From all practical points of view, if, indeed, it is stretching the metaphor a bit with regard to smells and scenes (to preserve the alliteration), Amsterdam may be considered the Venice of the Netherlands. Like Venice it seems to have as many canals as there are blood vessels in the human body; like Venice it is the home of the damp cellar, for the city is built upon piles.

In the erection of a new building in Amsterdam the first thing they do is to pump out the site, and, after they have it fairly dry, keep on pumping to prevent it from filling up again; when the structure is completed they celebrate the event by the installation of a permanent pump in the basement which they must needs start running at stated intervals to diminish the volume of water that has seeped in through the cracks. The driver of piles takes the place of our stone mason, for of piles is the city’s foundation. A foot at a whack, these piles are sunk into the sand. They are then morticed with mud, girders are strung between them, and behold! the house on stilts commences to assume its architectural design. By and by the mud loses its adhesive properties to a certain degree, and the building commences to lean dangerously forward or backward, although without the dire results that one might imagine.

Amsterdam is the largest and most commercially important city in Holland. Founded in 1204 by Gysbrecht II, who built a castle here, and choked the flow of the river Amstel by throwing a dam across it—from which more or less momentous event the town derived its appellation,—Florins V, of Binnenhof fame, favored the place to the extent of granting its exemption from the taxes imposed by Zeeland and Holland. In 1311 it was formally absorbed by the latter province. From that time on Amsterdam gathered greater importance as a commercial center, until, in the early years of the seventeenth century, after the Dutch had finally succeeded in beating off the Spaniards, the establishment of the Dutch East India Company added its might to raise Amsterdam to the rank of the foremost mercantile community in the world. Later she commenced to gravitate slowly down the incline of trade and her cogs refused to take hold again until the latter half of the nineteenth century, although at the time of the dividing of the Dutch Republic, when King Louis Bonaparte took up his residence in Amsterdam in 1808, she was considered the third greatest city in the French Empire. To-day she has advanced well past the half million population mark. Although as regards her foreign trade she does not profess to compete with Rotterdam, as a money market and clearing house for colonial products she is preËminent in the Netherlands.

The Dam—a large square that owes its name to the fact of its being the eastern boundary of Lord Amstel’s embankment across the river—is the axis around which Amsterdam revolves. It is literally the hub of the Dutch universe. Every electric car in the place starts from the Dam, and in due course of time will wind its way back again. The principal edifices adjacent to it are the Royal Palace, the Nieuwe Kerk, or New Church, and the imposing post and telegraph offices.

Completed in the year 1655 at a total cost of more than $3,000,000, this Royal Palace was originally the Town Hall, but when Louis Bonaparte came upon the scene the Dutch made him a present of it for his use as a royal residence. At a later date King William I of Holland handed it back to the city, whose property it still remains, instead of that of the Crown; so that when Wilhelmina makes her annual ten days’ visit to Amsterdam she comes more as a private citizen and is the guest of the city for the period of her stay. With its 264 feet of length and its 207 of width it seems rather a strain upon the imagination to picture the Royal Palace as standing upon stilts; but such is actually the case, for its foundations consist of 13,659 piles (to be absolutely accurate) driven from forty to sixty feet into the sand.

The difference in ages between the Nieuwe Kerk, just around the corner from the palace, and the Oude Kerk, or Old Church of Amsterdam, is that the Oude Kerk was erected in 1300, whereas they didn’t commence work upon the Nieuwe Kerk until a hundred and eight years later. Both were doing their religious duties before America was discovered. Successive conflagrations destroyed different parts of the Nieuwe Kerk and the first service in the building as it stands to-day was not celebrated until 1648. The church contains the tombs of three of Holland’s famous fighting admirals, that of Admiral de Ruyter included, in addition to the hermes bust of another, and the mausoleum of a Dutch lieutenant of marines, van Speyk by name, who, during the revolution of Holland, “maintained on the 5th of February, 1831, before Antwerp, the honor of his native flag at the cost of his life” by blowing up his gunboat in the harbor of Antwerp to prevent it from falling into the possession of the enemy. Since 1814 four kings of Holland have taken the oath of the constitution in the Nieuwe Kerk and here, on September 6, 1898, Wilhelmina was formally inaugurated Queen of the Netherlands—an event recently commemorated by the installation of a handsome stained glass window in the church. Well might the Nieuwe Kerk be said to be the Westminster Abbey of Amsterdam.Connecting the Dam with the central railway station is the wide Damrak, part of which was at one time a canal. In the opposite direction wiggles the narrow Kalverstraat, Amsterdam’s principal shopping street, thronged in the late afternoon and evening with that part of the population of the city that isn’t sipping coffee in the windows of its cafÉs.

