ON GETTING THERE 21 



gives one the feeling of having gone back some 

 decades when one is among them. 



But den Heer Karel was goodness itself, and, 

 without a word of protest, made the expedition. 

 We steamed down the canal — a narrow canal 

 lying in the old part of the town, where old purple- 

 red houses, with green shutters, and tales haunting 

 their every doorway and steep gable -end, came 

 down to the water's edge ; where broad brown 

 craft lay crowded along the water side, and red- 

 capped men lowered barrels from upper stories, and 

 wooden -shod women, with their skirts girt high, 

 clattered down the step, which alone stood between 

 their back doors and the waterway, to fill empty 

 pails, or empty full ones. A life and a folk 

 strangely suggestive, at least to the foreigner, of 

 those of Haarlem city in the days of the Spanish 

 occupation. 



The boat did not go fast that June day ; indeed, 

 once afloat in her, it was possible to realise at 

 what a really superior speed Amsterdam had been 

 approached on the great canal. It was also now 

 possible to think of that canal as "great." It was 

 very great in comparison to this one. But even 

 at this rate of progress Haarlem was left behind 

 before very long, and on either side was green 



