LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 69 



and poverty had dismasted him ; but that he was now safe in dock, 

 thanks to the generous people of Hull ; and that he would be com- 

 fortable there, in a good snug berth, with plenty of excellent food, 

 till death should break his crazy vessel into pieces. 



" Having settled the little demands against us at the Victoria Hotel, 

 we went on board the Seahorse, and steamed for Rotterdam. Beauti- 

 ful, indeed, is the former sedgy marsh of Holland, and rich the 

 people who have drained and fertilised it. There is a placidity and 

 frankness in the Hollanders which at once gain the good-will of the 

 traveller on his first appearance amongst them. The uniformity of 

 their country, and the even tenor of their tempers, appear as though 

 the one had been made for the other. You may walk the streets of 

 Rotterdam from light to dark without encountering anything in the 

 shape of mockery or of rudeness.* I could see nobody pressing 

 forward with a hurried pace up the street, as though the town were 

 on fire behind him ; nor a single soul whose haughty looks would 

 give me to understand that I must keep at a respectful distance 

 from him. No bird ever preened its plumage with more assiduity 

 than the housemaid in Holland removes every particle of dust and 

 dirt from the fagade of her neat and pretty dwelling. It seemed to 

 me that she was at work with her water-pail and broom from the 

 beginning of the week till late on Saturday night. 



" Had the sun shone with sufficient warmth and brightness, I 

 could have fancied myself in the cultivated parts of Demerara, a 

 country once the pride of Holland, ere we broke in upon it during 

 the revolutionary war with France, and changed the face of all that 

 she had done before us. Our raising immense taxes, and the profli- 

 gate expenditure of them, did neither suit the means nor the notions 

 of these frugal colonists ; whilst our overbearing demeanour as con 

 querors soon gave them to understand that it was time for them to 

 go elsewhere. In 1824, when I last visited the wilds of Guiana, 



* The manners of the Dutch have improved ; for Ray, the naturalist, who tra- 

 velled through the Low Countries in 1663, says, "As to what relates to the 

 common people of Holland, it must be confessed they are surly and ill-bred, 

 which is the reason that no strangers that know the country will deal with inn- 

 keepers, waggoners, boatmen, porters, and such like, without bargaining before- 

 hand." My own experience agrees with Waterton's. [ED.] 



