Take, if you will, the state of Delaware, something less than half of Maryland and the lower end of New Jersey; turn them upside down; drive Delaware and Jersey and the most of Maryland below the level of the sea; let the waters of the Atlantic and the Chesapeake Bay seep in over the low-level territory; dike up the edges at the weak and exposed parts along the coast; pump the country dry, and keep it pumped dry, as far as possible—then, with a little less regularity of contour, you will have almost a geographical counterpart of Holland, both as to acreage and topography, although of but one fifth its total population. The Chesapeake Bay would equal the Zuyder Zee; Baltimore, if shifted to the other side of the Bay, might be substituted for Amsterdam; Wilmington on the Delaware would displace Rotterdam on the Maas; Hagerstown would fit the position of Arnhem; and, with the aid of a little elasticity of the imagination, Cape May might be mistaken for the Hook of Holland.

Such, in brief, are the physical dimensions of, perhaps, the most unique, the most remunerative travel territory, acre for acre, in Europe.

Holland, like ancient Gaul, is divided; but into two parts instead of three. If we draw an imaginary line north and south bisecting the Zuyder Zee, the country on the west side of this line may be designated as the more be-traveled, therefore the more familiar part. Hundreds of thousands of tourists, singly, in groups, in “personally conducted” parties, annually make use of it as a playground. Its unusual below-sea-level scenery, its historical buildings, its marvelous waterways, its sandy bathing beaches, the life in its cities, the poetic costuming of its rural inhabitants, its treasures and masterpieces of art—all combine to fulfill every condition required by the average sight-seer. In no other section of Europe are the distances between places of interest so short; in no other section are the modes and conveniences of reaching these places so varied. If the traveler relies solely upon the railways to carry him from one point to another, he may be compelled to wait two hours in order to ride ten minutes. A happy combination of the steam tram lines, the railways, and the canal packets, will enable him not only to get about without loss of time, but to penetrate curious, out-of-the-way parts of the country which one or the other of the different methods of transportation may overlook.

The surface of the territory to the eastward of the imaginary longitude is barely scratched by the searcher of the picturesque and historical. Many of its towns are as interesting as any of those in the west, but, as a general rule, their peoples have been more easily influenced by German and Belgian methods, and, therefore, their characteristics differ greatly from those of the natives of North and South Holland and Zeeland, for example. What evidences of their history and art these towns still possess they have in a great measure failed to appreciate themselves, and it is this lack of self-confidence, translated into a complete failure so far to advertise their own scenic and historical virtues, that has bred the comparative aloofness with respect to them in the manner of the tourist through Holland. Probably the majority of travelers go to the Netherlands, not for art, nor for scenery, nor even for history, but for windmills and wooden shoes (to epitomize the characteristics of the country and its peoples), and for that reason their wanderings are bound to be confined, for the most part, to the exiguous territory bordered by the North Sea on the west and the Zuyder Zee on the east.

The omnipresent story of Holland is the story of its fight against the waters. Its other conquests pale before it. Its eighty years’ revolution against the Spaniards cannot compare with it. Water is Holland’s perpetual and merciless enemy; so much so that if all the dikes that protect her from the waters of the ocean burst to-night, to-morrow there would be but a third of the country left. How she has conquered would fill a book in itself. Since the Frisian monks first commenced to dike in the country, successive inundations have blotted out the lives of more of her people than all her conquests at arms put together. But still the Dutch fought on, resolutely, unflinchingly, persistently, until they dredged what land they needed from the bottom of the sea and grew grass and flowers and vegetables where kelp and cockle-shells thrived before. After hundreds of years of dredging and diking, by 1833 Holland had attained an acreage of 8,768 square miles. By 1877 she had added another four thousand.

Characteristic of the Dutch perseverance to conquer the menacing waters is a part of the report of the commission appointed to superintend the reclamation of the Haarlemermeer, an inland sea that once lapped the very gates of Amsterdam herself and upon which a fleet of seventy vessels once gave battle. “We have driven forever from the bosom of our country a most dangerous enemy,” said the commission, after its task had been completed; “we have at the same time augmented the means for defending our capital in time of war. We have conquered a province in combat without tears and without blood, where science and genius took the place of generals, and where workmen were the worthy soldiers.”

