In the matter of ancient buildings, Hoorn is one of the gems of all the towns of Holland. Its fine old harbor tower, its Town Hall, its weigh-house, its Oosterpoort—the most prominent remaining factor of the walls that once surrounded the town—its assortment of quaint old gateways and entrances, its steep-roofed dwellings and warehouses that lean forward or backward at more acute angles than even the oldest buildings in Amsterdam—all combine in contributing to Hoorn a medieval charm that is puissant and irresistible.

But whatever Hoorn may be noted for as she stands to-day, her name has gone down in history as that of the mother of Dutch navigators. Three of them were famous in their day: Schouten, Tasman, and Coen; and, in the eye of the Dutch nation, the greatest of these was Coen—Jan Pieters Coen, the founder of the Dutch dominions in the East Indies and the creator of Batavia as their capital. A statue of him in bronze stands in the Kaasmarkt of the town of his birth.

Tasman was numbered among the foremost discoverers of the seventeenth century. In the year 1639 he was assigned to a voyage of exploration by Van Dieman, the governor general of the Dutch East Indies at the time, his cruise leading him to the Western Pacific. After exploring part of the coast of Luzon in the Philippine Islands, he sailed farther to the northward and around Japan, but, discovering no land not already nailed to the flag of some nation, he set sail again for home on October 15th of the same year.

The Hollanders having already discovered and explored a part of the west coast of Australia, the Dutch East India Company was desirous of obtaining fuller and more accurate information about the territory with a view of exploiting its natural resources and whatever others the company itself might develop. Accordingly, on August 14, 1642, Tasman was dispatched from Batavia in command of two ships and intrusted with the task of bringing back a full and authentic account of whatever he saw and conquered. Owing to the inaccuracy of his sailing charts, head winds that blew him from his prescribed course, and what not, he went south of his mark, and came upon a hitherto undiscovered country which he promptly named Van Dieman’s Land, in honor of his sponsor. But being unaware that what is now known as Tasmania was an island by its own right, he hoisted his flag and set to work exploring what he thought at the time to be the most of Australia. He set sail again from the newly discovered territory, bearing to the eastward with a vague idea of reaching the Solomon Islands. On the 13th of December he discovered a “high, mountainous country,” which he noted in his log book as “Staatenland.” For some unaccountable reason the English have allowed its name to remain as New Zealand, neglecting to change it when they took it over, as they did that of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam.

William Schouten, having had an earlier relapse under the spell of the spray, was the first to sail round the southern extremity of South America, his goal being one and the same with that of Henry Hudson, who attempted a supposed route to China from Amsterdam, first by way of the Chesapeake Bay, and later, the Hudson River. Schouten, in passing, christened the point “Cape Hoorn,” latterly contracted to “Horn,” in honor of his birthplace.

In addition to these, Hoorn refers proudly to the exploits of another of her sons, John Haring by name, a Dutch Horatius whose signal courageous achievement consisted in holding in check, single-handed, a round thousand of Spaniards, while his compatriots gathered themselves together in order to retreat in a systematic manner at least.

It took place before Amsterdam in 1573, when the city was held in the grip of the Dons. The Prince of Orange had taken up a position to the south of the city, and Sonoy, his general, was encamped to the north. The operations of both were hampered by the lack of sufficient forces. Sonoy having gone to Edam for the purpose of gathering reinforcements, the Spaniards in his absence made a concentrated attack upon his division entrenched behind the Diemer Dike. Seeing the fight was going against his fellows, Haring of Hoorn, as Motley relates, “planted himself entirely alone upon the dike, where it was so narrow between the Y on the one side and the Diemer Lake on the other that two men could hardly stand abreast. Here, armed with a sword and a shield, he had actually opposed and held in check one thousand of the enemy, during a period long enough to enable his own men, if they had been willing, to rally and effectually to repel the attack. It was too late—the battle was too far lost to be restored; but still the brave soldier held his post, till, by his devotion, he enabled all those of his compatriots who still remained in the entrenchments to make good their retreat. He then plunged into the sea, and, untouched by spear or bullet, effected his escape.”

