of procedure in this case being to take the ferry from the end of the Damrak near the station in Amsterdam to the Tolhuis, or old customhouse, across the Y.

Here near the Tolhuis is the southern entrance to the North Holland Canal, with its great lock gates—a channel which simplifies the boat voyage between Amsterdam and The Helder, penetrating almost the entire length of the province of North Holland, a distance of forty-five miles or more, and dividing into two the island already made by the North Sea Canal. A hundred and thirty feet in width and sixteen feet in depth, it was constructed a half century before its North Sea predecessor at a cost of about $4,000,000, and its water level at Buiksloot, the first little station on the tram line, about a mile from the Tolhuis, is as much as ten feet below that of the sea at half tide.

Broek, a little farther along near the tram line, is reputed to be the cleanest town in the world, and I have not the least doubt that its reputation is well deserved. But its motive is ill chosen: it is clean for a purpose. By its cleanliness it attracts visitors, and so it can scarcely be reckoned as a criterion by which to judge the other towns of Holland. No doubt it was clean long before it ever had any visitors, but since the tourists commenced to hear about its hypertrophied spotlessness, they began to visit it; now the more visitors it has the cleaner it becomes. Like a duck, it is preening itself continuously from dawn till dark.

From Monnikendam you may take steamer direct for the Island of Marken, but it will be more to your comfort to join the steamer in Marken and return through the canals to Amsterdam by way of Monnikendam. Such a procedure, however, is dependent upon the steamer captain’s consent to the proposition; for the boats that ply this route carry excursionists exclusively, so that even if the captain can be induced to accept you as a passenger you may have to pay the full fare for the trip from Amsterdam to Marken and return.

Once—about three and a half centuries ago—Monnikendam was included in the list of the most important towns in Holland. In its halcyon days its money chests contained enough bullion to provide for the outfitting of a fleet which it sent under spreading canvas up the coast to Hoorn, to demonstrate to the skeptics that a Spanish admiral could be captured in battle, if only the scheme were handled in the proper manner. Long since has Monnikendam been relegated to the so-called “dead city” class. It is almost too sleepy to keep awake in the daytime, arousing but once a year from its perennial slumber: when Amsterdam comes on skates to hold an ice carnival.

Back somewhere in the fourteenth century, when the only maritime means of access to Amsterdam was down the Zuyder Zee, Edam held the strategical position of being its picket port. Since those good old days its 25,000 population has depreciated four-fifths in numbers. Were it not for its brand of cheese, flourishing before the gastronomic world a perpetual advertisement of the place, Edam would soon find itself mentioned in the same breath with Broek and Monnikendam. It has a fourteenth century Gothic Groote Kerk, tremendous in comparison with its population, and a Town Hall in which are preserved the portraits of four or five erstwhile citizens of Edam, the respective virtues of whom its present inhabitants still like to mention as if they bore some weight upon the town’s past prosperity.

One of these local celebrities was a man of the name of Osterlen, who, in the 1680’s, could boast about a merchant fleet of his own numbering ninety-two sail. Three of the others were Trijntje, Peter, and Jan. Trijntje (the diminutive in this case must have been merely a matter of irony) was said to have been nine feet in height and of proportionate width; Peter grew an ambiguous beard the dimensions of which required it to be tied into a knot in order to save it from being stepped on by its master; and Jan, an immigrant from Friesland who later procured papers of naturalization in Edam—a “ringer” we should have called him in small town baseball parlance—Jan’s net tonnage was four hundred and fifty-four pounds on the date when he launched himself into the forty-second year of his life.

At Edam you will scramble into a little sailboat to be propelled by the breeze down the canal for a mile or more to Volendam. Each side of the ditch—it isn’t much more, if judged by its width; neither is its odor any sweeter—is bordered by low-lying fields populated with the black and white bovines directly responsible for the principal industry of that section. They look docile enough at a distance, these cows of North Holland, and they probably are at close range, when it comes to showing the proper deference due an unmolesting human being, but they are notorious for their biased aversion to dogs. The dog seems to be their time-honored and ancient enemy, and the mere presence of one in the field can cause a deal of agitation. If its owner accompanies the dog he may be expected to commence a Dutch Marathon almost any minute, because, at sight of him, the cow will foreclose with the canine and open speedy negotiations with the owner. I have been told that it is unsafe even to walk along the canal bank with a dog, for only during last summer one staid old burgher of Volendam, in so doing, was hooked to death, and two ladies of Edam, while taking an evening walk, had to be hustled into a passing sailboat and pushed out from shore to escape a similar fate.

Every ten feet or so, it seems, someone will be fishing, for fishing, more than any other, appears to be the national sport of Holland. No self-respecting fish would live in some of the canals they fish in, but certain species must be able to survive their density else the proverbial Dutch patience would be soon exhausted.

