No. 4.] HOLLAND AND ITS PEOPLE. 79 



the surface of the country has been transformed by these 

 three processes is really surprising. A map showing the dis- 

 tribution of land and water as it was in one province, North 

 Holland, in 1575, when compared with another map of that 

 province as it was in 1875, shows that a great transformation 

 of the surface was produced by the turning out of the water 

 and the reclaiming of land in that part of Holland during the 

 three hundred j^ears. Since 1875 another large body of 

 water has disappeared, with the exception of the portion 

 used as a ship canal from Amsterdam to the sea. In the 

 prosecution of these enterprises the people have labored 

 under peculiar difficulties. In many places the land is so 

 soft that any weighty construction placed upon it, without 

 securing a foundation of long and closely driven piles, would 

 soon disappear or become worthless, in consequence of the 

 sinking. It has often been quite as expensive to secure the 

 foundations as it has been to complete the rest of the struct- 

 ures. On the coast of Haarlam there is a dyke of granite 

 which is five miles long and forty feet high, which extends 

 two hundred feet into the waves, and there is not a stone 

 quarry in all Holland. The stone of which this dyke was 

 constructed was all brought over the sea from Norway. 



In approaching Holland, from England, for example, the 

 boat sails up some winding channel with the land on each 

 side often lower than the water, and sometimes even lower 

 than the keel of the ship. It is reported that in the province 

 of Zeeland alone there are ninety thousand acres which are 

 seventeen feet below sea level. Sailing onward towards some 

 port which may be first indicated by spires of churches, we 

 observe a marked increase in the number of boats until 

 we enter the city by a harbor crowded with vessels of various 

 descriptions. A map of the city of Amsterdam shows us 

 that the location and the system of the larger canals is of 

 fundamental importance in the general plan of the city. 

 These canals are so arranged that domestic or foreign boats 

 may not only sail into the city, but even through it, along 

 the lines of the semi-circular canals which constitute the 

 most important business thoroughfares of the place. Of 

 course, such an alternation of wide canals and narrow roads 

 is possible only in a country where the land is so low and 



