Chapter IV: Part 4

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.

IX

EXCURSIONS ABOUT AMSTERDAM

It is doubtful indeed if any other city in Holland than Amsterdam can tempt the tourist with a greater number of pleasant day’s excursions. Lying at the very feet of North Holland--a travel territory no larger in area than the state of Rhode Island, but replete with picturesque nooks and corners, congested with types and abounding in peculiar customs--every part of the province is readily accessible to Amsterdam by rail or by water. Back of its central railway station there is a long line of docks which berth the boats that only await your patronage. Here you may board the large river steamer that takes you to Zaandam in half an hour for the price of one-half of one Dutch cent a minute; here you may take the little excursion boats for ports along the Zuyder Zee; here you may engage passage to Alkmaar or to The Helder or even to Leeuwarden or Groningen or Zwolle, situated in that unpenetrated part of the kingdom which may be termed the hinterland of Holland; and here you may hire a private yacht or motor boat, master and all, to carry you whither you will and for as long as you wish for as little as five dollars a day inclusive. If you cross the arm of the Zuyder Zee they call the Ij--much easier spelled Y--by ferry to the Tolhuis you have only to board the steam tram to be rattled across country to Alkmaar, Edam, or Volendam. To Haarlem is but fifteen minutes’ ride by rail, while The Hague itself is only an hour’s trip in the _schnell zug_. Zandvoort, on the North Sea, is served by electric train direct from Amsterdam, stopping at Haarlem to break the short journey.

A favorite excursion for a summer’s evening is from Amsterdam by steamer to Zaandam, the most typically Dutch of all Dutch towns. The course of the steamer leads up the North Sea Canal to a point a little beyond the Petroleum Harbor and then turns off into the river Zaan.

It is in the North Sea Canal that Amsterdam places her only hope of ever being able to compete with Rotterdam as a shipping port. With its fifteen miles of length, its sixty-five to one hundred and ten yards of width, and its thirty feet of depth, this canal pierces the one-time peninsula of North Holland from the Zuyder Zee to its western boundary, making an island out of part of the province and placing Amsterdam in direct and easy communication with the North Sea. An “A.P.” gauge along its bank would prove its water level to be about twenty inches minus, that is, twenty inches below the mean level of the water at Amsterdam--the bench mark of all water levels throughout Holland. To cut such a canal across country from one sea to another and to protect it at either end with immense breakwaters and lock gates has cost the government in the neighborhood of $18,000,000 and consumed eleven years of patient labor. Since 1895 its western terminus has been divided into two outlets, the older being protected by a lock of three openings, while the more recently completed branch, diverging a little to the northward from the main canal, has but one opening, 245 yards long, 27 yards wide, and 33 feet deep.

Zaandam being the home and breeding ground of the windmill, a bird’s-eye view of it would give the effect of four inverted centipedes kicking in their death throes. It is the center of the Dutch lumber trade, and since the windmill is the cheapest method of generating the power that any lumber trade requires in order to operate its sawmills, Zaandam draws from the breeze what we conjure from steam. There are upwards of four hundred windmills in its immediate vicinity. Its houses, brightly painted with green, red, or white, and surrounded with pleasant little gardens, gayly reiterate the Dutchman’s delight in contrasts, harmonious or otherwise.

Another of Zaandam’s claims to the consideration of the tourist is a little old house near the harbor, that belongs, not to any resident of the town, nor to any man in Holland, but to the Czar of all the Russias personally. It is the house which Peter the Great made his domestic headquarters for a brief week in the year 1697 while, as tradition has it, he studied shipbuilding incognito in Zaandam. If the villagers had not made themselves so pestiferously inquisitive and penetrated his disguise a few days after his arrival he might have learned a lot from Mynheer Kalf, under whose competent tutelage he apprenticed himself as a ship carpenter; but the idlers about town became too importunate for Peter. He gave up his position at the end of a week and returned to Amsterdam.

Volendam, on the west coast of the Zuyder Zee, and the little Island of Marken, just opposite, are the two most advertised and, therefore, the show places in the tourist territory of Holland and enjoy the highest patronage. Both are being rapidly and ruthlessly spoiled in consequence. However, as these are the towns easiest of access from Amsterdam that have retained the costumes and customs which prevailed hundreds of years ago, embellishing both to a certain degree as the signs of the times dictate, one feels it his solemn duty, almost, to go there. If the gentle reader has been to Amsterdam and has weathered the many appeals to make a day’s trip to Volendam and Marken we should like to have him raise his hand, please, so that we may inquire as to the cause and effect of his superb indifference. It would be worth noting in the minutes of any travel club.