But John Haring survived only to suffer death in the attempt of an equally valiant feat a few months later before the sea-gates of his own native town.

The siege of Alkmaar having terminated unhappily for the Spaniards, they dispatched a fleet from Amsterdam under Count Bossu, to effect the surrender of Hoorn and Enkhuizen. No sooner had the project been contemplated than the Dutch got wind of it; Admiral Dirkzoon sailed in command of a fleet of twenty-five vessels, and, having had favorable winds and weather, bore down upon the Spanish armada near Hoorn.

“After a short and general engagement,” according to Motley, “nearly all the Spanish fleet retired with precipitation, closely pursued by most of the patriot Dutch vessels. Five of the King’s ships were eventually taken—the rest effected their escape. Only the Admiral remained, who scorned to yield, although his forces had thus basely deserted him. His ship, the Inquisition, for such was her insolent appellation, was far the largest and best manned of both fleets. Most of the enemy had gone in pursuit of the fugitives, but four vessels of inferior size had attacked the Inquisition at the commencement of the action. Of these, one had soon been silenced, while the other three had grappled themselves inextricably to her sides and prow. The four drifted together, before wind and tide, a severe and savage action going on incessantly, during which the navigation of the ships was entirely abandoned. No scientific gunnery, no military or naval tactics, were displayed or required in such a conflict. It was a life-and-death combat, such as always occurred when Spaniard and Netherlander met, whether on land or water. Bossu and his men, armed with bullet-proof coats of mail, stood with shield and sword on the deck of the Inquisition, ready to repel all attempts to board. The Hollanders, as usual, attacked with pitch hoops, boiling oil, and molten lead. Repeatedly they effected their entrance to the Admiral’s ship, and as often they were repulsed and slain in heaps, or hurled into the sea. The battle began at three in the afternoon, and continued without intermission throughout the whole night. The vessels, drifting together, struck on the shoal called the Nek, near Wydeness. In the heat of the action the occurrence was hardly heeded. In the morning twilight, John Haring of Hoorn, the hero who had kept one thousand soldiers at bay upon the Diemer dike, clambered on board the Inquisition, and hauled her colors down. The gallant but premature achievement cost him his life. He was shot through the body, and died on the deck of the ship, which was not quite ready to strike her flag.... At eleven o’clock Admiral Bossu surrendered, and with three hundred prisoners was carried into Holland. Bossu was himself imprisoned at Hoorn, in which city he was received, on his arrival, with great demonstrations of popular hatred.”

It was on a feast-day that I came upon Hoorn, and the place was garbed in gala attire. Throughout the morning the hotel stableboys were kept busy tending the horses of rural arrivals, and every stable-yard was congested with wagonettes and carts. Never have I seen such a variety of vehicles. There was the painted produce wagon with its white canvas cover; there was the gayly decorated antique “two-wheeler,” its body swung upon heavy straps held fore and aft at the ends of great protruding springs; there was the commodious, shapely cart of plum-colored upholstery, belonging to the “gentleman farmer”; and there was a host of others too numerous to describe in detail.

Hoorn’s main street had been roped off, and the bricks covered with a thick layer of sand, in preparation for the series of horse races that was soon to take place up and down its length. Along about noon the Dutch David Harums led their horses down to the improvised race track behind the village band in all its glory, and the festivities were on.

Running races were of necessity tabooed on account of the danger to life and property—the actions of the horse being restricted to such an extent by the limited fairway of the course that, in event of the horse’s losing its head, even the side ropes along the street could not restrain it from dashing through the crowd and into the window of the nearest cheese shop. But there were sulky races between the Hal Pointers and the Palo Altos of the district, driven with rope reins by erstwhile jockeys, some of the costumes of whom were no less curious than the harness of the horses. Breeches, in some cases, and blouses, in others, looked as if they might have been recently redeemed from many years of confinement in Amsterdam’s municipal pawnshop, their public sale having been repeatedly overlooked.