Once I had the misfortune to be stopping in Amsterdam upon the occasion of the Queen’s birthday, the 31st of August. This not being sufficient unpremeditated self-punishment, I was provincial enough to have chosen as headquarters what appeared from across the street to be a clean, quiet little hotel in the Kalverstraat. The two blended most harmoniously. Between the unmelodious patriots who paraded the Kalverstraat from sunset to sunrise, and the battles royal participated in with the ambidextrous entomological specimens among the bedclothes, I did anything but enjoy a refreshing night’s rest. To which tale there are two morals: avoid Amsterdam on the Queen’s birthday, and little Juliana’s as well, and eschew the hotels in the Kalverstraat (one especially, which shall be nameless) as you would the nest of the subtle hornet.

At the southeastern terminus of the Kalverstraat stands the old Mint Tower of 1620, and still farther to the east is the Rembrandtplein, a small, park-centered intersection of streets named in honor of Holland’s painter par excellence, who lived for sixteen years at No. 4 Joden-Breestraat in Amsterdam’s Jewish quarter, the house having been since marked with a small memorial tablet.

Here bordering the Rembrandtplein are the larger sidewalk cafÉs, jammed of a summer’s evening with pleasure-seeking Amsterdamers, each with a cup or a glass of something in front of him. Like those found in the ordinary German cafÉs these crowds seldom change. Here you may find the same people at eleven that you have seen at seven, and in exactly the same positions. A cup of coffee followed by a cordial is the usual evening’s refreshment programme, the consuming time of which the Amsterdamer will expand into a couple of hours by the assiduous perusal of every newspaper and periodical he can inveigle the waiter to bring him, interrupted only by an occasional sip of his beverage. Even the persistent street singers, who come one at a time to prolong the agony and stand but a few feet away from his table, yelling triumphantly into his ear, fail to disturb him in the least. If, unthinkingly, he finishes his refreshment before he considers the time has arrived to go home to bed, he will calmly smoke out the remainder of the engagement. The expenditure of half a gulden or less will buy his contentment until the following evening.

Many of the indoor cafÉs charge a small admission fee for the privilege of listening to a “lady orchestra.” In each of these that part which is adjacent to the street will be partitioned off by a dark curtain, so that the patrons of the place may choose, if there be any choice, between the crowds on the street and the vaudeville turns that may be scheduled to follow the sufferings of the musicians.

On the Rembrandtplein stands also the Rembrandt theater, Amsterdam’s principal playhouse, which, by way of information, is closed in summer. But, by way of further information, there are in the city a number of vaudeville theaters that cater to the less exacting in the matter of histrionic art and are open throughout the year, offering more or less respectable performances.

To one of these near the Rembrandtplein I wended my way upon a certain evening, desirous of being amused, no matter what the consequences. I obtained my money’s worth, and more. It cost me one and a half gulden to get in, and it might have cost me an ear, or other projecting appendage, to get out if I had not slipped through a side exit as inconspicuously as I could during the height of the mÊlÉe and commenced forthwith to accelerate my gait toward the hotel. I think the disturbance was inaugurated by an American protÉgÉ of His Pugilistic Highness, John Johnson, but I did not consider it exactly safe at the time to tarry longer in order to ascertain definitely.

