Bab Bab 2 · Holland
.
The sun had not yet appeared, but the gray sky was parted near the
horizon, and its edges shone crimson with the coming day. Most of the
good Hollanders were enjoying a placid morning nap. Even Mynheer
von Stoppelnoze, that worthy old Dutchman, was still slumbering “in
beautiful repose”.
Now and then some peasant woman, poising a well-filled basket upon her
head, came skimming over the glassy surface of the canal; or a lusty
boy, skating to his day’s work in the town, cast a good-natured grimace
toward the shivering pair as he flew along.
Meanwhile, with many a vigorous puff and pull, the brother and sister,
for such they were, seemed to be fastening something to their feet--not
skates, certainly, but clumsy pieces of wood narrowed and smoothed at
their lower edge, and pierced with holes, through which were threaded
strings of rawhide.
These queer-looking affairs had been made by the boy Hans. His mother
was a poor peasant woman, too poor even to think of such a thing
as buying skates for her little ones. Rough as these were, they had
afforded the children many a happy hour upon the ice. And now, as with
cold, red fingers our young Hollanders tugged at the strings--their
solemn faces bending closely over their knees--no vision of impossible
iron runners came to dull the satisfaction glowing within.
In a moment the boy arose and, with a pompous swing of the arms and a
careless “Come on, Gretel,” glided easily across the canal.
“Ah, Hans,” called his sister plaintively, “this foot is not well yet.
The strings hurt me on last market day, and now I cannot bear them tied
in the same place.”
“Tie them higher up, then,” answered Hans, as without looking at her he
performed a wonderful cat’s cradle step on the ice.
“How can I? The string is too short.”
Giving vent to a good-natured Dutch whistle, the English of which was
that girls were troublesome creatures, he steered toward her.
“You are foolish to wear such shoes, Gretel, when you have a stout
leather pair. Your klompen *{Wooden shoes.} would be better than these.”
“Why, Hans! Do you forget? The father threw my beautiful new shoes in
the fire. Before I knew what he had done, they were all curled up in the
midst o the burning peat. I can skate with these, but not with my wooden
ones. Be careful now--”
Hans had taken a string from his pocket. Humming a tune as he knelt
beside her, he proceeded to fasten Gretel’s skate with all the force of
his strong young arm.
“Oh! oh!” she cried in real pain.
With an impatient jerk Hans unwound the string. He would have cast it on
the ground in true big-brother style, had he not just then spied a tear
trickling down his sister’s cheek.
“I’ll fix it--never fear,” he said with sudden tenderness, “but we must
be quick. The mother will need us soon.”
Then he glanced inquiringly about him, first at the ground, next at
some bare willow branches above his head, and finally at the sky, now
gorgeous with streaks of blue, crimson, and gold.
Finding nothing in any of these localities to meet his need, his eye
suddenly brightened as, with the air of a fellow who knew what he was
about, he took off his cap and, removing the tattered lining, adjusted
it in a smooth pad over the top of Gretel’s worn-out shoe.
“Now,” he cried triumphantly, at the same time arranging the strings
as briskly as his benumbed fingers would allow, “can you bear some
pulling?”
Gretel drew up her lips as if to say, “Hurt away,” but made no further
response.
In another moment they were all laughing together, as hand in hand they
flew along the canal, never thinking whether the ice would bear them or
not, for in Holland ice is generally an all-winter affair. It settles
itself upon the water in a determined kind of way, and so far from
growing thin and uncertain every time the sun is a little severe upon
it, it gathers its forces day by day and flashes defiance to every beam.
Presently, squeak! squeak! sounded something beneath Hans’ feet. Next
his strokes grew shorter, ending oftimes with a jerk, and finally,
he lay sprawling upon the ice, kicking against the air with many a
fantastic flourish.
“Ha! ha!” laughed Gretel. “That was a fine tumble!” But a tender heart
was beating under her coarse blue jacket, and even as she laughed, she
came, with a graceful sweep, close to her prostrate brother.