The head porter of your hotel in Amsterdam--a sort of unproclaimed passenger agent himself--will try to sell you a round trip ticket to Volendam and Marken in one of the many parties, each attended by a conductor, which leave every morning and return every evening during the season. But, if you will bear a personal opinion, that which is interesting under the guidance of the prosaic conductor is twice as interesting to explore by yourself. Start as early as you choose, if you can, and get back when you can, if you choose, is the best advice I am able to utter with regard to travel through any country in the world--and, on account of its many facilities for getting about and the comparative meagerness of the territory involved, it is especially applicable to Holland.

Except to obtain a comprehensive view of the great dam at the mouth of the Y, a mile and a quarter in length, which protects the more delicate construction of the North Sea Canal from the ravages of the Zuyder Zee, the trip to Marken made by this route offers little compensation. The same view can be had if you will take the electric car from in front of the station in Amsterdam to the St. Anthonis Dyk and walk a short distance across to the locks at the Oranjesluizen near the north end of the embankment. The five openings at this point of the great breakwater permit the entrance and exit of vessels and regulate the depth of water in the canals. Out of a total of fifty-six lock gates twenty-two are constructed of iron.

Then, too, there seems to be no stability about the weather in Holland, and a voyage up the Zuyder Zee in a cold, drizzling rain does not encourage a pleasant afterthought of the excursion. Upon one trip I made up the Zee in the middle of summer the climate was of about the same temperature as that of a Christmas in Spitzbergen.

A much more satisfactory route by which to tap these towns is the steam tramway line through Monnikendam and Edam, the method of procedure in this case being to take the ferry from the end of the Damrak near the station in Amsterdam to the Tolhuis, or old customhouse, across the Y.

Here near the Tolhuis is the southern entrance to the North Holland Canal, with its great lock gates--a channel which simplifies the boat voyage between Amsterdam and The Helder, penetrating almost the entire length of the province of North Holland, a distance of forty-five miles or more, and dividing into two the island already made by the North Sea Canal. A hundred and thirty feet in width and sixteen feet in depth, it was constructed a half century before its North Sea predecessor at a cost of about $4,000,000, and its water level at Buiksloot, the first little station on the tram line, about a mile from the Tolhuis, is as much as ten feet below that of the sea at half tide.

Broek, a little farther along near the tram line, is reputed to be the cleanest town in the world, and I have not the least doubt that its reputation is well deserved. But its motive is ill chosen: it is clean for a purpose. By its cleanliness it attracts visitors, and so it can scarcely be reckoned as a criterion by which to judge the other towns of Holland. No doubt it was clean long before it ever had any visitors, but since the tourists commenced to hear about its hypertrophied spotlessness, they began to visit it; now the more visitors it has the cleaner it becomes. Like a duck, it is preening itself continuously from dawn till dark.

From Monnikendam you may take steamer direct for the Island of Marken, but it will be more to your comfort to join the steamer in Marken and return through the canals to Amsterdam by way of Monnikendam. Such a procedure, however, is dependent upon the steamer captain’s consent to the proposition; for the boats that ply this route carry excursionists exclusively, so that even if the captain can be induced to accept you as a passenger you may have to pay the full fare for the trip from Amsterdam to Marken and return.

Once--about three and a half centuries ago--Monnikendam was included in the list of the most important towns in Holland. In its halcyon days its money chests contained enough bullion to provide for the outfitting of a fleet which it sent under spreading canvas up the coast to Hoorn, to demonstrate to the skeptics that a Spanish admiral _could_ be captured in battle, if only the scheme were handled in the proper manner. Long since has Monnikendam been relegated to the so-called “dead city” class. It is almost too sleepy to keep awake in the daytime, arousing but once a year from its perennial slumber: when Amsterdam comes on skates to hold an ice carnival.