Previous to 1836 the Dutch had tolerated the Haarlemermeer. In November of that year a violent west wind lashed its waters into a fury and poured them into the streets of Amsterdam. On Christmas day there came an east wind that drove the waters from Amsterdam over into the streets of Leyden. This was too much. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. This was what exhausted even the patience of the Dutch, and they picked up the gauntlet. They contrived a plan of methodical, systematic attack. They diked in the Lake with a high earthen cofferdam, installed a series of powerful pumps that sucked a thousand cubic feet of water at a single stroke of the piston, and they drew 800,000,000 tons of lake water up into the surrounding canals to be carried off to the sea with much the same complacency that you would imbibe a glass of soda through a straw. It took more than four years to complete the process. When it was finally finished the Dutch struck a medal in commemoration which bore in Latin the following matter-of-fact inscription: “Haarlem Lake, after having for centuries assailed the surrounding fields to enlarge itself by their destruction, conquered at last by the force of machinery, has returned to Holland its 44,280 acres of invaded land.” The significance of the Dutch bon mot, “God made the sea; we made the shore,” will never be more apparent than when you look out from the car window across the Zuidplaspolder near Rotterdam, with a minus altitude of more than thirty feet below the level of the ocean at mean tide.

Holland being, as a whole, the lowest country in the world, is protected at the danger zones by the great dikes upon which almost the entire kingdom depends for its safety from disastrous inundation, and which require the annual cost of maintenance of approximately $12,000,000 and the undivided attention of a whole department of engineers. The mileage of the canals which intersect the country in every direction is greater than the mileage of the railroads. First and all the time, these canals, except those constructed for special purposes, serve for conducting the superfluous water from the cultivated areas. Second, they are highways for traffic. Travel on them is cheaper than on the steam tram lines, which is cheaper, in turn, than on the railways, for many of the latter are owned and operated by private companies, as in England. Even some of the lines built by the State are leased to a private concern. But unlike those of England, there can be little doubt that an investment in their stocks is a paying one, because railway building and railway up-keep in Holland are comparative sinecures. Grades are unknown, curves are scarce as the proverbial hen’s teeth, except in the approaches to a city, and I failed to find a tunnel in the whole country.

But touring in Holland is not so cheap as it is either in Germany or France. The unit basis of Dutch coinage is the gulden, of value equal to slightly more than two francs and just less than two marks. There is even an oft repeated but exaggerated saying that a gulden in Holland will only go as far as a mark in Germany. One of the reasons for the expensiveness of travel through the Netherlands is that to stop at any but the so-called first-class hostelries is a rather precarious business. In spite of all the Dutchman’s reputation for cleanliness, the less expensive hotels, unlike their ilk in Germany or Switzerland, are often anything but scrupulous in this matter and sometimes shockingly unsanitary.

The system of Dutch municipal government is almost identical with that of Germany, the Burgomaster, or Mayor, being appointed by the crown instead of being elected by the community, so that a man may follow the profession of burgomastering as he would that of engineering. It is, withal, a system that might well supplant that in vogue in American cities, and if the experimental stages of municipal government by commission—lately tentatively adopted in some few cases as an expedient to do away with political bartering for executive positions—if this form of government proves its worth, the professional mayor may yet become with us a reality.

School attendance for children is compulsory in the Netherlands, but not free. The equivalent of eight American cents is the charge imposed by the State for one week’s tuition for one child in the primary grades, with stipulated increments added to the fee as the pupil advances. All schools are under the supervision of the State, and if a family is found too poor to pay the school taxes on its children, the fees are remitted. The trade school, however, of late inauguration, has revolutionized the old-time classical education to a great degree.

