SANITARY DRAINAGE OF WASHINGTON. 5 



nearly a million acres ; and which has always excited the interest 

 and admiration of the rest of the world, should have remained so 

 exclusively Dutch. The method has crossed the North Sea and 

 invaded the Lincolnshire fens, and it has travelled a little way 

 along the German and Danish coasts ; but, with rare exceptions, 

 other countries have adopted it only in an extremely tentative and 

 ineffectual way. The great success of these works in Holland 

 seems to have been ascribed to some mysterious peculiarity of the 

 nature of the Dutch people. But water has the same weight there 

 that it has here, and windmills and steam-engines have the same 

 power here that they have there. Mechanical forces undergo no 

 change by exportation, and there is no other reason than confirmed 

 habit which leads us so generally to adopt the costly wheelbarrow 

 and cart, where the Dutchman would use the cheaper pump. 



There is no doubt that the Potomac flats might be rendered 

 healthful and valuable by being filled, in the manner and to the 

 depth that has been suggested, with fresh upland earth ; but there 

 is no special advantage in such an elevation of this territory which 

 may not be equally Avell secured by the suflScient lowering of the 

 ground water of that area, and in one respect there is a disad- 

 vantage. 



Three hundred years ago all of Holland west of Amsterdam 

 and north of Rotterdam was a series of lakes and swamps, divided 

 by narrow stretches of half-drained land, and protected against the 

 North Sea by the sand dunes along the coast. To-day, in that 

 whole area there is only sufficient water left for interior navigation. 

 Nearly three hundred years ago the Beemster Lake of 16,000 acres 

 was drained to a depth of nearly 20 feet, and it has ever since 

 remained one of the most fertile districts of the earth. Thirty 

 years ago Haarlem Lake, covering 44,000 acres, was brought 

 to the same condition ; and it is in contemplation to add to the dry 

 land of the kingdom 480,000 acres now covered by the Zuider 

 Zee. Many of the reclaimed districts lie along the banks of the 

 Rhine, which offers dangei-s and difficulties with which those of 



