Hans Brinker; Or, The Silver Skates

by Mary Mapes Dodge

  II

  HOLLAND

  Holland is one of the queerest countries under the sun. It should becalled Odd-land or Contrary-land, for in nearly everything it isdifferent from other parts of the world. In the first place, a largeportion of the country is lower than the level of the sea. Great dykesor bulwarks have been erected at a heavy cost of money and labor, tokeep the ocean where it belongs. On certain parts of the coast itsometimes leans with all its weight against the land, and it is as muchas the poor country can do to stand the pressure. Sometimes the dykesgive way, or spring a leak, and the most disastrous results ensue. Theyare high and wide, and the tops of some of them are covered withbuildings and trees. They have even fine public roads upon them, fromwhich horses may look down upon wayside cottages. Often the keels offloating ships are higher than the roofs of the dwellings. The storkclattering to her young on the house-peak may feel that her nest islifted far out of danger, but the croaking frog in neighboring bulrushesis nearer the stars than she. Water-bugs dart backward and forward abovethe heads of the chimney swallows; and willow trees seem drooping withshame, because they cannot reach as high as the reeds near by.

  Ditches, canals, ponds, rivers and lakes are everywhere to be seen.High, but not dry, they shine in the sunlight, catching nearly all thebustle and the business, quite scorning the tame fields stretchingdamply beside them. One is tempted to ask, "Which is Holland--the shoresor the water?" The very verdure that should be confined to the land hasmade a mistake and settled upon the fish-ponds. In fact the entirecountry 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 oncanal-boats. Farmhouses, with roofs like great slouched hats pulled overtheir eyes, stand on wooden legs with a tucked-up sort of air, as if tosay "we intend to keep dry if we can." Even the horses wear a wide stoolon each hoof to lift them out of the mire. In short, the landscapeeverywhere suggests a paradise for ducks. It is a glorious country insummer for barefooted girls and boys. Such wadings! such mimic shipsailing! Such rowing, fishing and swimming! Only think of a chain ofpuddles where one can launch chip boats all day long, and never make areturn trip! But enough. A full recital would set all young Americarushing 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'door-posts and receive their freight from the upper windows. Mothersscream to Lodewyk and Kassy not to swing on the garden gate for fearthey may be drowned! Water-roads are more frequent there thancommon-roads and rail-ways; water-fences in the form of lazy greenditches, enclose pleasure-ground, polder and garden.

  Sometimes fine green hedges are seen; but wooden fences such as we havein America are rarely met with in Holland. As for stone fences, aDutchman would lift his hands with astonishment at the very idea. Thereis no stone there, excepting those great masses of rock, that have beenbrought from other lands to strengthen and protect the coast. All thesmall stones or pebbles, if there ever were any, seem to be imprisonedin pavements or quite melted away. Boys with strong, quick arms may growfrom pinafores to full beards without ever finding one to start thewater-rings or set the rabbits flying. The water-roads are nothing lessthan canals intersecting the country in every direction. These are ofall sizes, from the great North Holland Ship Canal, which is the wonderof the world, to those which a boy can leap. Water-omnibuses, called_trekschuiten_,[3] constantly ply up and down these roads for theconveyance of passengers; and water drays, called _pakschuyten_,[3] areused for carrying fuel, and merchandise. Instead of green country lanes,green canals stretch from field to barn and from barn to garden; and thefarms or _polders_, as they are termed, are merely great lakes pumpeddry. Some of the busiest streets are water, while many of the countryroads are paved with brick. The city boats with their rounded sterns,gilded prows and gaily painted sides, are unlike any others under thesun; and a Dutch wagon with its funny little crooked pole, is a perfectmystery of mysteries.

  [Footnote 3: Canal-boats. Some of the first named are over thirty feetlong. They look like green houses lodged on barges, and are drawn byhorses walking along the bank of the canal. The trekschuiten are dividedinto two compartments, first and second class, and when not too crowdedthe passengers make themselves quite at home in them; the men smoke, thewomen knit or sew, while children play upon the small outer deck. Manyof the canal-boats have white, yellow, or chocolate-colored sails. Thislast color is caused by a preparation of tan which is put on to preservethem.]