Riding, instead of driving, would seem with us a less effective method of developing the speed of a trotting horse, and it certainly appears to be a less comfortable one, but ride them they do in many parts of Holland. I can imagine only one reason for the prevalence of the custom, and that is that the trotting horses are so rotund and ponderous that the shafts of no sulky would fit them, and if it did, no driver could spread his lower limbs so far apart as to drive the horse from the sulky’s seat. Large and ample as Percherons are some of these North Holland and Friesland horses, with long, well-groomed tails and manes; but they have a faster gait than they might be given credit for when seen hitched to a cart or a farm wagon. Pads with knee braces, which serve the riders in place of saddles, are strapped to the horses’ backs, and they trot the course with but little less action than blue grass Kentuckians. A singular thing is that they seldom “break,” their weight apparently holding them to the trot.

The express trains from Amsterdam to Leeuwarden make the run in just over three hours and a half, including the ferry passage of an hour and ten minutes across the neck of the Zuyder Zee from Enkhuizen to Stavoren. The line runs through Zaandam to Hoorn and thence to Enkhuizen through the richest farming district in North Holland. The farmhouses, somewhat more substantially built than those in the south, resemble what we rather ambiguously call “country residences.” They have their lawns and their gardens full of flowers, and each is surrounded with its little moat, bridged by a tiny archway which connects the house with the road at but a single point.

Enkhuizen is the unfortunate victim of what its inhabitants must consider to be a depraved taste for salmon rather than herring. The Rhine salmon has taken the place of the humble herring on the Dutch menu cards, and the town of Enkhuizen has dwindled accordingly. Of its fleet of four hundred herring vessels and its population of 40,000 souls in the seventeenth century, not a single fishing smack and only 6,300 descendants of its earlier inhabitants remain.

Aside from the magnitude of its one-time fishing industry, Enkhuizen courts the fickleness of fame by being the birthplace of Paul Potter. Born in 1625, he painted his most renowned canvas, “The Bull”—now in the Mauritshuis at The Hague—at the age of two-and-twenty, and died but seven years later—only another of the many instances where Death has chosen to lay his hand upon the shoulder of one so young and signally gifted in preference to an octogenarian dullard.

Waiting alongside the dock station at Enkhuizen will be the side-wheel steamer that ferries the passengers the fourteen miles across the Zuyder Zee to Stavoren in Friesland. The old Dromedary Tower, as they call it, at the harbor, diminishes rapidly into the general skyline of Enkhuizen, and you will be sailing out over what was once a broad isthmus of dry land—for the Zuyder Zee was not always the Zuyder Zee. Until the thirteenth century it consisted of but a comparatively small inland lake called Flevo. Near the close of that cycle—in 1282, to give the exact year—the German ocean burst over the land from the north, wiping the lives of 80,000 people out of existence and combining itself and Lake Flevo into one, which was henceforth called the Zuyder Zee. Above the ferry crossing, beginning at the eastern end of the little island of Wieringen, they will build the contemplated dam across it, the first process in the reclamation of more than a million acres of what was once a fertile, productive district.

In pleasant weather it is a beautiful trip across the neck of the Zee, but if the breeze blows from the north, bringing with it the customary cold drizzle of rain, the best method of putting in the time is to go below to the cabin and follow the invariable custom of the country of eating bread and great, thin slices of Dutch cheese.

Stavoren is the deadest of all the “dead cities of the Zuyder Zee.” At the beginning of the thirteenth century the merchants of Stavoren were prepotent among the rulers of the world of trade and commerce. Treasures from all the then known corners of the earth lay in their storehouses. The homes of these merchant princes were palaces comparable only with those of kings and furnished with the sumptuousness and incomputable grandeur of the famous abodes of the Sultan Harun-al-Rashid in the “Arabian Nights.” Previously, Stavoren had been the residence of all the Frisian princes. But riches contributed to the pride that came before its fall. To-day the census taker counts its population in three figures and its commerce is not worthy of mention in a trade report. The smoke of the lingering express train that will subsequently carry you to Friesland’s capital is the only evidence that the town may not be abandoned completely.