“Are you hurt, Hans? Oh, you are laughing! Catch me now!” And she darted
away, shivering no longer, but with cheeks all aglow and eyes sparkling
with fun.
Hans sprang to his feet and started in brisk pursuit, but it was no easy
thing to catch Gretel. Before she had traveled very far, her skates,
too, began to squeak.
Believing that discretion was the better part of valor, she turned
suddenly and skated into her pursuer’s arms.
“Ha! ha! I’ve caught you!” cried Hans.
“Ha! ha! I caught YOU,” she retorted, struggling to free herself.
Just then a clear, quick voice was heard calling, “Hans! Gretel!”
“It’s the mother,” said Hans, looking solemn in an instant.
By this time the canal was gilded with sunlight. The pure morning air
was very delightful, and skaters were gradually increasing in numbers.
It was hard to obey the summons. But Gretel and Hans were good children;
without a thought of yielding to the temptation to linger, they pulled
off their skates, leaving half the knots still tied. Hans, with his
great square shoulders and bushy yellow hair, towered high above his
blue-eyed little sister as they trudged homeward. He was fifteen years
old and Gretel was only twelve. He was a solid, hearty-looking boy, with
honest eyes and a brow that seemed to bear a sign GOODNESS WITHIN just
as the little Dutch zomerhuis *{Summer house} wears a motto over its
portal. Gretel was lithe and quick; her eyes had a dancing light in
them, and while you looked at her cheek the color paled and deepened
just as it does upon a bed of pink and white blossoms when the wind is
blowing.
As soon as the children turned from the canal, they could see their
parents’ cottage. Their mother’s tall form, arrayed in jacket and
petticoat and close-fitting cap, stood, like a picture, in the crooked
frame of the doorway. Had the cottage been a mile away, it would still
have seemed near. In that flat country every object stands out plainly
in the distance; the chickens show as distinctly as the windmills.
Indeed, were it not for the dikes and the high banks of the canals, one
could stand almost anywhere in middle Holland without seeing a mound or
a ridge between the eye and the “jumping-off place.”
None had better cause to know the nature of these same dikes than Dame
Brinker and the panting youngsters now running at her call. But before
stating WHY, let me ask you to take a rocking-chair trip with me to that
far country where you may see, perhaps for the first time, some curious
things that Hans and Gretel saw every day.
CHAPTER 2. Holland
Holland is one of the queerest countries under the sun. It should
be called Odd-land or Contrary-land, for in nearly everything it is
different from the other parts of the world. In the first place, a large
portion of the country is lower than the level of the sea. Great dikes,
or bulwarks, have been erected at a heavy cost of money and labor
to keep the ocean where it belongs. On certain parts of the coast it
sometimes leans with all its weight against the land, and it is as much
as the poor country can do to stand the pressure. Sometimes the dikes
give way or spring a leak, and the most disastrous results ensue.
They are high and wide, and the tops of some of them are covered with
buildings and trees. They have even fine public roads on them, from
which horses may look down upon wayside cottages. Often the keels of
floating ships are higher than the roofs of the dwellings. The stork
clattering to her young on the house peak may feel that her nest is
lifted far out of danger, but the croaking frog in neighboring bulrushes
is nearer the stars than she. Water bugs dart backward and forward above
the heads of the chimney swallows, and willow trees seem drooping with
shame, because they cannot reach as high as the reeds nearby.
Ditches, canals, ponds, rivers, and lakes are everywhere to be seen.
High, but not dry, they shine in the sunlight, catching nearly all
the bustle and the business, quite scorning the tame fields stretching
damply beside them. One is tempted to ask, “Which is Holland--the shores
or the water?” The very verdure that should be confined to the land
has made a mistake and settled upon the fish ponds. In fact, the entire
country is a kind of saturated sponge or, as the English poet, Butler,
called it,
A land that rides at anchor, and is moor’d,
In which they do not live, but go aboard.