Back somewhere in the fourteenth century, when the only maritime means of access to Amsterdam was down the Zuyder Zee, Edam held the strategical position of being its picket port. Since those good old days its 25,000 population has depreciated four-fifths in numbers. Were it not for its brand of cheese, flourishing before the gastronomic world a perpetual advertisement of the place, Edam would soon find itself mentioned in the same breath with Broek and Monnikendam. It has a fourteenth century Gothic Groote Kerk, tremendous in comparison with its population, and a Town Hall in which are preserved the portraits of four or five erstwhile citizens of Edam, the respective virtues of whom its present inhabitants still like to mention as if they bore some weight upon the town’s past prosperity.

One of these local celebrities was a man of the name of Osterlen, who, in the 1680’s, could boast about a merchant fleet of his own numbering ninety-two sail. Three of the others were Trijntje, Peter, and Jan. Trijntje (the diminutive in this case must have been merely a matter of irony) was said to have been nine feet in height and of proportionate width; Peter grew an ambiguous beard the dimensions of which required it to be tied into a knot in order to save it from being stepped on by its master; and Jan, an immigrant from Friesland who later procured papers of naturalization in Edam--a “ringer” we should have called him in small town baseball parlance--Jan’s net tonnage was four hundred and fifty-four pounds on the date when he launched himself into the forty-second year of his life.

At Edam you will scramble into a little sailboat to be propelled by the breeze down the canal for a mile or more to Volendam. Each side of the ditch--it isn’t much more, if judged by its width; neither is its odor any sweeter--is bordered by low-lying fields populated with the black and white bovines directly responsible for the principal industry of that section. They look docile enough at a distance, these cows of North Holland, and they probably are at close range, when it comes to showing the proper deference due an unmolesting human being, but they are notorious for their biased aversion to dogs. The dog seems to be their time-honored and ancient enemy, and the mere presence of one in the field can cause a deal of agitation. If its owner accompanies the dog he may be expected to commence a Dutch Marathon almost any minute, because, at sight of him, the cow will foreclose with the canine and open speedy negotiations with the owner. I have been told that it is unsafe even to walk along the canal bank with a dog, for only during last summer one staid old burgher of Volendam, in so doing, was hooked to death, and two ladies of Edam, while taking an evening walk, had to be hustled into a passing sailboat and pushed out from shore to escape a similar fate.

Every ten feet or so, it seems, someone will be fishing, for fishing, more than any other, appears to be the national sport of Holland. No self-respecting fish would live in some of the canals they fish in, but certain species must be able to survive their density else the proverbial Dutch patience would be soon exhausted.

The most odoriferous point along the canal from Edam to Volendam is in the immediate vicinity of a duck farm just near the journey’s end. These ducks are the amphibious flies in the amber of what is otherwise transparently picturesque. They are farmed throughout Holland, but only for their eggs, which, being too strong even for the Dutchman to relish, are sent to the more cosmopolitan cities or exported into the foreign pastry kitchens.

Volendam, by reason of the curious costuming of its inhabitants, its quaint, narrow main street, high above the doorsteps of the bordering brick houses, and its picturesque fishing fleet, is the haven of artists of all nationalities. One of the most interesting picture galleries in the Netherlands comprises the public rooms of the Hotel Spaander, hung with sketches, more or less frivolous, and finished works, more or less serious, done spontaneously by the hands of such illustrators and painters as Phil May, Will Owen, Edward Penfield, William Chase, and Burne-Jones. The back yard of the hotel, which, without the least excuse, it advertises as an “attractive garden,” is fringed with old buildings, each roof exchanged within the comparative recent development of the town as an art center for the skylight of the unmistakable studio.

Sunday, by all odds, is the most advantageous day of the week to visit Volendam. Then are the dresses of its women folk and the breeches of its men, copious as meal sacks, garnished with the jewelry and the silver buckles respectively which have been handed down as heirlooms from mother to daughter, from father to son, even unto the third and fourth generations. Then is the fishing fleet jammed together in the little harbor to spend its accustomed week end of lethargy, each masthead flying its long, narrow pennant--a sight which from a distance might be mistaken for a hibernating flock of wild fowl. You would have to use a rifle with an elbow in its barrel to be able to shoot through this patch of pine forest with its top cut off without puncturing one mast at least. On other days of the week Volendam’s citizens are preoccupied with whatever they have to attend to, but on Sunday they stand around and pose gracefully and easily for the commendation of the visiting public.

