Pilgrimages to the Spas in Pursuit of Health and Recreation / With an inquiry into the comparative merits of different mineral waters: the maladies to which they are applicable, and those in which they are injurious

by James Johnson

AMSTERDAM.

How often does the monotonized traveller in Holland and Belgium sigh for the luxury of a zig-zag mule-track along the steep acclivity of some alpine height, as a change of scene from the eternal right-lined chaussée, terminating out of sight, beyond the verge of the horizon, or dipping apparently, like Pharaoh’s route, into a lake or the ocean! The Haerlem pavé is constantly menaced by the Zuyder-Zee on the right, and the German Ocean on the left; but it escapes a watery grave, and safely lands the weary tourist in Amsterdam. Ascending the tower of the Stadthouse, or palace, I cast my wondering eyes over the largest community of beavers that ever lived upon logs, or drove their far-fetched piles into the muddy bottom of lake or pool! Strange that the dry land of this our globe should not afford space enough for cities or towns, without invading the Adriatic and the Zuyder-Zee for the sites of Venice and Amsterdam! From this bird’s-eye view, the confusion and commixture of land and water is inextricable and incalculable. The city stands on nearly one hundred detached islets, connected by more than three times that number of drawbridges—the houses rising bolt upright out of the water—each street being a quay lined with trees—and each mansion a warehouse, as evinced by the crane and rope at the attic for hoisting in goods, furniture, fuel, and provisions. The space between the houses and the water, is much narrower than at Rotterdam, and I think the bustle and activity of commerce are far less conspicuous in the northern than in the southern entrepôt. The water, though capable of floating ships, is unfit for cooking or drinking—and, were it not for the springs of Seltzer, and the distilleries of Scheidam, I imagine that hydrophobia would universally prevail.

I suspect that the Amsterdammers were originally a colony from Palestine. Like the “chosen people,” they are much fonder of conveying merchandize from one hand to another, than of manufacturing any article of trade or commerce. The only fabrications that I could see, were those of ships to carry, and houses to contain goods. The building of houses has long been limited to the re-construction of those whose foundations had given way—and naval architecture has received many checks—the annihilation of the whale-fishery among others. But the red-herring still cheers the heart of the Hollander, and qualifies the brackish water of the Zuyder-Zee. While wandering through the streets in the evening, I found that gin-palaces were not confined to England. They are on a splendid scale here, and frequented by better classes of society than in the British metropolis. We saw burgesses—probably burgomasters—with their wives, and sometimes with their children, drinking, smoking, and listening to the dulcet sounds of Swiss or Bavarian hurdi-gurdies. This was not quite in keeping with the grave, moral, and religious character of the Dutchman.

It is not my inclination—to say the truth, it is not my forte—to describe the lions of Amsterdam—or of any of the other dams in this hybrid offspring of land and water. It was quite enough for me to see the shows—their pictorial delineation I leave to those of my tourist brethren who have studied under that inimitable painter, and hero of the hammer, Geo. Robins, Esq. They can readily transmute a varnished treckschuyt into a Cleopatra’s barge—a buggerlugg into a bust of bronze—a Flanders mare into a prancing Bucephalus—a brick trottoir into a tesselated pavement—or a Belgian flat into a garden of the Hesperides. The worst of this is, that, by the time they have ascended the Rhine, or entered Switzerland, their stock of the picturesque is expended, and they have only the sublime to draw upon for the remainder of the tour.

To see the sights of Amsterdam, the gilders and stivers must be in perpetual motion. Even at the doors of the churches, the padré’s demand your money for admittance into their cold, damp, and dreary tabernacles—a most unusual practice on the Continent.

In order to vary the journey, we returned by Utrecht to Rotterdam:—but although the route was alter, the scene was idem—and I will not detain the reader with any account of it.