ROTTERDAM. 
999 
13. Rottboellia corymbosa. — Spikes aggregate, lateral, 
filiform, florets bifarious, spreading, leaves ciliate at the base. 
—Native of Malabar, in ditches. 
14. Rottboellia muricata.—Spikes several, round, on long 
peduncles, calyxes ciliate-aculiate, the neutres bifid.—Native 
of the East Indies. 
15. Rottboellia sanguinea.—Spikes of the panicle awned, 
alternate, simple, peduncled, the lateral bracte of the flowers 
ciliate.—Native of China. 
16. Rottboellia setacea.—Spike solitary, awl-shaped, one- 
ranked, a little curved inwards, rachis excavated but not 
jointed.—Native of the East Indies, on old walls. 
17. Rottboellia monandra.—Culm erect, flowers distich, 
in spikes.—It is annual grass, very common about Madrid, 
and flowers in May. At the top of the stem there is always 
a solitary flower, which, beyond the calycine glume bears 
another almost opposite to that and much shorter. 
ROTTE, a small river of the Netherlands, in South Hol¬ 
land, which falls into the Maese, at Rotterdam. 
ROTTEL, a small river of Austria, in the quarter of the 
Upper Muhl, which falls into the Danube, near the castle of 
Ottersheim. 
ROTTEN, adj. Putrid; carious; putrescent. 
O bliss-breeding sun, draw from the earth 
Rotten humidity; below thy sister’s orb 
Infect the air. Shakspeare. 
Not firm ; not trusty. 
Hence, rotten thing, or I shall shake thy bones 
Out of thy garments. Shakspeare. 
Not sound; not hard.—They were left moiled with dirt 
and mire, by reason of the deepness of the rotten way.— 
Knol/es. —Fetid; stinking. 
You common cry of curs, whose breath I hate, 
As reek o’ the rotten fens. Shakspeare. 
ROTTENBACH, a large village of Germany, in Bavaria, 
to the south-west of Augsburg, near Goggingen, with 1200 
inhabitants. 
ROTTENBACH, another village of Bavaria; 9 miles 
south-south-west of Mindelheim, with 900 inhabitants. 
ROTTENBURG, a small town of the west of Germany, 
in Wirtemberg, containing 4700 inhabitants. This place is 
separated by the Neckar from Ehingen, and the two form 
properly but one town. 
ROTTENDEN, a parish of England, in Essex ; 7 miles 
from Bellericay, and 30 from London. Population 501. 
ROTTENMANN, a small town of the Austrian states, in 
Styria ; 20 miles north-west of Judenburg. 
ROTTENNESS, s. State of being rotten ; cariousness; 
putrefaction. 
Diseas’d ventures. 
That play with all infirmities for gold, 
Which rottenness lends nature. Shakspeare. 
ROTTEN STONE. See Tripol*. 
ROTTERDAM, a large commercial cjty in South Hol¬ 
land, situated on the north bank of the Maese, which here 
resembles an arm of the sea, although nearly 20 miles from 
its mouth. The form of Rotterdam is triangular, its longest 
side (above a mjle and a half in extent), stretching along 
the bank of the Maese. The town, though not fortified, is 
surroupded by a moat, and entered by six gates towards the 
land, and fpur towards the water. It is traversed from north 
to west by the Rotte, a liver, or rather (like most Dutch 
rivers), a broad canal, which here joins the Maese. Rotter¬ 
dam is intersected, even more than other towns in Holland, 
by canals, which divide the half of the town near the river 
into several insulated spots connected by draw-bridges. 
Thus the long and stately row of houses facing the Maese, 
and called, from its rows of trees, the Boomtjes, lias behind 
it abroad and deep canal, parallel to the river. This first 
section of the city is succeeded first by a triangular, and next 
by an oblong division, each containing several streets and 
quays. The largest vessels unload in two great inlets from 
the Maese, one stretching to the west, and the other to the 
north, untd they meet each other. The water of the Maese 
enters by the former, and flows out by the latter. In the 
south-east of the town are also two canals, with a basin and 
dock, for the repair of shipping. It is only in the north or 
inland half of the town, that the streets succeed each other 
without much recurrence of water communication. 
The canals of Rotterdam are almost all bordered with 
trees. The row called the Boomtjes is the finest in the city, 
as well in regard to buildings, as for its pleasant prospect 
across the Maese. Next to the Boomtjes comes the Haring- 
vliet. The other streets are in general long, but narrow. 
Several of them are so similar, that a stranger has much 
difficulty in recognising the distinction. The houses of 
Rotterdam are rather convenient than elegant, the peculiar 
style of Dutch architecture being here more than usually 
prevalent. Their height is of tour, five, or sLx stories; the 
bricks used are in general very small, and in some quarters 
the walls project as they ascend, so as to place the higher 
part of the building several feet out of the perpendicular. The 
windows are in general far larger than is usual in France or 
England. In many houses the ground floor is not inhabited, 
but serves, with its gate and arched passage, merely as an 
entrance to the warehouses behind. In regard to their in¬ 
terior, the houses here, as in any other part of Holland, 
though not so aukwardly distributed as in the provincial 
towns of France, are, both in lightness and convenience, 
inferior to the houses of Britain. 
Of the public buildings of Rotterdam, the principal are 
the exchange, finished in 1736. The great church of St. 
Lawrence, from the top of which may be seen the Hague to 
the north-west, Leyden to the north, and Dort to the south¬ 
east. After these come several other churches, the town- 
house, an old edifice, the admiralty, the academy, the thea¬ 
tre, the extensive buildings of the East India Company, a 
number of large warehouses, and a few manufactories. Here 
are several commodious market-places. Rotterdam contains 
both an English Episcopal, and a Scotch Presbyterian 
church. Here are also several monuments, viz. the tombs 
of Admirals De Witt and Van Braekel, with a bronze stone 
statue of Erasmus, who was born here in 1467. Of scientific 
collections, Rotterdam contains a cabinet of antiquities, a 
cabinet of natural history, and a public library. It has also 
an academy of sciences instituted in 1771. 
As a commercial city, Rotterdam has various advantages. 
Its broad and deep canals bring vessels of large burden close 
to the doors of the merchants’ warehouses. It has in several 
respects greater accommodation than Amsterdam, the Maese 
being open, and the passage free from ice, earlier than in the 
Zuyder Zee, and a single tide sufficing to carry vessels to the 
German ocean ; whereas the navigation from Amsterdam to 
the Texel is tedious and intricate. Rotterdam is of consi¬ 
derable antiquity; it became a privileged town, and was 
surrounded with walls, so early as the 13th century, owing, 
like other towns in Holland and Flanders, its increase to the - 
facility of communicating by water not only with the sea, 
but with the interior, in almost every direction. The time 
of its greatest prosperity was the 17th and 18th centuries;' 
but after 1795, the invasion of the French, and the war with 
England, suspended to a distressing degree, the commerce of 
Holland. It had begun to recover in 1802, when it was 
again rapidly depressed by the renewal of war. 
Years. 
Vessels. 
Years. 
Vessels. 
1802 ... 
.... 1786 
1806..... 
.....381 
1803 .... 
1807. 
.294 
1804 .... 
.... 693 
1808.... 
. 65 
1805 ... 
.... 679 
The years 1809, 1810, and still more 1811, 1812, and 
1813, were marked by an almost total suspension of Dutch 
trade ; but the overthrow of Buonaparte proved the harbinger 
of reviving prosperity to Rotterdam. 
Years. Vessels. 
1814.. 1284 
1815.; 1503 
1817. .1731 
To 
