IV 
NEW AMSTERDAM HOUSEWIVES’ 
GARDENS 
I T was from a snug little land that they came, these 
solid Dutchmen who followed Hudson and his 
Half Moon some twenty years after the first voyage; 
a land whose every square foot was precious, redeemed 
from the waters as so much of it was by patient and 
untiring effort—and retained by ceaseless vigilance. 
So the habit of thrift in the use of land was strong 
upon them; indeed I doubt they could be lavish with 
it if they tried. 
And then, too, they were dwellers in town. Feu¬ 
dalism had never had the hold upon Holland that it 
had upon the rest of Europe; partly, no doubt, be¬ 
cause the country’s natural physical conditions were 
distinctly against the development of feudal holdings, 
and partly because the temper of the race would have 
none of it. In Friesland, the “cradle of the Anglo- 
Saxons,” it was never known; and elsewhere through¬ 
out the Netherlands the independent town life had 
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