As you sail into the harbor, a wide, grass-grown embankment in front of the town can be seen plainly from the steamer’s deck. This is the Vrouwensand, and it recalls the legend that attributes the fall of Stavoren to the whims of a woman. The reader himself must be the judge whether or not the tale is worth the telling. One writer on Holland asserts that no author dealing previously with the country in a literary way has been gifted either with the independence or the imprudence to avoid it. His predecessors have been numerous and illustrious, and if the story be so important that each of them has seen fit to relate it, I can do naught but imitate.

Of all the inhabitants of the old city of Stavoren, none was so blessed with riches as the wife of a certain wealthy merchant. Continually bathed in the high lights of smiling fortune, she plucked one by one the treasures that were thrown daily at her feet. She owned everything of intrinsic value that the fabulous wealth of her husband could bestow upon her. But one thing she did not possess, and that was love. Her character was devoid of a woman’s tenderness. She was cold, indifferent, supercilious, insouciant. Exaggerated pride in her own wealth and an undying envy of those whose fortunes dared to compete with hers—these were the only passions of her life.

One day, while acting as hostess at a great banquet, a stranger from the Far East was ushered into the room. He had come, he said, to behold the marvelous wealth of Stavoren with his own eyes, and now that he had penetrated into this merchant’s house, he felt he had been amply rewarded.

The merchant’s wife, not impervious to flattery, requested the traveler to be seated and to partake of the banquet as her unbidden but welcome guest. He accepted the invitation in part, but asked, according to the custom of the Orient whence he came, for nothing but some bread and salt. Servants were dispatched to bring both, but returned, saying that no such simple articles of food could be found in the house. Thereupon the stranger, without further word, ate of the costly and unfamiliar dishes prepared for the banquet.

After the feast he told of his travels, he expatiated upon the successes and the failures of his life, he discoursed with much eloquent verbiage upon the instability of earthly fortunes, and he prognosticated the ultimate fall of wealth and splendor. His hostess became offended, not only because of his contumelious belittling the value of riches in her presence and before her guests, but because he had failed thus far to compliment her upon her personal beauty and the luxuries to be found in her home. Before he took his leave he mollified his views to this extent: “O gracious lady,” he said, “marvelous indeed is your home and fit for a queen; if you traveled far and near you could not find its equal. But, my lady, among your treasures I miss one thing, and that is the noblest that all the earth produces.” He departed forthwith, leaving the gathering in a state of perplexity.

To please the whim of his wife, the merchant dispatched a fleet of ships to cruise the world until it should find “The noblest thing that all the earth produces,” whereupon the fleet’s commander should fill the hulls and cover the decks with it and bring it to Stavoren. For months the ships sailed about, touching at one port and then at another, blindly searching for this most costly of all treasures.

One day a heavy sea came over one of the ships, flooding the ’tween decks and spoiling the provisions. The crew became in need of bread, but there was no flour with which to bake it. The men grew mutinous. The captain saw that neither gold nor silks nor precious jewels could outweigh the value of bread, and the occurrence led him to believe that bread was the most expensive thing in the world. He reported the matter to the commander, who agreed with his specious argument, and the whole fleet hurried to the nearest port, which happened to be Danzig. They loaded the vessels with the finest wheat, and set sail direct for Stavoren.

When the merchant’s wife heard of the nature of the cargo the fleet had brought home, she ordered the wheat thrown into the sea. The poor of the town begged and implored, stormed and reproached, but of no avail; the order of the woman was executed to the letter.

By and by myriads of blades of grainless wheat commenced to appear above the surface of the water. Their stocks and roots collected the sand as it was washed up by the tides of the German ocean, forming a great sand dune that blocked the port so that vessels could neither enter nor leave. The inhabitants of the place were suddenly brought face to face with the fact that commerce, the source of their wealth, had to be abandoned. Poverty and want reigned where riches ruled before. The wife of the once wealthy merchant wandered about from village to village, begging the bread which no one who had heard of her improvidence would give her. She suffered death from utter starvation. Then one night the sea began to boom and, bursting over the dunes, buried the town forever.

To this day the more superstitious of the fisher-folk who ply their vocation along that coast of the Zuyder Zee talk of the wonderful sunken city of Stavoren and how its pinnacles and palaces at the bottom glitter up through the pellucid waters under the rays of a summer’s sun.