The ship entered the Meuse, and turned for the tenth time, to the left. At this point the Meuse is very wide, as it carries away and imprisons the waters of the Waal, the largest branch of the Rhine, and the waters of the Leck and Yssel also empty themselves into it. Its banks are flanked on either side by long rows of trees, and are dotted with houses, workshops, manufactories, and arsenals, which grow thicker as Rotterdam is approached.
However little acquainted one may be with the physical history of Holland, the first time one sees the Meuse and thinks of its memorable overflowings, of the thousand calamities and innumerable victims of that capricious and terrible river, one regards it with a sort of uneasy curiosity, much as one looks at a famous brigand. The eye rests on the dykes with a feeling almost of satisfaction and gratitude, as on the brigand when he is safely handcuffed and in the hands of the police.
While my eyes were roving in search of Rotterdam, a Dutch passenger told how, when the Meuse is frozen, the currents, coming unexpectedly from warmer regions, strike the ice that covers the river, break it, upheave enormous blocks with a terrific crash, and hurl them against the dykes, piling them in immense heaps which choke the course of the river and make it overflow. Then begins a strange battle. The Dutch answer the threats of the Meuse with cannonade. The artillery is called out, volleys of grape-shot break the towers and barricades of ice which oppose the current, into a storm of splinters and briny hail. "We Hollanders," concluded the passenger, "are the only people who have to take up arms against the rivers."
When we came in sight of Rotterdam it was growing dark and drizzling. Through the thick mist I could barely see a great confusion of ships, houses, windmills, towers, trees, and moving figures on dykes and bridges. There were lights everywhere. It was a great city different in appearance from any I had seen before, but fog and darkness soon hid it from my view. By the time I had taken leave of my fellow-travellers and had gathered my luggage together, it was night. "So much the better," I said getting into a cab. "I shall see for the first time a Dutch city by night; this must indeed be a novel spectacle." In fact, Bismarck, when at Rotterdam, wrote to his wife that at night he saw "phantoms on the roofs."
ROTTERDAM.
ONE cannot learn much about Rotterdam by entering it at night. The cab passed directly over a bridge that gave out a hollow sound, and while I believed myself to be—and, in fact, was—in the city, to my surprise I saw on either side a row of ships which were soon lost in the darkness. When we had crossed the bridge we drove along streets brightly lighted and full of people, and reached another bridge, to find ourselves between other rows of ships. So we went on for some time, from bridge to street, from street to bridge. To increase the confusion, there was everywhere an illumination such as I had never seen before. There were lamps at the corners of the streets, lanterns on the ships, beacons on the bridges, lights in the windows, and smaller lights under the houses,—all of which were reflected by the water. Suddenly the cab stopped in the midst of a crowd of people. I put my head out of the window, and saw a bridge suspended in mid-air. I asked what was the matter, and some one answered that a ship was passing. In a moment we were again on our way, and I had a peep at a tangle of canals crossing and recrossing each other, and of bridges that seemed to form a large square full of masts and studded with lights. Then, at last, we turned a corner and arrived at the hotel.
The first thing I did on entering my room was to examine it to see if it sustained the great fame of Dutch cleanliness. It did indeed; and this was the more to be admired in a hotel, almost always occupied by a profane race, which has no reverence for what might be called in Holland the worship of cleanliness. The linen was white as snow, the windows were transparent as air, the furniture shone like crystal, the walls were so clean that one could not have found a spot with a microscope. Besides this, there was a basket for waste paper, a little tablet on which to strike matches, a slab for cigar-ashes, a box for cigar-stumps, a spittoon, a boot-jack, in short, there was absolutely no excuse for soiling anything.
When I had surveyed my room, I spread the map of Rotterdam on the table, and began to make my plans for the morrow.
It is a singular fact that the large towns of Holland have remarkably regular forms, although they were built on unstable land and with great difficulty. Amsterdam is a semicircle, the Hague is a square, Rotterdam an equilateral triangle. The base of the triangle is an immense dyke, protecting the town from the Meuse, and known as the Boompjes, which in Dutch means little trees,—the name being derived from a row of elms that were planted when the embankment was built, and are now grown to a great size. Another large dyke, dividing the city into two almost equal parts, forms a second bulwark against the inundations of the river, extending from the middle of the left side of the triangle to the opposite angle. The part of Rotterdam which lies between the two dykes consists of large canals, islands, and bridges: this is the modern town; the other part, lying beyond the second dyke, is the old town. Two large canals extend along the other two sides of the city up to the vertex, where they join and meet a river called the Rotte, which name, prefixed to the word dam, meaning dyke, gives Rotterdam.