Holland was once a quagmire, almost covered with water; but by making canals higher than the land, and pumping the water out of the fields into them, the land was drained. The bogs are numerous, and supply so much turf that little else is burned. There are no beggars; and the people are in general pretty warmly clothed, and comfortable looking, with ruddy faces. The townspeople are dressed almost like the Londoners, or Parisians; but the costume of the country folks is rather funny. A farmer's wife, when out for a holiday, wears a large kind of gipsy hat, like a small umbrella, lined with damask; a close jacket with long flaps; and full short thick coloured petticoats. Her slippers are yellow, her stockings blue, and her cap is without a border, being made to fit her head exactly, and gaily ornamented with gold filagree clasps; while her costume is finished by a pair of earrings and a necklace. The farmer himself wears a hat without a rim, and huge silver buttons on his coat; and keeps whiffing away at his pipe, which he is seldom without. The Dutch are most excellent gardeners, though they sometimes ruin themselves by their love for flowers.
Among the articles that have been sent here from Switzerland, are several well worth looking at, they are so wonderfully ingenious. Of this kind are two boxes, one of white wood, and the other of brown; the white has a lovely Alpine rose, with garlands of flowers upon the sides, the rose and lid being cut out of one piece of wood, and so beautifully made to imitate nature, that the slightest touch with the point of a knife or a needle, makes the leaves move and quiver without spoiling the flower. This was made by a Swiss peasant. The people of Switzerland are very remarkable for their industry, contentment, and ingenuity.
Among the villagers, their chief occupations are the management of dairies, and the breeding of cattle; and many of the peasantry make a living by hunting the chamois, as the wild goat is called. This is rather a dangerous employment, yet the chamois-hunters delight in it; they carry a long hook pointed with an iron spike, and with the help of this, they leap from rock to rock, over frightful chasms and precipices; yet such is their surprising activity, that they are never killed. Other peasants earn a livelihood by fattening and preparing snails for market; for these creatures are considered a great delicacy in many parts of Switzerland. In another part of the country the inhabitants almost exclusively follow the trade of watch-making, and polishing the crystals and pebbles that are found in the mountains, Geneva, a city of Switzerland, is celebrated for the watches that are made there.
The women are extremely domestic, delighting in their children; and all the Swiss are remarkable for their passionate love of home. In every village there is a school, established by the Government for the instruction of poor children. The Swiss are the most graceful of all peasants, and wear very smart costumes. The men wear large hats, and their dress is generally a brown cloth jacket without sleeves, and puffed breeches of ticking. The women have short blue petticoats, a cherry-coloured boddice, full white sleeves fastened above the elbow, and a muslin kerchief thrown round their necks; while their hair is plaited, and twisted about their heads. They also wear pretty flat straw hats, ornamented with bows of ribbon.
The scenery of Switzerland is of the most charming and romantic description; there are towering mountains, craggy rocks, steep precipices, with foaming torrents dashing down their sides, and dizzy heights, which I should be sorry any of my little friends were looking down. But these are delightfully intermixed with beautiful valleys, adorned with groves of fir, beech, and chestnut trees; clear lakes, rapid rivers, cataracts, and bridges of one arch reaching an immense distance from rock to rock. Portions of the mountains are covered with villages and scattered cottages; and the inside of the dwellings are so neat and look so comfortable, that you could almost wish to live in one of them, if you were not told that there is a perpetual danger of their being buried under one of the enormous masses of snow that frequently roll from the tops of the mountains, and destroy everything in their way. These masses are called Avalanches.
Between the summits of the highest of the mountains are valleys of ice, frozen into many fantastic shapes, formed by one crust of ice growing hard over another; but what is more extraordinary, is that the borders of these glaciers, as they are called, are fertile: strawberries, wild cherries, nuts, barberries, and mulberries, grow there; and goats browse on the most inaccessible parts of the rocks, and bound with the most surprising agility from one cliff to another.
