At noon the next day, we took the train for Amsterdam—another two hours' ride. The land began to undulate as we went towards the sea, with the shifting hillocks of sand raised by wind and wave. We passed Leyden, famous for its resistance to the Spaniards, as well as for having been the birthplace of Rembrandt and a score of lesser lights, and Haarlem, known for its great organ, and still the sand-hills rose one above the other, until they shut out everything beyond. It was only when we made a sharp turn, and struck out in a straight line for the city, that the Zuyder Zee opened before us, the curving line of land along its edge alive with windmills. We counted a hundred and twenty in sight at one time, and still did not exhaust them; so many skipped and whirled about, and refused to be counted. It hardly seems possible that the city of Amsterdam is built upon piles driven into the sand and mud. Certainly, when you have been jolted and shaken until your teeth chatter, for a long mile, in one of the hotel omnibuses from the station through the narrow streets and over the rough pavements, you will think there must be a tolerably firm foundation. Such a peaceful, sleepy, free-from-danger air, these slimy canals give to the cities! You forget that just beyond the dikes the mighty, restless sea lurks, and watches day and night for a chance to rush in and claim its own. The canals run in a succession of curves, one within the other, all through the city. Upon the quays are the dwellings and warehouses. In the narrow streets, crossing them by means of endless bridges, are the shops and dwellings of the lower classes. Looking down a street, no two houses present an unbroken line. They have all settled in their places until they nod, and leer, and wink at each other, in a decidedly sociable, intoxicated manner. The whole city, to a stranger, is a curious sight—the arched bridges over the interminable canals; the clumsy boats (for the canals are too shallow to admit anything but coasters and river boats); the antic and antiquated houses with high gables, rising in steps, to the street; the women of the lower classes, with yokes over their shoulders, and long-eared white caps on their heads, surmounted by naked straw bonnets of obsolete fashion and coal-scuttle shape, and out and from which, on either side, protruded all the wonderful tinkling ornaments of which the prophet speaks; the long quays and streets utterly bare of trees; the iron rods thrust out from the houses half way up their height, upon which all manner of garments, freshly washed, hang over the street to dry. Down in an open Place stands the dark, square palace, grand and grim, where Hortense played queen a little time while Louis Bonaparte was king of Holland. Near the palace is a national monument, for the Dutch, too, remember their brave. There are old and new churches also to be seen, but churches bare of everything which clothes cathedrals with beauty, having been stripped in the time of the reformation. I suppose one should rejoice; but we did miss the high altar, the old carved saints, and the pictures in the chapels.
Some of the finest paintings of the Dutch school are in the national museum here; genre pictures, many, if not most of them, but pleasant to look at, if not of the highest art; and we visited another collection of the same, left by a M. Van der Hoop. There are several other private collections thrown open to the public. But after all, the most charming picture was the Jews' quarter of the city. I know it was horribly filthy, and so crowded that we could hardly make our way; I know it was filled with squalor and rags, and great dark eyes, and breathed an odor by no means of sanctity. The dusky, luminous-eyed people seemed to move, and breathe, and hold a constant bazaar in the lane-like streets filled with everything known and unknown in merchandise, or leaning out from the windows of the tottering houses, their arms crossed over the sill, to dream away a lifetime. Still there was a fascination about it all, a suggestion of vagabondism, of Ishmaelitish wanderings, of having "here no continuing city," that touched the heart of a certain Methodist minister's daughter in our party.
