TAKES HIS DOCTOR'S DEGREE IN HOLLAND 287 



gelatinous peat. The view is bounded by a range of 

 dark purple hills Dutch hills, that is scantily clothed 

 with firs and occasional beech and birch saplings, but 

 no subsistence for man or beast. The land is not 

 prepared to receive them yet. There is nobody moving 

 about here, but further on we find a few old women 

 wearing their silver heirlooms helmetwise upon their 

 heads, and some ' mannikins ' (small boys) watching that 

 the birds do not make off with the occasional blades of 

 barley. The land gradually gets less sterile ; cattle, 

 trees, and grass appear at Hatten, near which are flooded 

 marshy meadows, and a bridge over a river, and Holland, 

 as we know it best, appears again at Zwolle. But it is 

 mostly a flat treeless country, with less capital laid 

 out, and fewer inhabitants, than in West Holland, which 

 is so much better situated for commerce. One looks 

 out for the tumuli, or giants' graves, that one has heard 

 of, but one only sees herons standing patient as monu- 

 ments. The cottages are thatched, the few that exist, 

 among the swamps and black peaty wastes, reminding 

 an Englishman that the Frisians are his nearest re- 

 lations. No wonder the Frisians and Saxons came to 

 England ; it is a vastly more tempting country to 

 settle in. This is a desert of bog and sand, dotted 

 with a few long-woolled sheep ; the horizon is a dark 

 indigo purple stripe, the middle distance a stripe of 

 dead brown, the foreground a stripe of mottled drab ; 

 it is as dismal a country as one can see, with clouds 

 lowering over it, few hands to labour, and no capital. 



