Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-02-07

populated as the waterways Of China.
Every barge we passed had its family upon
1t, an evidence of the thousands of Dutch
families which live and die upon boats.
Babies are born upon them, and many have
no other homes. We frequently saw chill
dren trotting up and down the roofs Of the
now and then little one tied with rope
to the mast. On many of the boats the
women were cooking; on some they were
hanging out the washing, and on one a
little Dutch girl held up her doll baby and
laughed as we went by.
Every village along the canal had its own
boats tied to the banks, and the larger
towns were cut up by canals so that boats
from the main canals could be taken into
them by means of locks.
We stopped for a time at Dordrecht, which
in the middle ages was one of the richest
Of all the Dutch cities. 1t had palaces at
that time, and its buildings now are me-
dieval and quaint to an extreme. Just be-
low the city there is lumber yard at
which barges of American lumber were I'M
loading. I noted the name Of the firm. 1t
was Dubbledam, an evidence that the lum-
Der men of Holland can compete in pro-
family with our men at home.
In many places along these canals there
were dredges at work, and here and there
We saw the officers of the Waterstaat su-
perintendng the building of new embank-
ments. The canals are almost everywhere
walled with stones, the size of your two
fists, and as looked at them the enormous
work that 1t must have taken to make 1000
miles of such canals came to me- There
are no stones in Holland. Every pebble has
to be brought in from other countries, and
every one Of those stones was laid by hand.
Each one took a part Of a mans life to put
1t in it's place, so that in reality the lives
of generations have been swallowed up by
these canal banks.
Windmills on the Wane.
You have all heard Of the windmills Of
Holland? They are to be seen everywhere.
Along some Of the canals there are hun
dreds of them. They spot the farms and
you see them on the edge of the towns,
where they grind flour, saw lumber and do
all sorts Of things. They give a great
charm to the landscape. They look so alive
that don't wonder that Don Quixote took
one for giant and wanted to fight him.
These mills are all old, and it must have
cost many millions of dollars to build them.
Their day. however, is past, and but few
new ones are building. The gas engine and
the steam engine have taken their places.
and We may yet have Holland without
windmills.
Holland has made it's ship canals pay
well. Amsterdam has the North Sea Canal
which is about fifteen miles long running
across the country from Amsterdam to the
ocean. 1t is thirty feet deep and has two
enormous locks which protect it from the
North Sea at high tide. took a ride along
it a week ago and inspected the breakwa-
tiers at its entrance. The work is we'll done
but the locks do not compare with those Of
the Sault Ste. Marie between Lake Superior
and Lake Huron. The canal cost about
SIC 00O, COO. of which one-fourth was paid
by the sale of the reclaimed land which
brought an average price of almost $500
an acre.
Rotterdam.
This town of Rotterdam is city of canals
and canalized rivers. The Mas has been
so dredged that 1t now permits the largest
Of ocean ships to come into Rotterdam, and
the connections with the Rhine and other
parts of Europe are such that this city has
become one of the chief ports on the con-
tinent. 1t is one Of our principal gateways