The garb of the male Volendamer is about as characteristic as any regalia in Holland. His round, flat-crowned cap permits the exposure of its owner’s bronzed and finely cut features. He wears a loosely tied scarf about his neck, and his shirt or jersey usually displays a large patch cut from another shirt or jersey regardless of any probable ambition to match the patterns. Whenever and wherever the garment wears out, then and there it is patched, and by their patches ye shall know them; that is, you can come within measurable proximity of telling the daily duties of every man by the position of his patches. One will have a livid green patch down the collar bone of a dark maroon jersey; another will display a different colored sleeve from the elbow down. The Volendamer’s trousers extend in a southerly direction to the tops of the ankles only, and are built with a voluminously exaggerated peg-top effect, so much so that each cavernous side pocket must hold at least a peck, and to be able to find with any degree of proficiency such an insignificant article as a penknife in its depths, the wearer would have to go into early training as a contortionist. Week days he wears _klompen_, or the ordinary poplarwood shoes, which may be used for as many different and distinct purposes as the owner’s ingenuity may contrive--such as amusing the little tots by sailing a _klomp_ across the canal as a boat, or tying one on the end of a rod and offering it to the canal boat master as a receptacle in which to drop the toll as he poles his barge through the locks. The _vrouw_ sees that her “man” removes his _klompen_ before he dares enter the house, and upon each doorstep you will invariably behold one or more pairs, including, perhaps, those of a visitor in the kitchen paying his respects in his stocking feet. On Sundays, however, the more fastidious Volendamer will break the monotony by changing the _klompen_ for the more genteel-looking low, leather, pump-like slippers.

The most distinguishable feature of the Volendam feminine attire from that found on the Island of Walcheren or at Scheveningen, for example, is the immaculate white cap, somewhat of the shape of a miniature miter, terminating at the sides in two stiffly starched points that curl out from the ears like the horns of a water buffalo. The hair is cropped close and, according to the prevailing rules of decorum, only a fringe of it is allowed to be visible. Never under any conditions should a man see an unmarried member of Volendam’s gentler sex with her head uncovered.

Over in Marken the proper thing to do to complete the delusion is to allow one of the many children who pester the passengers upon landing from the boat to lead you to his home, reimbursing him financially to the extent demanded--not a very vast sum, in any event. It will be a scrupulously clean little place of one, and not often more than two rooms. It will contain the usual amount of brass-work and a nondescript collection of Delft ware. The floor will be brick, the fireplace will have its ingle nooks, and its pot of whatever-it-is suspended over the fire from a crane, will be simmering gently. In the side walls will be built the sleeping accommodations, like bunks on a ship, draped with curtains at night and closed to view--and air--in the daytime by means of paneled wooden doors. This will be about all to see in Marken, and you will be happy enough to be led back to the boat to escape further mercenary moves on the part of the populace.

The shirt of the male Markener can show as many patches as that of the male Volendamer, but instead of the little round cap he sees fit to favor a sort of derby hat having a two-inch crown. His breeches are of the knickerbocker type, but still very much peg-topped, and his _klompen_ are sometimes varnished yellow and carved in more or less delicate tracery. Unlike those of Volendam, the women of Marken let the hair grow, plaiting it into two braids which hang down, one from each ear, in defiance to any custom that may obtain across on the mainland.

X

ALKMAAR AND THE HELDER

It is as imperative that the traveler through Holland should journey from Amsterdam to Alkmaar by canal as it is that he should not overlook the steam tram trip between The Hague and Leyden.

The twenty-four and a half miles between the commercial metropolis and the cheese capital of North Holland is made in a little less than three hours. Taking all things into consideration, it is one of the most enjoyable steamboat excursions in the kingdom. Bearing up through the North Sea Canal and the River Zaan, the packet makes its first stop at Zaandam; then on up the river it winds between the bristling windmills, turns from one canal into another, crosses a small lake, and finally negotiates the waterway that leads eventually to Alkmaar. The _polders_ on either hand are far below the level of the water you are steaming over, so that you see no more than the tops of the farmhouses. Although the wake of the passing boat rattles the reeds along the banks, the fishermen concealed here and there among them seem not the least perturbed, but continue to fish with all their might and main, allowing the steamer to play what havoc it will with the movements and inclinations of their prey.

