For five miles farther, to Westkapelle, the road lies first behind the dunes and then behind the giant dike for which this, one of the most exposed and at the same time one of the lowest sections of Holland, is famous. Presently you find yourself bowling along on top of the dike, with the sea lapping restlessly at its thick, beveled-stone hide on the right, and the village of Westkapelle, nestling some feet below the water level even at low tide, yet secure behind the backbone of its protector, on the left. This dike, being of necessity one of the largest and strongest along the Dutch coast, receives the tenderest of care in the hands of the Government, for, in case of a break in it, the Island of Walcheren would be reduced to its former state of shallow sea water in less time than it would take to set the type of the “scare-head” in the newspapers to tell of the catastrophe. The laborers who are constantly employed at work upon it are supposed to be the direct descendants of the Danish fishermen who dragged these waters with their nets far back in Norman times.
Aside from its dike the most conspicuous object in the vicinity of Westkapelle is the lofty, square, Gothic tower, belonging originally to a fifteenth-century church burned down in 1831. This tower the Dutch have aptly turned into practical service by making a lighthouse of it. The powerful reflectors at its top have a radius of twenty-five miles or more and, even in the daytime, the tower is as much of a landmark along the west coast of the island as the church at Veere is along the north.
Driving from Westkapelle back to Middelburg you scarcely pass out from the throes of one tollgate until you are enmeshed in those of another. You are assumed to be honest in Zeeland and expected to march right up to the door of the tollhouse, pass a cordial time of day with the character who keeps it, and pay your little five or six Dutch cents without even so much as giving vent to the time-honored conjecture that the farmers thereabouts must be too well off to work out their taxes on the roadway.
Nor is it only the tollhouse keeper who has a pleasant word of greeting for you, but every native you pass, man, woman, or child, will have a nod and a smile and a cheery “Good evening”—although you may not recognize the verbiage. The sturdy truck farmer, with gold earrings and cropped hair, trudging homeward in the wake of his push-cart; the thickly padded maiden with her dangling milk pails; the tiny boys and girls, diminutive counterparts of their parents as regards a costume which wavers not with the change of fashion—all seem to think it their especial assignment to treat the tourist on Walcheren as a visitor and not an invader.
III
From Middelburg to Dortrecht
If the American traveler expects to stop off along the line from Middelburg at a little place called Goes, he will undergo his first operation with the Dutch language. Should he fail to catch sight of the signboard that proclaims in print the name of the station, or to compare his watch with his timetable in order to ascertain in this manner the exact bearings of the point of stoppage, he will probably be carried on through, for it will not occur to him that he had planned to detrain when the tin-horn-girdled conductor rattles up and down the platform shouting, “Whose.” But “Whose” is the way Goes is pronounced—and this is simply introductory.
Some there be who try to insist that we have nothing to brag about in the way of euphonic orthography, which is more or less of a cold fact. But then, we are used to it. The same may be said of the Dutch language, and it is to be hoped that the Dutch are used to it. They seem to get along with it passably well, at all events. But their ability to master the impossible does not alleviate our troubles in the least. Any nation that can spell “ice” y-s and i-j-s with equal complacency, and gather the same meaning from both methods, deserves to be misunderstood.
The Dutch letter g, to come back to Goes, strikes terror to the vocal organs of the most versatile linguist. It is treated with somewhat the same disrespect that the Spanish treat their j, only more so. The Dutch pronunciation of a word beginning with g is started somewhere in the anatomical vicinity of the diaphragm and allowed to percolate up through the æsophagus, gathering harshness and strength until it comes in violent contact with the larynx, whence it is finally ejaculated with about the same sound as a bad attack of hay fever. I quote a passage from a certain work on Holland, the author of which infers that if any person not of Dutch descent can repeat the sentence correctly as to sound and emphasis, to him the mastery of the remainder of the language will seem like child’s play. The sentence follows: “Grietje, gooi geen goeje groente in de gracht.” The interlinear cribbing of it would be in English, “Gretchen, do not throw any good vegetables into the canal.”