It so happened that this particular vaudeville house was in the habit of concluding its performance each evening with a series of international wrestling matches, offering a considerable monetary reward to the winner of the finals. The first bout of the evening of my visit was between an Englishman and a Dutchman, which terminated satisfactorily for the latter and with no casualties. The crowd went rampant; whereupon I became imbued with the spirit of the thing, ordered another cup of coffee—which, by the way, was served gratis by the management—and settled myself more comfortably to enjoy the next tilt between a Frenchman and a Swede. The gougings and hair-pullings resorted to by the Latin were not received with complacency on the part of the audience, and when he lost the match, he made his exit with ruffled temper, together with his full share of hisses and catcalls. Then the promoters of the scheme made a managerial mistake. They pitted a bloated Belgian wrestler against the champion of Amsterdam. A brief reference to the pages of any volume reciting the incidents of 1830–31 will convey the correct impression that the Belgians and the Dutch are not the intimate playmates they used to be—a fact which in itself precluded the possibility of any amicable settlement of the forthcoming athletic imbroglio.

The Belgian proved to be a past master in the science of hair-pulling and eye-gouging. When the even tempered Dutchman finally turned him on his back he felt called upon to challenge the referee, the score keeper, the orchestra, the audience, or any other single individual or group of them that happened to be within reach. The crowd hooted the villain and applauded the hero.

Just at this inopportune moment a dark, ominous cloud, of African parentage, wrapped in a true Alabama grin and peg-top trousers, blew in from the wings and commenced to congratulate the victor hilariously. In order that the peace respecting reputation of the house might be preserved, a brigade of stage hands and ushers rushed in double phalanx upon the scene, and, with rather generous turn of mind, attempted to distract the negro’s attention and keep him from maiming the Belgian. Ultimately they tried to put the negro out—an inconsiderate procedure, to say the least. I once saw the same thing attempted during fair week in Albuquerque, to the demolition of several plate glass windows and the necessary services of half a dozen local surgeons.

The last I remember they were enticing the negro toward the front door in a none too gentle manner, while the more enthusiastic half of the audience was making for the stage, and the other half, among whom was the writer, for the exits. On my way to the hotel there passed two police vans loaded to the gunwales with a blur of arms and legs.

The Rijks or Royal Museum stands in a prominent location to the south of the Old Town, surrounded by the more fashionable residence section and the Vondel Park. From street floor to gables it is filled with objects of historical and technical interest. It would take just as long to “do” it thoroughly as it would the British Museum in London or the Metropolitan in New York. But the tourist in Holland, usually of limited time allowance, contents himself with a hurried inspection of the different collections in the Rijks Museum and a view of the piÈce de resistance of its picture gallery, namely, the world renowned painting by Rembrandt erroneously styled “The Night Watch.” Many having been led to believe, on account of the very marvelous chiaroscuro of the picture, that Rembrandt intended it to represent a street scene at night, its present title has been given universal usage; but in reality the scene depicted takes place in daylight. It is the largest and most justly celebrated work by Rembrandt, being fourteen and a quarter feet long, and eleven and three quarters feet wide. It was painted in 1642, and represents a small company of arquebusiers under Captain Franz Cocq emerging from their shooting gallery, or doele—a name so commonly given to Dutch hotels that you will find a “Hotel de Doelen” in almost every town in Holland. The supposed night shadows in the picture are in truth cast by the lofty vaulting of the gallery. The portraits of the sixteen members of the guild were done from life, and each member represented in the picture paid the artist one hundred gulden, which remunerated him to the extent of something less than $800 for his labors. To-day the painting could not be purchased at any price.

Not the least interesting—nor most fragrant—section of Amsterdam is its Jewish Quarter, situated in the eastern part of the Old Town. The quarter is a typical city in itself, for of Amsterdam’s total population more than 60,000 are Jews. It possesses ten synagogues, the largest of which, erected as early as 1670 by the Portuguese Jews and said to resemble as far as possible the ancient Temple of Solomon, stands in the Muiderstraat. Freedom of religion was accorded these persecuted peoples early in the history of Amsterdam, and to Amsterdam as an asylum they flocked, first from Spain in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a little later from Portugal, then from the Spanish Netherlands, from Germany, and from Poland. In the administration and the commercial enterprises of the city their wealth wielded much influence.

Amsterdam is indebted to those Portuguese Jews who emigrated from Antwerp in 1576 for the introduction of its most widely known industry, that of diamond polishing—an art utterly unknown in Europe prior to the fifteenth century. To-day there are more than seventy diamond polishing establishments in and about the city, employing some 10,000 men, and they are building a new diamond exchange to cost in the neighborhood of $240,000. The cut diamonds exported to the United States from the Amsterdam district alone in 1909—the latest figures at my elbow—were valued at $13,319,417, in addition to more than a million dollars’ worth in the rough.

