HOLLAND.—PART I.
Holland is one of the queerest countries under the sun. It should be called Odd-land, or Contrary-land; for, in nearly every thing, it is different from other parts of the world.
In the first place, a large portion of the country is lower than the level of the sea. Great dikes have been built at a heavy cost of money and labor, to keep the ocean where it belongs.
On certain parts of the coast it sometimes leans with all its weight against the land, and it is as much as the poor country can do to stand the pressure.
Sometimes the dikes give way, or spring a leak, and the most disastrous results follow. They are high and wide, and the tops of some of them are covered with buildings and trees. They have even fine public roads upon them, from which horses may look down upon wayside cottages.
Often the keels of floating ships are higher than the roofs of the dwellings. The stork, on the house-peak, may feel that her nest is lifted far out of danger, but the croaking frog in the neighboring bulrushes is nearer the stars than she.
Water-bugs dart backward and forward above the heads of the chimney swallows; and willow-trees seem drooping with shame, because they can not reach so high as the reeds near by.
Ditches, canals, ponds, rivers, and lakes are every-where to be seen. High, but not dry, they shine in the sunlight, catching nearly all the bustle and the business, quite scorning the tame fields, stretching damply beside them. One is tempted to ask: "Which is Holland—the shores or the water?"
The very verdure that should be confined to the land has made a mistake and settled upon the fish ponds. In fact the entire country is a kind of saturated sponge, or, as the English poet Butler called it—
"A land that rides at anchor, and is moored,