  "One thing is clear," cries Master Brightside, "the inhabitants neednever be thirsty." But no, Odd-land is true to itself still.Notwithstanding the sea pushing to get in, and the lakes struggling toget out, and the overflowing canals, rivers and ditches, in manydistricts there is no water fit to swallow; our poor Hollanders must godry, or drink wine and beer, or send far into the inland to Utrecht, andother favored localities, for that precious fluid older than Adam yetyoung as the morning dew. Sometimes, indeed, the inhabitants can swallowa shower when they are provided with any means of catching it; butgenerally they are like the Albatross-haunted sailors in Coleridge'sfamous poem of "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 flocksof huge sea-birds were just settling upon it. Everywhere one sees thefunniest trees, bobbed into fantastical shapes, with their trunkspainted a dazzling white, yellow or red. Horses are often yoked threeabreast. Men, women and children go clattering about in wooden shoeswith loose heels; peasant girls who cannot get beaux for love, hire themfor money to escort them to the Kermis;[4] and husbands and wiveslovingly _harness_ themselves side by side on the bank of the canal anddrag their pakschuyts to market.

  [Footnote 4: Fair.]

  Another peculiar feature of Holland is the _dune_ or sand-hill. Theseare numerous along certain portions of the coast. Before they were sownwith coarse reed-grass and other plants, to hold them down, they used tosend great storms of sand over the inland. So, to add to the oddities,farmers sometimes dig down under the surface to find their soil, and onwindy days _dry_ showers (of sand) often fall upon fields that havegrown wet under a week of sunshine.

  In short, almost the only familiar thing we Yankees can meet with inHolland is a harvest-song which is quite popular there, though nolinguist could translate it. Even then we must shut our eyes and listenonly to the tune which I leave you to guess.

  "Yanker didee dudel down Didee dudel lawnter; Yankee viver, voover, vown, Botermelk und Tawnter!"

  On the other hand, many of the oddities of Holland serve only to provethe thrift and perseverance of the people. There is not a richer, ormore carefully tilled garden-spot in the whole world than this leaky,springy little country. There is not a braver, more heroic race than itsquiet, passive-looking inhabitants. Few nations have equaled it inimportant discoveries and inventions; none has excelled it in commerce,navigation, learning and science,--or set as noble examples in thepromotion of education, and public charities; and none in proportion toits extent has expended more money and 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; itsreligious freedom, its enlightened enterprise, its art, its music andits literature. It has truly been called, "the battle-field of Europe,"as truly may we consider it the Asylum of the world, for the oppressedof every nation have there found shelter and encouragement. If weAmericans, who after all, are homeopathic preparations of Holland stock,can laugh at the Dutch, and call them human beavers, and hint that theircountry may float off any day at high tide, we can also feel proud, andsay they have proved themselves heroes, and that their country will_no
t_ float off while there is a Dutchman left to grapple it.

  There are said to be at least ninety-nine hundred large windmills inHolland, with sails ranging from eighty to one hundred and twenty feetlong. They are employed in sawing timber, beating hemp, grinding, andmany other kinds of work; but their principal use is for pumping waterfrom the lowlands into the canals, and for guarding against the inlandfreshets that so often deluge the country. Their yearly cost is said tobe nearly ten millions of dollars. The large ones are of great power.Their huge, circular tower, rising sometimes from the midst of factorybuildings, is surmounted with a smaller one tapering into a cap-likeroof. This upper tower is encircled at its base with a balcony, highabove which juts the axis turned by its four prodigious, ladder-backedsails.

  Many of the windmills are primitive affairs, seeming sadly in need ofYankee "improvements"; but some of the new ones are admirable. They areso constructed that, by some ingenious contrivance, they present theirfans, or wings, to the wind in precisely the right direction to workwith the requisite power. In other words, the miller may take a nap andfeel quite sure that his mill will study the wind, and make the most ofit, until he wakens. Should there be but a slight current of air, everysail will spread itself to catch the faintest breath; but if a heavy"blow" should come, they will shrink at its touch, like great mimosaleaves, and only give it half a chance to move them.