The most odoriferous point along the canal from Edam to Volendam is in the immediate vicinity of a duck farm just near the journey’s end. These ducks are the amphibious flies in the amber of what is otherwise transparently picturesque. They are farmed throughout Holland, but only for their eggs, which, being too strong even for the Dutchman to relish, are sent to the more cosmopolitan cities or exported into the foreign pastry kitchens.

Volendam, by reason of the curious costuming of its inhabitants, its quaint, narrow main street, high above the doorsteps of the bordering brick houses, and its picturesque fishing fleet, is the haven of artists of all nationalities. One of the most interesting picture galleries in the Netherlands comprises the public rooms of the Hotel Spaander, hung with sketches, more or less frivolous, and finished works, more or less serious, done spontaneously by the hands of such illustrators and painters as Phil May, Will Owen, Edward Penfield, William Chase, and Burne-Jones. The back yard of the hotel, which, without the least excuse, it advertises as an “attractive garden,” is fringed with old buildings, each roof exchanged within the comparative recent development of the town as an art center for the skylight of the unmistakable studio.

Sunday, by all odds, is the most advantageous day of the week to visit Volendam. Then are the dresses of its women folk and the breeches of its men, copious as meal sacks, garnished with the jewelry and the silver buckles respectively which have been handed down as heirlooms from mother to daughter, from father to son, even unto the third and fourth generations. Then is the fishing fleet jammed together in the little harbor to spend its accustomed week end of lethargy, each masthead flying its long, narrow pennant—a sight which from a distance might be mistaken for a hibernating flock of wild fowl. You would have to use a rifle with an elbow in its barrel to be able to shoot through this patch of pine forest with its top cut off without puncturing one mast at least. On other days of the week Volendam’s citizens are preoccupied with whatever they have to attend to, but on Sunday they stand around and pose gracefully and easily for the commendation of the visiting public.

The garb of the male Volendamer is about as characteristic as any regalia in Holland. His round, flat-crowned cap permits the exposure of its owner’s bronzed and finely cut features. He wears a loosely tied scarf about his neck, and his shirt or jersey usually displays a large patch cut from another shirt or jersey regardless of any probable ambition to match the patterns. Whenever and wherever the garment wears out, then and there it is patched, and by their patches ye shall know them; that is, you can come within measurable proximity of telling the daily duties of every man by the position of his patches. One will have a livid green patch down the collar bone of a dark maroon jersey; another will display a different colored sleeve from the elbow down. The Volendamer’s trousers extend in a southerly direction to the tops of the ankles only, and are built with a voluminously exaggerated peg-top effect, so much so that each cavernous side pocket must hold at least a peck, and to be able to find with any degree of proficiency such an insignificant article as a penknife in its depths, the wearer would have to go into early training as a contortionist. Week days he wears klompen, or the ordinary poplarwood shoes, which may be used for as many different and distinct purposes as the owner’s ingenuity may contrive—such as amusing the little tots by sailing a klomp across the canal as a boat, or tying one on the end of a rod and offering it to the canal boat master as a receptacle in which to drop the toll as he poles his barge through the locks. The vrouw sees that her “man” removes his klompen before he dares enter the house, and upon each doorstep you will invariably behold one or more pairs, including, perhaps, those of a visitor in the kitchen paying his respects in his stocking feet. On Sundays, however, the more fastidious Volendamer will break the monotony by changing the klompen for the more genteel-looking low, leather, pump-like slippers.

The most distinguishable feature of the Volendam feminine attire from that found on the Island of Walcheren or at Scheveningen, for example, is the immaculate white cap, somewhat of the shape of a miniature miter, terminating at the sides in two stiffly starched points that curl out from the ears like the horns of a water buffalo. The hair is cropped close and, according to the prevailing rules of decorum, only a fringe of it is allowed to be visible. Never under any conditions should a man see an unmarried member of Volendam’s gentler sex with her head uncovered.

Over in Marken the proper thing to do to complete the delusion is to allow one of the many children who pester the passengers upon landing from the boat to lead you to his home, reimbursing him financially to the extent demanded—not a very vast sum, in any event. It will be a scrupulously clean little place of one, and not often more than two rooms. It will contain the usual amount of brass-work and a nondescript collection of Delft ware. The floor will be brick, the fireplace will have its ingle nooks, and its pot of whatever-it-is suspended over the fire from a crane, will be simmering gently. In the side walls will be built the sleeping accommodations, like bunks on a ship, draped with curtains at night and closed to view—and air—in the daytime by means of paneled wooden doors. This will be about all to see in Marken, and you will be happy enough to be led back to the boat to escape further mercenary moves on the part of the populace.

The shirt of the male Markener can show as many patches as that of the male Volendamer, but instead of the little round cap he sees fit to favor a sort of derby hat having a two-inch crown. His breeches are of the knickerbocker type, but still very much peg-topped, and his klompen are sometimes varnished yellow and carved in more or less delicate tracery. Unlike those of Volendam, the women of Marken let the hair grow, plaiting it into two braids which hang down, one from each ear, in defiance to any custom that may obtain across on the mainland.