Until the child attains the age of thirty years he or she is subservient to parental authority and must even obtain, up until that age, parental permission to marry—and the matter of marriage in Holland is by no means the least interesting of the customs of the country. Courtship is a protracted affair and follows the engagement indefinitely. Two weeks prior to the date of the wedding the legal declaration of the betrothal takes place, consisting of the “signing on” of both parties involved. The bride, with apt acknowledgment that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, at once proceeds to render herself immune from the usual deluge of cut glass and pie knives by compiling a list of acceptable wedding presents for the consultation of her relatives and friends, so that they may select such gifts as are suited both to her needs and their pocketbooks.

Of the civil marriage ceremonies there are three classes, not at all determined by the social positions of the contracting parties, but by the time required to tie the knot and the corresponding fee imposed. A first-class marriage may be performed on any day of the week, but the second and third-class marriages are conducted upon certain days, the different members of the City Council officiating by turns. Each of the second-class ceremonies is performed separately and the ritual repeated for each couple. A number of third-class marriages, however, may be conducted at one and the same time, and practically at club rates. The ceremony in this case is not altogether an impressive one but it serves its purpose at a cheaper price and is more quickly over with. The methods of procedure are somewhat as follows:

Brides and bridegrooms to be, friends, relatives, and witnesses are ushered into a large room in the city hall. The member of Council in charge takes his position upon the dais, and the clerk calls the names of the contracting parties. They arise to acknowledge their identities, which are duly vouched for by the various witnesses in each case. The officer then proceeds to expatiate upon the duties of man and wife and upon the holy bonds of matrimony, directing his awesome remarks to the standing couples. In closing, he puts forth the question as to whether each, in spite of all he has said, will take the other for better or for worse, abide by the laws, and love and cherish each other until death doth part, so help them. A loud and enthusiastic chorus in the affirmative is followed by a banging of the table right soundly with the official gavel, and the whole company is forthwith pronounced man and wife. Of course it is assumed by the conspirators which maiden the functionary has pronounced the wife of which young man; at all events, there is nothing on record about the wrong husband decamping with the wrong wife. Order comes out of apparent chaos and, as the story books read, they all live happily ever after.

The civil ceremony is all that is required by law, but, possibly to moisten the already well executed knot in the tie that binds, many couples later undergo the religious ceremony in the church. The familiar wedding ring figures in neither the religious nor the civil ceremony. Each member of an engaged couple presents the other with a plain gold ring at the time of “plighting their troth,” as we observe in the novels, which is worn upon the third finger of the left hand until after the marriage, when it becomes a wedding ring and is transferred to the right hand.

Until the advent of the little Princess Juliana Holland realized her danger of being ultimately absorbed by Germany. A German Prince had married the sovereign of the Dutch nation, and German journals were not reticent in suggesting that, in the event of Queen Wilhelmina leaving no direct issue, the succession should revert to the family of the Prince Consort. Moreover, Germany had ever been jealous of Holland’s possession of the mouth of the greatest of German rivers—the Rhine, of which she sought the control from its source to the sea. Germany also had an eye upon Holland’s possessions for her own colonization—possessions that give this little country second place among the colonial powers of the world and which, in the Far East alone, aggregate in acreage fourteen times her own area. But the birth of Juliana precluded all immediate possibility of German usurpation, and the Hollanders didn’t convalesce from the effects of the joyous news for a whole week.

The Dutch are an intensely patriotic people and have made heroic sacrifices to maintain the independence now assured them by the powers of the world—and the birth of Juliana. They are phlegmatic rather than impetuous; stoical rather than demonstrative; impassive rather than excitable. By virtue of their country’s unique maritime position it has bred the naval heroes, navigators, discoverers, and engineers whose names will remain synonymous for indomitable pluck so long as there exists a history of unequal fighting. By reason of the wealth derived from the foreign trade that these men made possible it has fostered conspicuous groups of artists and scholars and scientists who in their times were the leaders of their guilds.

It is with keen appreciation of the characteristics of the Hollander which enable him to offer to the traveling world so delightful a handmade territory, that I turn to the pages of “The Traveler” by Oliver Goldsmith and quote a short summary of Holland from the pen of one who traveled and observed, and who, by his enviable powers of description, analysis, and condensation, could epitomize a volume of significance in a single word of syncope.