Alkmaar, and not Edam, is the geographical and industrial center of the cheese trade of North Holland, and the cheese market is the geographical and industrial center of Alkmaar. To give some idea of the length of time they have been marketing cheeses in Alkmaar you will be told upon inquiry that the town weigh-house was constructed in 1582, and for no other purpose than to weigh the cheeses bought and sold at the weekly market. To give some idea of the town’s importance as a cheese center, the astonishing number of forty-odd million pounds of round, golden cheeses are bargained for at the side of the weigh-house in every twelve months.

In addition to the weigh-house the town boasts of but few historically remunerative objects of interest. There is the old Church of St. Lawrence, built in 1470, the surrounding walls and buttresses of which protect a part of the eminent remains of Floris V, Count of Holland and builder of the Hall of the Knights at The Hague, although why they were interred at such a distance to the north of the scenes of his activity is a matter of some conjecture; there are a few relics and mediocre paintings on show in the Municipal Museum; and there is the old water gate that seems to forbid any farther penetration into the town on the part of the packet from Amsterdam. In history Alkmaar played its solemn rôle by making a stubborn and ultimately successful resistance against the besieging Spaniards in 1573. Five to one were the odds against which the burghers fought and, as at Leyden, the water of the ocean was the all-powerful lever that rewarded the besieged and routed the besiegers.

As early as daybreak the Friday visitor--for Friday is cheese day in Alkmaar--will find plenty of activity in the vicinity of the town weigh-house. It is therefore advisable to reach the place the previous Thursday evening, because the unloading of the cheeses and the stacking of them upon the stone pavement of the market square during the early hours of the following morning are among the most interesting phases of the whole proceeding. And so, by daylight on Friday, gayly painted farm wagons from the surrounding country already fringe three sides of the market, and every one of them is disgorging, two at a time, its load of golden cheeses. On the canal that bounds the fourth side of the square lie berthed a double row of long, narrow boats, also loaded from keel plate to hatch cover with the product of the district. From every point of the compass cheeses are being tossed through the air from the wagons and boats, only to have their flight checked with a smack by the men who catch them and pile them upon the pavement in long, double-decked rows, ten cheeses in width. Later, canvas is thrown over the piles to protect the cheeses from the rays of the sun until it is time for the cheese makers and the wholesale commission merchants from the cities, soon to descend upon the scene, to commence their dickerings. All through the early morning this unloading continues, its accompanying smacks to be heard half a block away, until perhaps 250,000 cheeses have been piled up in neat rows with alleyways between them, across the market square from one edge to the other.

At half-past nine, half an hour before the market opens, the weighmen, all garbed in immaculate white, meet in executive session in the weigh-house and absorb a ceremonious talking-to by the superintendent of the market--probably upon the subject of honest weights and the penalties to be imposed upon the unfortunate man caught trifling with the rules and regulations of the game.

These weighmen constitute a distinct feature of every cheese market in Holland. Their dress may seem ludicrous and their duties a bit undignified, but they go about their calling with all the seriousness of statesmen. Until recently they were divided, one might say, into four colors: red, blue, green, and yellow, as distinguished by their hat bands. Latterly, a fifth color, orange, has been added. In the weigh-house there are five pairs of scales, each pair painted a different color corresponding to the colors of the weighmen. The “red” weighmen must weigh their barrowfuls of cheeses upon the “red” scales; the “blue” weighmen, upon the “blue” scales, and so on. An Alkmaar cheese weighman holds a life position, is elected by the community, and receives in commissions a certain percentage, determined by the value of the cheeses, of each hundred kilos weighed, or fraction thereof.

At ten o’clock promptly the heavy sheets of canvas are dragged from the piles. The market is thus officially opened, and for the ensuing two hours the visitor will be treated to some of the shrewdest of shrewd Dutch bargaining. The stolid, unemotional makers of cheeses stand doggedly by their respective piles, while the crafty wholesale merchants flit hither and yon testing. Not a word passes between them other than a surly “how d’ y’ do” in Dutch. The merchant selects a cheese at random, jams into it an instrument that any competent housewife might mistake for an apple corer, gives it a twist, pulls it out slowly, and tastes the end of the sample thus taken. What remains of the sample is drawn from the instrument, slipped back into the parent cheese, and the tester moves along to attack another pile.

