410 HOLLAND. 



the canals are lined for miles together with elegant neat country- 

 houses, seated in the midst of gardens and pleasure grounds, inter- 

 mixed with figures, busts, statues, temples, &x. to the very water's 

 edge. 



Metals, minerals... .Holland produces neither metals nor mine- 

 rals, except a little iron ; nor any mineral waters, 



Climate, soil, agriculture... .The air of the United Provinces 

 is foggy and gross, until it is purified by the frost in winter, when 

 the east wind usually sets in for about four months, and their har- 

 bours are frozen up. The moisture of the air causes metals to rust, 

 and wood to mould, more than in any other country, which is the rea- 

 son of their perpetually rubbing and scouring, and of the brightness 

 and cleanliness in their houses, so much taken notice of. The soil is 

 unfavourable to vegetation ; but, by the industry of the inhabitants in 

 making canals, it is rendered fit for pasture, and in many places for 

 tillage. 



Vegetables, animals. ...The quantity of grain produced here is 

 not sufficient for home consumption ; but, by draining the bogs and 

 marshes, the Dutch have many excellent meadows, which fatten lean 

 German and Danish cattle to a vast size; and they make prodigious 

 quantities of the best butter and cheese in Europe. Their country 

 produces turf, madder, tobacco, some fruit and iron ; but all the pit- 

 coal and timber used there, and, indeed, most of the comforts and 

 even the necessaries of life, are imported. They have a good breed 

 of sheep, whose wool is highly valued : and their horses and horned 

 cattle are of a larger size than in any other nation in Europe. It is 

 said that there are some wild bears and wolves here. Storks build 

 and hatch on their chimnies ; but being birds of passage, they leave 

 the country about the middle of August, with their young, and return 

 the February following. Their river-fish are much the same as ours; 

 but their sea-fish are generally larger, owing perhaps to their fishing 

 in deep water. No herrings visit their coasts,; but they have many 

 excellent oyster-beds about the islands of the Texel, producing very- 

 large and weli-tasted oysters. Notwithstanding all the inconve- 

 niences, the industry of the Hollanders furnishes as great a plenty of 

 the necessaries and commodities of life, and upon as easy terms, ex- 

 cept to travellers and strangers, as can be met with in any part of 

 Europe, 



Curiosities. ...Holland, like the Netherlands, presents none of the 

 vast and grand scenery of nature. The numerous canals with which 

 the country is intersected, may be considered as interesting to the 

 curiosity of the traveller ; and the prodigious dykes (some of which 

 are said to be seventeen ells in thickness) mounds, and canals, con- 

 structed by the Dutch, to preserve their country from those dreadful 

 inundations by which it formerly suffered so much, are works equally 

 stupendous and singular. The Stadthouse of Amsterdam is perhaps 

 the best building of that kind in the world: it stands upon 13,659 

 large piles, driven into the ground; and the inside is equally conve- 

 nient and magnificent. Several museums, containing antiquities and 

 curiosities, artificial and natural, are to be found in Holland and the 

 other provinces, particularly in the university of Leyden. 



Population.. ..The Seven United Provinces are perhaps the best 

 peopled of any spot of the same extent in the world. They contain- 

 ed in 1785, according to a public account then given, 113 cities and 

 towns, 1400 villages^ and 2,758,632 inhabitants ; besides the twenty- 