Sometimes the houses rise directly from the water, as did our hotel, the entrance being gained from another street in front. Our room was like a town hall, with mediæval bed furniture and sofa, high chest of drawers, and great round table that might have come in with the Dutch when they took Holland. The deep windows looked down upon a canal. Across from them, anchored to the quay as if for a lifetime, was one of the river boats. Early in the morning the wife of the skipper—a square woman, brown-faced, with faded, braided hair—ran out bareheaded into the town, coming back with her arms mysteriously full. Down into the cabin she disappeared, from whence directly came a sound of sputtering and frying, with a most savory odor. Up she would come again—frying pan in hand to corroborate her statement—to call her husband to breakfast. He was never ready to respond, never, though he was doing nothing to support his energetic family at the time, but coiling and uncoiling old ropes, or rubbing at invisible spots with a handful of rope-yarn. I know he only delayed to add to his own dignity and the importance of his final advent. Breakfast over, there followed such a commotion in the little world as I cannot describe—a shaking out of garments, a scraping out of plates, and throwing into the canal the refuse of the feast, a flying up with pots and pans for no object whatever but to clatter down again with the same, and all in the face and eyes of the town, with nevertheless the most absorbed and unconscious air imaginable. When it was over, somewhat what red in the face, but serene, the wife would appear upon the deck, to sit in the shadow of a sail and mend her husband's stockings, or put on a needed patch. We left the boat still fast to the quay; but I know that some day, when it was filled with scented oils, and rouge, and borax, and all the other things exported from the manufactories here, our skipper and his wife went sailing out of the canals and along the edge of the sea or up the Rhine, the stockings all mended, and the good woman not above giving a strong pull at the ropes.
To drive about the streets of Amsterdam is slow torture, so rough are the pavings, so springless the carriages; but to roll along the smooth, wide roads in the suburbs is delightful. Upon one side is a canal, stagnant, lifeless, with a green weed growing upon its still surface, which often for a long distance entirely hides the water; beyond the canal are pleasant little gardens and a row of low, comfortable-looking wooden houses with green doors. Before each door is a narrow bridge—a neatly-painted plank with hand-rails—thrown over the canal, to be swung around or raised like a drawbridge at night, making every man's house a moated castle. We passed a fine zoölogical garden here upon the outskirts of the city, a garden of animals that ranks next to the famous one in London; but had no time to visit it, nor did we see any of the charitable institutions in which Amsterdam excels.
"You know the pilgrim fathers?" said Emmie—whose family had preceded us by a day or two—the night after our arrival. "O, yes; had not our whole lives been straightened out after their maxims?" "Well, we've found the house where it is said they held meetings before they embarked for America. Wouldn't you like to see it?" Of course we would; in fact, it would be showing no more than proper respect to our forefathers. So six of us—women and girls—put ourselves under her guidance. We found a narrow, dirty street, the dwellers in which stared after us curiously. Between two old houses was an opening, hardly wide enough to be called an alley, hardly narrow enough to be looked upon as a gutter. Into this we crowded. "There; this is the house," said Emmie, laying her slight fingers upon the old stone wall before us. It was quite bare, and devoid of ornament or entrance, being evidently the back or side of a house. Down from the peak of the gable looked a solitary window. A rude balcony, holding a few plants, was below it, with freshly-washed clothes hanging from its rail. We rolled our eyes, experienced a shiver that may have been caused by awe or the damp chill of the spot, and came out to find the narrow street half filled with staring men and women crowding about the point of our disappearance, while from the upper end of the street, and even around the corner, others hastened to join the whispering, wondering crowd. How could we explain? It was utterly impossible; so we came quickly and quietly away; but whether this house had ever been a church, whether the pilgrim fathers ever saw it, or indeed whether there ever were any pilgrim fathers, are questions I cannot undertake to answer.
CHAPTER XII.
THE RHINE AND RHENISH PRUSSIA.
First glimpse of the Rhine.—Cologne and the Cathedral.—"Shosef in ter red coat."—St. Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins.—Up the Rhine to Bonn.—The German students.—Rolandseck.—A search for a resting-place.—Our Dutch friend and his Malays.—The story of Hildegund.—A quiet Sabbath.—Our Dutch friend's reply.—Coblentz.—The bridge of boats.—Ehrenbreitstein, over the river.—A scorching day upon the Rhine.—Romance under difficulties.—Mayence.—Frankfort.—Heidelberg.—The ruined castle.—Baden-Baden.—A glimpse at the gambling.—The new, and the old "Schloss."—The Black Forest.—Strasbourg.—The mountains.