At the end of an hour every merchant on the ground will have tested and tasted every pile of cheeses--in itself no small saporific achievement. Not only will he have used the taste test on the different piles, but he will have called upon his other four senses to confirm or countervail its decision. He will have examined cheeses by sight; he will have held them to his ear and shaken them, as we might an egg; he will have felt of the weight and solidity of them; and he will have taken long, knowing whiffs of their fragrance. At the end of an hour, then, he is qualified to approach this or that particular dealer and offer him so much per hundred kilos for his cheeses. Then it is that Greek meets Greek. In a moment’s time the dull-looking, uncommunicative, apparently unconcerned provincial maker of cheese seems to be transformed into a cunning, canny, clear-headed man of business. The two of them, merchant and maker, stand for a full minute with their right hands outstretched, like a picture of Captain John Smith sealing a treaty with the Indians. Suppose the maker finally agrees to the price offered: without uttering a syllable he grips the hand of the merchant, and the bargain is closed. If he does not agree, he slaps the merchant’s hand a whack that resounds across the square. By eleven-fifteen the walls of the surrounding houses reverberate with what a stranger around the corner might easily suppose to be the premature explosion of a number of toy balloons--for cheese makers are but human and would rather wait in the hope of being offered more for their stock. Competition is the essence of trade, even in Holland.

When a bargain is negotiated, they call a pair of weighmen who load the cheeses upon a barrow--a queer kind of barrow that resembles more a stretcher on sled runners--and carry them to the scales to be weighed. After being weighed and their sale recorded upon the books of the superintendent, the cheeses are loaded back into the wagons and boats to be transferred to the warehouse for shipment.

The cheese goes through no further preliminaries if intended for native consumption. If destined for export, however, it must needs undergo a peculiar, yet withal a simple process: it must be well scraped and painted over with a thin aniline dye which rapidly turns as it dries to a glorious vermilion. The scraping is done by machinery, but the dyeing is done by hand and with almost incredible swiftness by the men employed in some of the establishments in Alkmaar.

The question was asked if the dyeing assisted in the preservation of the cheese or helped to keep it immune from mould or corrodings. Not at all. The ultimate consumer across the seas would turn up his nose at an un-dyed cheese and snub it as a cheap imitation. The foreign public demands that the genuine North Holland cheese bear a distinctive hall-mark. That hall-mark is its coat of red dye. Since this province probably supplies a good three-fifths of the 55,000 tons of cheese exported in a single year the reader can imagine what a deal of red dye it takes to satisfy a foreign fancy.

A distance of thirty miles or more north of Alkmaar lies The Helder, figuratively the top of the kingdom. Geographically, it is only in the same latitude as the most northerly point of Newfoundland at the Straits of Belle Isle, and so there are plenty of towns over in Friesland and Groningen that lie still farther to the north, but these do not have the conditions to contend with that does The Helder. Surrounded on three sides by the waters of the Zuyder Zee and the North Sea, The Helder assumes much of the responsibility of protecting the whole province of North Holland from a general and disastrous inundation. More than any other part of the province, indeed of all Holland, it is exposed to the ravages of the most violent winds, which kick the sea into a maelstrom and pound it with relentless fury upon the coast line.

Here at The Helder may be found the finest fruits of that “big story” of Holland: the constant battle of mere man against an all but omnipotent element--water; the romantic, persistent, patient strife of the Hollander to insure as much as possible his own safety and that of the land which he has weaned from the sea from utter and inexorable annihilation. If for nothing else, it is for this “big story” that one should go to The Helder. If the traveler through Holland has not been already duly impressed with the silent, continuous fight of the Dutch for mere existence, he will return from this northernmost promontory of North Holland with augmented faith in the ingenuity and dogged perseverance of the men who have made a country out of what once was sea bottom.

The foregoing preamble is meant to prepare the traveler to appreciate The Helder. If it fails in its mission, it may be all for the best, because the unanticipated often strikes with the greatest degree of accuracy and forcefulness and brands the experience upon the mind, never to be obliterated.

