The Taney County republican., 1907-09-12
N RURAL HOLLAND
A DAYS TRAVEL IN THE LAND
OF DYKES.
From Amsterdam Through the Won
derful Country Wrested from the
Sea by Sheer Courage and
Rssourcefulness.

Here is a pretty description OF a
days travel through Holland: AT
Amsterdam left the train and board
cd boat bound for the Helder, the
northernmost point of North Holland,
where the low-lying islands curve
round to the horizon, looking as If
they had been appointed ocean out
posts to Friesland. The voyage might
take day, but what of that? There
is only one way to travel in Holland
by water. The boat glides through
the brimming canal, passes the clean
towns and the many windmills. Life
persists; passengers and cargoes come
and go, but you are no longer at war
with the world or in trouble with it..
You are a spectator, idling through a
summer day, wrapped in aloofness,
content merely to be moving through
the moist and luminous air. When the
Cnvirons of Amsterdam are left be-
hind and the waterside houses give
place TO the reeds that bend as the
haCkwGsh ovCrtakes them and the fac
tories fade into vast, bright meadows,
the spirit Of this land, wrested from
the sea, o6sesses the traveller. | for
cot to count the windmills, was indif-
forent to the locality of the hut where
Peter the Great studied shipbuilding
and was content with pretending to
choose a habitation from among the
dwellings, whose gardens are washed
by the waters of this great north
canal.
We passed through Alkmaar. On
enc side Dutch farmhOuses, compact,
four-square stretching in an endless
line along the waterway; on the other
side the meadows and beyond them,
| far away, the sweeping line Of the
dunes. They rise above the North sea
and on their sandy sides and heights
men are forever on the watch against
| the entertainments of the ocean; they
! plant the shrub called helm, that
! binds the sand together, making a bull
wark against the rage of the waves.
/ God gave us the sea, but we made the
! shore says the DutChman. These
/ ilowcr-iruitful and pastoral meadows
{ that OutstrctChed as We glidcd north.
/ ward were once submerged in water.
| The fight against the sea never ceases.
| IS We moved nOrthward the three
great dykes loomcd ont. ] ga2cd out
( at these high bulwarks, patrUllcd and
watched by day and by night, and
unused on the legend that at Amstcr-
! dam there is one master key turn Of
which, in times Of peril from foreign
invasion, will drown the land again.
And as | mused there swept past a
/ barge. The great sail was hoisted.
! The family-a mite of the 10000 canal
/ population who live out their lives on
| these floating houses-were gathered
| round the tiller, where mynhoer
smoked and steered. 4 barge--the
! symbol of this sea.conqucring people.
| Below the Heder landed. BEYOND is
| the fort, with the fringe of islands out
! posting Friesand, the fishing feet and
/ the sunboats, and the channel between
the mainland and TeXel opening to the
world. As / crossed the bridge | saw
the sight Of sights There was no fuss,
no shouting, no spilling of wine at
that launch The barge moved from
her cradle. shot downward, took the
water in a rush, pretended to capsize
and all at once acquiesced. She had
| found her master"