Persons are born, live, and die, and even have their gardens on
canal-boats. Farmhouses, with roofs like great slouched hats pulled over
their eyes, stand on wooden legs with a tucked-up sort of air, as if
to say, “We intend to keep dry if we can.” Even the horses wear a wide
stool on each hoof as if to lift them out of the mire. In short, the
landscape everywhere suggests a paradise for ducks. It is a glorious
country in summer for barefoot girls and boys. Such wading! Such mimic
ship sailing! Such rowing, fishing, and swimming! Only think of a chain
of puddles where one can launch chip boats all day long and never make
a return trip! But enough. A full recital would set all young America
rushing in a body toward the Zuider Zee.
Dutch cities seem at first sight to be a bewildering jungle of houses,
bridges, churches, and ships, sprouting into masts, steeples, and
trees. In some cities vessels are hitched like horses to their owners’
doorposts and receive their freight from the upper windows. Mothers
scream to Lodewyk and Kassy not to swing on the garden gate for fear
they may be drowned! Water roads are more frequent there than common
roads and railways; water fences in the form of lazy green ditches
enclose pleasure-ground, farm, and garden.
Sometimes fine green hedges are seen, but wooden fences such as we
have in America are rarely met with in Holland. As for stone fences, a
Dutchman would lift his hands with astonishment at the very idea. There
is no stone there, except for those great masses of rock that have been
brought from other lands to strengthen and protect the coast. All the
small stones or pebbles, if there ever were any, seem to be imprisoned
in pavements or quite melted away. Boys with strong, quick arms may
grow from pinafores to full beards without ever finding one to start the
water rings or set the rabbits flying. The water roads are nothing less
than canals intersecting the country in every direction. These are of
all sizes, from the great North Holland Ship Canal, which is the wonder
of the world, to those which a boy can leap. Water omnibuses, called
trekschuiten, *{Canal boats. Some of the first named are over thirty
feet long. They look like green houses lodged on barges and are drawn by
horses walking along the bank of the canal. The trekschuiten are divided
into two compartments, first and second class, and when not too crowded,
the passengers make themselves quite at home in them; the men smoke, the
women knit or sew, while children play upon the small outer deck. Many
of the canal boats have white, yellow, or chocolate-colored sails.
This last color is caused by a tanning preparation which is put on
to preserve them.} constantly ply up and down these roads for the
conveyance of passengers; and water drays, called pakschuyten, are used
for carrying fuel and merchandise. Instead of green country lanes,
green canals stretch from field to barn and from barn to garden; and
the farms, or polders, as they are termed, are merely great lakes pumped
dry. Some of the busiest streets are water, while many of the country
roads are paved with brick. The city boats with their rounded sterns,
gilded prows, and gaily painted sides, are unlike any others under the
sun; and a Dutch wagon, with its funny little crooked pole, is a perfect
mystery of mysteries.
“One thing is clear,” cries Master Brightside, “the inhabitants
need never be thirsty.” But no, Odd-land is true to itself still.
Notwithstanding the sea pushing to get in, and the lakes struggling
to get out, and the overflowing canals, rivers, and ditches, in many
districts there is no water fit to swallow; our poor Hollanders must go
dry or drink wine and beer or send far into the inland to Utrecht and
other favored localities for that precious fluid older than Adam yet
younger than the morning dew. Sometimes, indeed, the inhabitants can
swallow a shower when they are provided with any means of catching it;
but generally they are like the albatross-haunted sailors in Coleridge’s
famous poem “The Ancient Mariner.” They see
Water, Water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink!
Great flapping windmills all over the country make it look as if flocks
of huge sea birds were just settling upon it. Everywhere one sees
the funniest trees, bobbed into fantastical shapes, with their trunks
painted a dazzling white, yellow, or red. Horses are often yoked three
abreast. Men, women, and children go clattering about in wooden shoes
with loose heels; peasant girls who cannot get beaux for love, hire them
for money to escort them to the kermis, *{Fair.} and husbands and wives
lovingly harness themselves side by side on the bank of the canal and
drag their pakschuyts to market.
