214 HOUSES OF AMSTERDAM. AMSTERDAM. When you enter the streets of Amsterdam and view the tall brick houses on either hand, some of them leaning over as if tottering to their fall, you feel disposed almost instinctively to hurry past them. The walls were originally perpendicular, but from the muddy, unstable nature of the soil on which they stand, they have become settled, leaning over, and cracked. It not unfrequently becomes necessary to rebuild them more securely upon piles, which are indispensably necessary to give stability to every well built house. About one hundred long piles are driven deep into the mud for a common dwelling-house. No cellars, of course, can be made where the springs of water remain within one or two feet of the surface of the ground. It has been stated, in relation to the houses of Amsterdam, that the foundations have cost as much as the walls of the buildings erected on them. Every third or fourth street that you pass has a canal in the middle of it; or rather on each side of the canal is a passage way for carriages, the borders being shaded by fine rows of trees. The stranger, during his ramble over the city, may sometimes stop to gaze at very pretty views produced by a combination of foliage overhanging with pendant branches the bridges and the water. The banks or sides of the canals are sustained by brick walls, instead of stone-the common material employed elsewhere for this purpose. A rock or stone in Holland is rarely to be seen, and bricks are substituted for them. This perishable material, exposed to the action of the water, and to intense frosts, gradually crumbles away. SLEDGES FOR PASSENGERS. From the quagmire nature of the trembling and yielding soil, the passage of heavily laden carts or wagons over MODES OF CONVEYANCE. 215 the pavements imparts a perceptible tremor or vibration to the walls of the adjacent buildings, and formerly, it is stated, heavy loads of merchandise were always transported through the streets upon sleds with wooden runners, provided with a keg of water trickling in front of them to diminish the friction; which the driver further contrives to lessen by throwing on the pavement before them a greased mop, which he carries with him as regularly as other drivers do their whips. The wooden runners sliding over this mop, become lubricated, and slip along more freely. The projecting tops of the stones of the pavement are thus from long use rendered quite smooth and slippery by the polish they have acquired, and by the tallow that overspreads them. This mode of conveyance is even applied to some of the hackney coaches, as a cheap mode of riding from one part of the city to another. The carriages are mounted upon these wooden runners, as they sometimes are in the United States for the purpose of being used for sleigh-rides. I tried one of them to gratify my curiosity; but soon abandoned my seat to regain my feet and outstrip the tardy movement of this dull travelling vehicle. A person must make less account of his time than his money who would choose this mode of transportation. The driver never moves at a faster pace than a slow walk. He saunters along on foot by the side of his horse, holding his reins in one hand, and his greased mop p in the other, and sends up whiffs of tobacco smoke that curl above his head and disappear in the air. He moves with such a measured pace, that in foggy weather the circling eddies of the tobacco smoke appear to lag lazily after him. You may see a lady and gentleman seated in one of these vehicles, fortified with a plentiful store of patience, and conversing at their leisure, as if performing a journey, although merely passing from one street of the city to another. Modern ideas of celerity of movement have out 216 STAADT HOUSE. stripped those of the patriarch Dutch Burghers, and coaches and carts are now rattling together side by side with these softly slipping sleds. We sallied out from the Hotel, called by the soft name of Wappen Van Amsterdam, to deliver some letters, and to take a stroll over the city. Under the direction of a valet de place, we made our way to the picture galleries of the Museum. Most of the pictures here are of the old Dutch school, and the canvass is covered with Dutchmen, Dutch ships, and Dutch houses. A stranger therefore feels no other interest in contemplating them, than what is derived from the coloring of the artist, or oftener from the magic of some celebrated name affixed to them. STAADT-HOUSE. The palace or Staadt-House is always shown to strangers as one of the principal curiosities of the city. The building is of great dimensions, but may be regarded as a curiosity rather from the difficulties and expenses which attended the construction of it, than for any peculiar style of beauty or magnificence. Before the foundations were laid, above 13,000 long piles, as large as the masts of a ship, were driven into the mud; and some of the timbers of the roof, which were pointed out to us, are composed of teak wood, transported from the remote Indies. It has been used for divers purposes since its erection. The Bank of Amsterdam, in the days of its prosperity, when all the commercial exchanges of the world were managed through its agency, once deposited here the greatest heaps of the precious metals that ever were accumulated in one edifice, exceeding, it is stated, 40,000,000 of dollars. It was fitted up for the residence of Louis Bonaparte, whilst he was king of Holland, and continues to be used as a royal palace by the king of the Netherlands, when INUNDATION OF A PART OF HOLLAND. 217 ever he visits Amsterdam. All the furniture is exhibited, even to the very cradle which remains stationed by the side of one of the beds. From the elevated cupola of the Staadt-House, you have a commanding view of a vast expanse of flat country, stretching away to the verge of the horizon, without a bill or undulation of the earth's surface to interrupt the continued level. Long lines of straight roads, and of equally straight canals, with their ruffled waters brightened and glittering like silver in the sunbeams, appear diverging from the city of Amsterdam in various directions, whilst the Zuyder Sea presents to view a continuation of nearly the same level. OVERFLOW OF VILLAGES IN HOLLAND. At a distance, I saw long black lines of the tops of dikes projecting just above the surface of the sea; and trees, houses, and even villages appeared as it were rising above the waves of a wide-spread ocean. At the view of so strange a spectacle, I involuntarily rubbed my eyes, as if laboring under the impression that they were deceived by some optical delusion. The scene of wide desolation before me originated from the overflowing of the dikes of North Holland, during a violent storm. The waters of the Zuyder Sea were heaped up by the force of a powerful tempest against the embankments, which the waves finally surmounted, when a great district of country, estimated at ninety thousand acres of land, covered with cattle, and peopled by numerous villages, was so suddenly submerged, that many of the inhabitants as well as the greater part of the cattle were drowned. It was stated to us by a person who was a spectator of the inundation, that the cattle were seen swimming in various directions around the house tops, upon which the inhabi 20 VOL. II. 218 MARSHY SITUATION OF AMSTERDAM tants had taken refuge from the overwhelming waters, looking up to them as if piteously supplicating human aid in their extreme distress. During all the period of the storm, the greatest apprehensions were entertained even for the safety of Amsterdam, as an eminent merchant of this city observed to me; for the tide had risen to a greater height than was ever before known, and within a very few inches of the top of the dikes which protected the city from the threatened inundation. Before the regular period of high water, and whilst all were expecting a further rise, the tide was observed suddenly to subside about a foot. It was immediately conjectured by the inhabitants. of Amsterdam, that they owed their escape from their imminent peril, to the destruction of a large portion of their country. The accumulated waters, after the dikes failed, were diffused over nearly 100,000 acres improved as fields, and occupied by happy farmers, and even by populous villages. From the top of the Staadt-House, in Amsterdam, the stranger may look abroad over the level range of adjacent country, and muse for hours in contemplating the wonderful effects of the persevering labors of man in reclaiming morasses from the waters of the sea, and converting them into fruitful fields, the abodes of an industrious people. The site of the city of Amsterdam is elevated a little above the level of the adjacent country, and a portion of the ground is actually above the reach of ordinary tides. These spots of ground, it appears from the history of the early settlement of the country, were selected by fishermen, who built their huts upon them. As the population gradually increased, the limits of the city were enlarged by constructing streets and houses upon the lower adjacent marshes, which were protected from being overflowed by the tides, by means of embankments. Windmills were erected to pump out the water which might filter through |