Evening star., 1923-01-28
MANI " " ~ the coUSTRY VT TfRorcH m W MH 1T % " ~ ' ~

By and by we entered the Holiau-
dische dep and then the canals and
mouth of the Mas and finally came
to anchor in the midst Of the great
canal city Of Rotterdam.
The farms lying below the level Of
the sea and canals make up a large
part Of the country. In many places
the fish in the canals and the rivers
swim about above the chimneys. The
whole country is fiat, but the south
eastern portion slopes upward to an
altitude which in places is twice as
high as the Washington Monument.
but even this section is cut up by the
great rivers on their way down to the
North sea. The remainder is so gently
sloping that even from the airplaae
one can see no elevations except tho
poiders. or join the sand dunes. or
carry the highways and railroads
across country. The whole is a net
work of siiVeTy waterways which
shine like diamonds under the sun
and which inclosc great patches OF
emeralds-the fields and the farms
have used the word polder. This
is term employed by the Dutch for
land redeemed from the water. There
are two classes of polders, sea pold-
ers and pond polders. The sea polders
comprise the lands which have been
reclaimed from the sea by the en-
bankments that keep out the ocean
! One third OF all Holland is of this
character. If you could cut down
| the sand dunes and break up the
| dykes. something like five thousand
square miles. a tract of land one
eighth the size of Ohio, would disap-
pear under the billows.
= x :: =
ITO see these lands we must leave
l. our airplaine and to keep our
feet dry we may even don wooden
clogs which in some places are still
the footgear of the peasant. We
shall find most of the polders, how
kept so by continual pumping, some
by hundreds OF windmills and some
by the most modern centrifugal
steam pumps The pumping goes or
day and night, all the year through.
In making sea pfder, after the
dykes have been built the sea water
must be pumped out into basins and
canals and carried away. Fresh
water will keep on seeping in and
this must be taken out right along
while the land is being built up. It
Is the same with pond polders, which
are the reclaimed lands of the
| swamps and the lakes made by
taking off the fresh water from the
! small streams and rivers. In each
case it means the building of a wall
| or solid embankment around the
space to be reclaimed and pumping
| out the water.
But the building up of a polder,
| it's division into farms SO that eacl!
will be at the right level to carry
the water into the basin or canal,
from which II goes by two or tf1ce
! pumpings into higher canals and
| finally gets off to the sea, the trans
formation of the mud into arabic
| soil. and the building up of live agri-
cultural and municipal communities
into a kingdom like this, forms a
story that would take volumes to tell
I can only say that the Dutch under
stand this science better perhaps
| than any other peoule, and that their
| great department known as the
Waterstaat merits the most careful
study of the river and harbor COM
mittees of Congress and of our other
officials who are planning the drain
age Of our enormous swamp-lands
and the improvement of the Mssis
| shippi and other rivers.
| CARPENTERS WORLD TRAVELS" Copy
| righted 1923 by Frank G. Carpenter.)