Another peculiar feature of Holland is the dune, or sand hill. These are
numerous along certain portions of the coast. Before they were sown with
coarse reed grass and other plants, to hold them down, they used to send
great storms of sand over the inland. So, to add to the oddities, the
farmers sometimes dig down under the surface to find their soil, and on
windy days DRY SHOWERS (of sand) often fall upon fields that have grown
wet under a week of sunshine.
In short, almost the only familiar thing we Yankees can meet with
in Holland is a harvest song which is quite popular there, though no
linguist could translate it. Even then we must shut our eyes and listen
only to the tune, which I leave you to guess.
Yanker didee dudel down
Didee dudel lawnter;
Yankee viver, voover, vown,
Botermelk and Tawnter!
On the other hand, many of the oddities of Holland serve only to prove
the thrift and perseverance of the people. There is not a richer or more
carefully tilled garden spot in the whole world than this leaky, springy
little country. There is not a braver, more heroic race than its quite,
passive-looking inhabitants. Few nations have equalled it in important
discoveries and inventions; none has excelled it in commerce,
navigation, learning, and science--or set as noble examples in the
promotion of education and public charities; and none in proportion to
its extent has expended more money or labor upon public works.
Holland has its shining annals of noble and illustrious men and women;
its grand, historic records of patience, resistance, and victory; its
religious freedom; its enlightened enterprise; its art, music, and
literature. It has truly been called “the battlefield of Europe”; as
truly may we consider it the asylum of the world, for the oppressed
of every nation have there found shelter and encouragement. If we
Americans, who after all are homeopathic preparations of Holland stock,
can laugh at the Dutch, and call them human beavers and hint that their
country may float off any day at high tide, we can also feel proud, and
say they have proved themselves heroes and that their country will not
float off while there is a Dutchman left to grapple it.
There are said to be at least ninety-nine hundred large windmills in
Holland, with sails ranging from eighty to one hundred and twenty feet
long. They are employed in sawing timber, beating hemp, grinding, and
many other kinds of work; but their principal use is for pumping water
from the lowlands into the canals, and for guarding against the inland
freshets that so often deluge the country. Their yearly cost is said to
be nearly ten million dollars. The large ones are of great power.
The huge circular tower, rising sometimes from the midst of factory
buildings, is surmounted with a smaller one tapering into a caplike
roof. This upper tower is encircled at its base with a balcony, high
above which juts the axis turned by its four prodigious ladder-back
sails.
Many of the windmills are primitive affairs, seeming sadly in need of
Yankee “improvements,” but some of the new ones are admirable. They are
constructed so that by some ingenious contrivance they present their
fans, or wings, to the wind in precisely the right direction to work
with the requisite power. In other words, the miller may take a nap and
feel quite sure that his mill will study the wind and make the most of
it, until he wakens. Should there be but a slight current of air, every
sail will spread itself to catch the faintest breath, but if a heavy
“blow” should come, they will shrink at its touch, like great mimosa
leaves, and only give it half a chance to move them.
One of the old prisons of Amsterdam, called the Rasphouse, because the
thieves and vagrants who were confined there were employed in rasping
logwood, had a cell for the punishment of lazy prisoners. In one corner
of this cell was a pump, and in another, an opening through which a
steady stream of water was admitted. The prisoner could take his choice,
either to stand still and be drowned or to work for dear life at the
pump and keep the flood down until his jailer chose to relieve him.
Now it seems to me that, throughout Holland, nature has introduced this
little diversion on a grand scale. The Dutch have always been forced to
pump for their very existence and probably must continue to do so to the
end of time.
