Windmills and Wooden Shoes

by Blair Jaekel

A waterfront street in Volendam, which with Marken is the most advertised showplace on the tourist’s beaten track

It is in the North Sea Canal that Amsterdam places her only hope of ever being able to compete with Rotterdam as a shipping port. With its fifteen miles of length, its sixty-five to one hundred and ten yards of width, and its thirty feet of depth, this canal pierces the one-time peninsula of North Holland from the Zuyder Zee to its western boundary, making an island out of part of the province and placing Amsterdam in direct and easy communication with the North Sea. An “A.P.” gauge along its bank would prove its water level to be about twenty inches minus, that is, twenty inches below the mean level of the water at Amsterdam—the bench mark of all water levels throughout Holland. To cut such a canal across country from one sea to another and to protect it at either end with immense breakwaters and lock gates has cost the government in the neighborhood of $18,000,000 and consumed eleven years of patient labor. Since 1895 its western terminus has been divided into two outlets, the older being protected by a lock of three openings, while the more recently completed branch, diverging a little to the northward from the main canal, has but one opening, 245 yards long, 27 yards wide, and 33 feet deep.

Zaandam being the home and breeding ground of the windmill, a bird’s-eye view of it would give the effect of four inverted centipedes kicking in their death throes. It is the center of the Dutch lumber trade, and since the windmill is the cheapest method of generating the power that any lumber trade requires in order to operate its sawmills, Zaandam draws from the breeze what we conjure from steam. There are upwards of four hundred windmills in its immediate vicinity. Its houses, brightly painted with green, red, or white, and surrounded with pleasant little gardens, gayly reiterate the Dutchman’s delight in contrasts, harmonious or otherwise.

Another of Zaandam’s claims to the consideration of the tourist is a little old house near the harbor, that belongs, not to any resident of the town, nor to any man in Holland, but to the Czar of all the Russias personally. It is the house which Peter the Great made his domestic headquarters for a brief week in the year 1697 while, as tradition has it, he studied shipbuilding incognito in Zaandam. If the villagers had not made themselves so pestiferously inquisitive and penetrated his disguise a few days after his arrival he might have learned a lot from Mynheer Kalf, under whose competent tutelage he apprenticed himself as a ship carpenter; but the idlers about town became too importunate for Peter. He gave up his position at the end of a week and returned to Amsterdam.

Volendam, on the west coast of the Zuyder Zee, and the little Island of Marken, just opposite, are the two most advertised and, therefore, the show places in the tourist territory of Holland and enjoy the highest patronage. Both are being rapidly and ruthlessly spoiled in consequence. However, as these are the towns easiest of access from Amsterdam that have retained the costumes and customs which prevailed hundreds of years ago, embellishing both to a certain degree as the signs of the times dictate, one feels it his solemn duty, almost, to go there. If the gentle reader has been to Amsterdam and has weathered the many appeals to make a day’s trip to Volendam and Marken we should like to have him raise his hand, please, so that we may inquire as to the cause and effect of his superb indifference. It would be worth noting in the minutes of any travel club.

The head porter of your hotel in Amsterdam—a sort of unproclaimed passenger agent himself—will try to sell you a round trip ticket to Volendam and Marken in one of the many parties, each attended by a conductor, which leave every morning and return every evening during the season. But, if you will bear a personal opinion, that which is interesting under the guidance of the prosaic conductor is twice as interesting to explore by yourself. Start as early as you choose, if you can, and get back when you can, if you choose, is the best advice I am able to utter with regard to travel through any country in the world—and, on account of its many facilities for getting about and the comparative meagerness of the territory involved, it is especially applicable to Holland.

Except to obtain a comprehensive view of the great dam at the mouth of the Y, a mile and a quarter in length, which protects the more delicate construction of the North Sea Canal from the ravages of the Zuyder Zee, the trip to Marken made by this route offers little compensation. The same view can be had if you will take the electric car from in front of the station in Amsterdam to the St. Anthonis Dyk and walk a short distance across to the locks at the Oranjesluizen near the north end of the embankment. The five openings at this point of the great breakwater permit the entrance and exit of vessels and regulate the depth of water in the canals. Out of a total of fifty-six lock gates twenty-two are constructed of iron.

Then, too, there seems to be no stability about the weather in Holland, and a voyage up the Zuyder Zee in a cold, drizzling rain does not encourage a pleasant afterthought of the excursion. Upon one trip I made up the Zee in the middle of summer the climate was of about the same temperature as that of a Christmas in Spitzbergen.

A much more satisfactory route by which to tap these towns is the steam tramway line through Monnikendam and Edam, the method of procedure in this case being to take the ferry from the end of the Damrak near the station in Amsterdam to the Tolhuis, or old customhouse, across the Y.