  One of the old prisons of Amsterdam, called the Rasphouse, because thethieves and vagrants who were confined there were employed in raspinglog-wood, had a cell for the punishment of lazy prisoners. In one cornerof this cell was a pump and, in another, an opening through which asteady 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 thepump and keep the flood down until his jailer chose to relieve him. Nowit seems to me that, throughout Holland, Nature has introduced thislittle diversion on a grand scale. The Dutch have always been forced topump for their very existence and probably must continue to do so to theend of time.

  Every year millions of dollars are spent in repairing dykes, andregulating water levels. If these important duties were neglected thecountry would be uninhabitable. Already dreadful consequences, as I havesaid, have followed the bursting of these dykes. Hundreds of villagesand towns have from time to time been buried beneath the rush of waters,and nearly a million of persons have been destroyed. One of the mostfearful inundations ever known occurred in the autumn of the year 1570.Twenty-eight terrible floods had before that time overwhelmed portionsof Holland, but this was the most terrible of all. The unhappy countryhad long been suffering under Spanish tyranny; now, it seemed, thecrowning point was given to its troubles. When we read Motley's historyof the Rise of the Dutch Republic we learn to revere the brave peoplewho have endured, suffered and dared so much.

  Mr. Motley in his thrilling account of the great inundation tells us howa long continued and violent gale had been sweeping the Atlantic watersinto the North Sea, piling them against the coasts of the Dutchprovinces; how the dykes, tasked beyond their strength, burst in alldirections; how even the Hand-bos, a bulwark formed of oaken piles,braced with iron, moored with heavy anchors and secured by gravel andgranite, was snapped to pieces like packthread; how fishing boats andbulky vessels floating up into the country became entangled among thetrees, or beat in the roofs and walls of dwellings, and how at last allFriesland was converted into an angry sea. "Multitudes of men, women,children, of horses, oxen, sheep, and every domestic animal, werestruggling in the waves in every direction. Every boat and every articlewhich could serve as a boat, were eagerly seized upon. Every house wasinundated, even the graveyards gave up their dead. The living infant inhis cradle, and the long-buried corpse in his coffin, floated side byside. The ancient flood seemed about to be renewed. Everywhere, upon thetops of trees, upon the steeples of churches, human beings wereclustered, praying to God for mercy, and to their fellowmen forassistance. As the storm at last was subsiding, boats began to ply inevery direction, saving those who were struggling in the water, pickingfugitives from roofs and tree tops, and collecting the bodies of thosealready drowned." No less than one hundred thousand human beings hadperished in a few hours. Thousands upon thousands of dumb creatures laydead upon the waters; and the damage done to property of everydescription was beyond calculation.

  Robles, the Spanish Governor, was foremost in noble efforts to save lifeand lessen the horrors of the catastrophe. He had formerly been hated bythe Dutch because of his Spanish or Portuguese blood, but by hisgoodness and activity in their hour of disaster, he won all hearts togratitude. He soon introduced an improved method of constructing thedykes, and passed a law that they should in future be kept up by theowners of the soil. There were fewer heavy floods from this time, thoughwithin less than three hundred years six fearful inundations swept overthe land.

  In the Spring there is always great danger of inland freshets,especially in times of thaw, because the rivers, choked with blocks ofice, overflow before they can discharge their rapidly rising waters intothe ocean. Added to this, the sea chafing and pressing against thedykes, it is no wonder that Holland is often in a state of alarm. Thegreatest care is taken to prevent accidents. Engineers and workmen arestationed all along in threatened places and a close watch is kept upnight and day. When a general signal of danger is given, the inhabitantsall rush to the rescue, eager to combine against their common foe. As,everywhere else, straw is supposed to be of all things the most helplessin the water, of course in Holland it must be rendered the mainstayagainst a rushing tide. Huge straw mats are pressed against theembankments, fortified with clay and heavy stone, and once adjusted, theocean dashes against them in vain.

  Raff Brinker, the father of Gretel and Hans, had for years been employedupon the dykes. It was at the time of a threatened inundation, when inthe midst of a terrible storm, in darkness and sleet, the men werelaboring at a weak spot near the Veermyk sluice, that he fell from thescaffolding, and was taken home insensible. From that hour he neverworked 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 hadrecollections of a hearty, cheerful-voiced father who was never tired ofbearing him upon his shoulder, and whose careless song still seemedechoing near when he lay awake at night and listened.