Every year millions of dollars are spent in repairing dikes and
regulating water levels. If these important duties were neglected, the
country would be uninhabitable. Already dreadful consequences, as I have
said, have followed the bursting of these dikes. Hundreds of villages
and towns have from time to time been buried beneath the rush of waters,
and nearly a million persons have been destroyed. One of the most
fearful inundations ever known occurred in the autumn of the year 1570.
Twenty-eight terrible floods had before that time overwhelmed portions
of Holland, but this was the most terrible of all. The unhappy country
had long been suffering under Spanish tyranny; now, it seemed, the
crowning point was given to its troubles. When we read Motley’s history
of the rise of the Dutch republic, we learn to revere the brave people
who have endured, suffered, and dared so much.
Mr. Motley, in his thrilling account of the great inundation, tells us
how a long-continued and violent gale had been sweeping the Atlantic
waters into the North Sea, piling them against the coasts of the Dutch
provinces; how the dikes, taxed beyond their strength, burst in all
directions; how even the Hand-bos, a bulwark formed of oaken piles,
braced with iron, moored with heavy anchors, and secured by gravel and
granite, was snapped to pieces like thread; how fishing boats and bulky
vessels floating up into the country became entangled among the trees
or beat in the roofs and walls of dwellings, and how, at last, all
Friesland was converted into an angry sea. “Multitudes of men, women,
children, of horses, oxen, sheep, and every domestic animal, were
struggling in the waves in every direction. Every boat and every article
which could serve as a boat was eagerly seized upon. Every house was
inundated; even the graveyards gave up their dead. The living infant
in his cradle and the long-buried corpse in his coffin floated side by
side. The ancient flood seemed about to be renewed. Everywhere, upon
the tops of trees, upon the steeples of churches, human beings were
clustered, praying to God for mercy and to their fellow men for
assistance. As the storm at last was subsiding, boats began to ply in
every direction, saving those who were struggling in the water, picking
fugitives from roofs and treetops, and collecting the bodies of those
already drowned.” No less than one hundred thousand human beings had
perished in a few hours. Thousands upon thousands of dumb creatures lay
dead upon the waters, and the damage to property was beyond calculation.
Robles, the Spanish governor, was foremost in noble efforts to save life
and lessen the horrors of the catastrophe. He had previously been hated
by the Dutch because of his Spanish or Portuguese blood, but by his
goodness and activity in their hour of disaster, he won all hearts to
gratitude. He soon introduced an improved method of constructing the
dikes and passed a law that they should in future be kept up by the
owners of the soil. There were fewer heavy floods from this time, though
within less than three hundred years, six fearful inundations swept over
the land.
In the spring there is always great danger of inland freshets,
especially in times of thaw, because the rivers, choked with blocks of
ice, overflow before they can discharge their rapidly rising waters into
the ocean. Adding to this that the sea chafes and presses against the
dikes, it is no wonder that Holland is often in a state of alarm. The
greatest care is taken to prevent accidents. Engineers and workmen are
stationed all along in threatened places, and a close watch is kept up
night and day. When a general signal of danger is given, the inhabitants
all rush to the rescue, eager to combine against their common foe. As,
everywhere else, straw is supposed to be of all things the most helpless
in the water, of course, in Holland, it must be rendered the mainstay
against a rushing tide. Huge straw mats are pressed against the
embankments, fortified with clay and heavy stone, and once adjusted, the
ocean dashes against them in vain.
Raff Brinker, the father of Gretel and Hans, had for years been employed
upon the dikes. It was at the time of a threatened inundation, when
in the midst of a terrible storm, in darkness and sleet, the men were
laboring at a weak spot near the Veermyk sluice, that he fell from the
scaffolding and became insensible. From that hour he never worked again;
though he lived on, mind and memory were gone.
Gretel could not remember him otherwise than as the strange, silent man
whose eyes followed her vacantly whichever way she turned, but Hans had
recollections of a hearty, cheerful-voiced father who was never tired
of bearing him upon his shoulder and whose careless song still seemed
echoing near when he lay awake at night and listened.