The rules of the London syndicate from which every Amsterdam diamond polisher must purchase his uncut stones are equally strict with the regulation of the diamond workers’ organization.

In the former case, a diamond polisher must procure an introduction to the London merchant through the de Beers syndicate in order to obtain a “sight.” If a polisher is buying diamonds of one class, say Kimberly, he may not under any circumstances obtain a “sight” of diamonds of any other class, say Jagerfontein. He may examine the parcel of diamonds offered to him for a “sight” for fifteen minutes, no longer. If they do not suit him his trip to London has been of no avail. He must take what is offered or nothing, and at the price quoted. Until five years ago a polisher was punished by not being able to obtain a “sight” for a year if he refused to accept a parcel offered for purchase, and he would often pay a premium of $4,000 for another man’s packet without seeing a stone.

With regard to the worker, no one in Amsterdam may learn the trade of diamond polishing without the consent of the organization and unless he be the son of a diamond worker or jeweler. He must be under eighteen years of age, he must pass a rigid examination, and if he desires to become a cleaver—the highest salaried artisan in the diamond industry, whose wages often amount to $120 a week—he must pay sometimes as much as $2,000. There are special schools in Amsterdam for turners and polishers which charge an instruction fee ranging from $120 to $150.

The rough diamond is first cleaved by hand, or, if thought more profitable, it is set in a bar of hot lead which, after having cooled, is placed in front of a phosphor-bronze saw and sawed in half. Whether or not this saw may be used a second time depends upon the crystallization of the stone sawed. Some stones that, after being sawed, are considered too hard to polish, are pulverized and mixed with emery dust to be used in making the saws. The two halves of the original stone are then handed over to the cutters who cut them round, or nearly so, and remove the flaws. The polishers then polish the stones and make their facets, which, in the case of a gem of the first class, number from fifty-eight to sixty-four.

Amsterdam is also the home of a peculiar institution into the workings of which some of our own municipalities might delve to their advantage. It puts the predatory money-loan shark out of business as effectually as a hydrochloric acid bath would a potato bug. This institution is the municipal pawnshop, known as the Bank of Leening, of which there are fifteen branches in the city. It has been in successful operation for centuries, the first pawn ticket showing the early date of April 29, 1614. Loans are made for six months, and all articles not redeemed at the expiration of that period are sold at public auction. It is interesting to note that among the articles disposed of in this manner in 1909 were 3,427 sewing machines, 1,325 bicycles, and 106 pianos and organs. The maximum loan allowed on a single article is approximately $201, while the low rates charged have been the cause of much anxiety on the part of the independent pawnbrokers, and with the desired results. You may pawn with the Bank of Leening anything from a hair comb to a hair mattress, but it is an acknowledged fact that forty per cent. of its business is derived from that well-meaning Dutchman addicted to the habit of wearing his best suit only on Sunday. This he pawns on Monday and redeems on Saturday, until the suit wears out from being passed over the counter.

One item more to the credit of Amsterdam: all the slaughtering of animals for food must be done in the municipal abattoir, and meat which is brought in from the country must be inspected there before it is offered for sale. The dealers do their own slaughtering and must pay for the use of the abattoir sixty-four, thirty-four, or ten cents, according to the size of each animal slaughtered. Especially constructed vans then transfer the meat to the shops of the different dealers. Inasmuch as horseflesh is found on the daily menu of many families in Amsterdam, 5,444 horses were numbered among the 150,000 or more animals slaughtered in the municipal abattoir in 1909. Mutton, not being in particular favor with the Dutch for some unknown reason, cannot be bought in many of the meat shops, and there is a large central market in Amsterdam that carries only mutton as its stock in trade.

The Bank of Amsterdam antedates the Bank of England by almost a century, being founded in 1609. Under the administration of the Amsterdam Corporation, whose executives examined its specie annually in order to verify the statements of its managers, the business world became so confident of its solvency that its guaranteed certificates were usually offered at a premium, and as much as $180,000,000 in coin has been held against these certificates at one time. Ever since its establishment it has retained its place as one of the strongest financial institutions in the world.