Disembarking from the train, you will turn instinctively to the north through a wide avenue--a veritable tunnel through the trees. After crossing the drawbridge that spans the canal at the end of the avenue, you must turn abruptly to the left. The first cross street--little more than an alleyway between the houses--is barricaded at its farther extremity by a steep, grass-grown embankment that towers almost to the same altitude as the chimney pots of the house tops below. A flight of thirty-one steps ascends to the top of this peculiar embankment and you scramble up, expecting to behold on the other side a view of--you scarcely know what. You are surprised to discover that the view is a sea-scape, for, if you have failed to observe The Helder’s lofty lighthouse, it has not been suggested to you that the sea is anywhere in the neighborhood.

You will be standing on the top of one of the greatest and strongest dikes in Holland, its business side stretching away before you at an angle of forty degrees for two hundred feet into the Strait of Marsdiep. Extending a total distance of five miles in the arc of a circle, this, then, is the sloping buttress that North Holland relies upon for its very life. A severe storm will lash the water of the strait into spray, and fling it across into the windows of the bordering houses, but the highest of tides cannot come over the backbone of the dike, while at all times the water laps restlessly at its foundations. The top of the dike is mounted with a roadway twelve feet in width. Some feet above the water line at low tide the tops of great stone breakwaters, like the ribs of a dinosaur, stretch seaward at regular intervals. The whole of this remarkable artificial coast is constructed of Norwegian granite.

Upon the summits of a few sand dunes that raise themselves here and there behind the dike the Dutch have completed the construction of some rather crude military fortifications which Napoleon commenced in 1811. But improvements upon them are going on apace, for Holland is not exactly anxious to suffer an experience with regard to her string of islands in the north, in furthering German aggrandizement as did the Danes of Helgoland before the gun muzzles of the British in 1807.

The single point of North Holland, however, most exposed to sea encroachments is a few miles south of The Helder on the North Sea. Here there is a chain of three great dikes, one beyond the other, named significantly, beginning with the one farthest from the shore, “The Waker,” “The Dreamer,” and “The Sleeper.” Still farther to the south, on the same side of the province, are the great sand dunes, three miles in width in some places, under the protection of which the freight boats from Amsterdam creep to their destinations along the North Sea Canal.

Off the northern dunes the combined English and French fleets of war suffered defeat at the hands of the Dutch admirals, de Ruyter and Tromp, two hundred thirty-eight years ago to the day, as I write (the 21st of August), and in September, 1799, two armies of 10,000 and 13,000, English and Russian troops respectively, commanded by the Duke of York, landed here to try their luck at tempting the Dutch to revolt against the French. The Russian forces lost their way and were defeated by the French before they had advanced as far as Alkmaar, and the British, bearing in mind the comforting old adage about discretion being the best part of valor, retreated after having penetrated as far south as Castricum, near Zaandam.

In the town of The Helder itself--why they refer to it as “The” Helder I do not know, unless it be for the reason that the article makes of it a pseudonym for a Dutch John o’ Groats--in the town itself there is little of interest. One street I have in mind, however, which is of rather peculiar construction. The north side of it, from the middle of what ought to be the common roadway, is possibly three and a half feet higher than its south side, the upper part built upon an embankment faced with a brick wall.

The place is full of Dutch sailors and navy people, for about three quarters of a mile down the dike lies Nieuwediep, the Dutch combination of Hampton Roads, Annapolis, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Situated at the mouth of the North Holland Canal, Nieuwediep is the most important naval station in Holland, maintaining large wharves, docks, machine shops, and a naval academy, the students of which, two, four, and six abreast--Holland’s future Tromps and de Ruyters--can be seen strolling up and down the great dike. A fraction of the country’s one hundred vessels of war and of her 8,000 men that man them receive their orders at the station at Nieuwediep.

Across the Strait of Marsdiep is the Island of Texel, the most southerly unit of the long series of vertebræ that curve far to the northeast, as if made to fit exactly the coast lines of the provinces of Friesland and Groningen. A steamer plies to Texel from Nieuwediep and returns four times daily; but you may profitably omit the island from your itinerary unless you are particularly interested in natural history and you happen to come upon Texel during the bird nesting season. The northern extremity of the island, called Eyerland, or “The Land of Eggs,” is infested with sea fowl, the eggs of which are collected by the myriads and shipped to the large cities. Texel is seventy-three square miles in area and supports one or two very plain bathing places, but most of its six thousand inhabitants are chiefly engaged in the business of sheep raising on the long, crater-like pasture land hemmed in by the sand dunes.

XI

FROM HOORN TO STAVOREN

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.