Rollo in Holland

by Jacob Abbott

"We have been travelling now for several days in Holland, and it is one of the most curious and amusing countries to travel in that I have ever seen.

"We all know from the books of geography which we study at school, that Holland is a very low country—lower in many places than the ocean; and that the water of the ocean is kept from overflowing it by dikes, which the people built ages ago, along the shores. I always used to suppose that it was only from the sea that people had any danger to fear of inundations; but I find now that it is not so.

"The people have to defend themselves from inundations, not only on the side towards the sea, but also quite as much, if not more, on the side towards the land, from the waters of the River Rhine. The River Rhine rises in Switzerland, and flows through various countries of Europe until it comes to the borders of Holland, and there it spreads out into innumerable branches, and runs every where, all over the country. It would often overflow the country entirely, were it not that the banks are guarded by dikes, like the dikes of the sea. The various branches of the rivers are connected together by canals, which are also higher than the land on each side of them. Thus the whole country is covered with a great network of canals, rivers, and inlets from the sea, with water in them higher than the land. When the tide is low in the sea, the surplus water from these rivers and canals flows off through immense sluices at the mouth of them. When the tide comes up, it is kept from flowing in by immense gates, with which the sluices are closed. They call the tracts of land that lie lower than the channels of water around them, polders. That is rather a queer name. I suppose it is a Dutch name.

"The polders all have drains and canals cut in them. As we ride along in the railway carriages we overlook these polders. They look like immense green fields, extending as far as you can see, with straight canals running through them in every direction, and crossing each other at right angles. These canals, in the bottom of the polders, are about six feet wide. They are wide enough to prevent the cattle from jumping across them, and so they serve for fences to divide the fields from each other. They also serve for roads, for the Dutchmen use boats on their farms to get in their hay and produce, instead of carts.

"The water that collects in these low canals and drains, which run across the polders, cannot flow out into the large canals, which are higher than they are, and so they have to pump it out. They pump it out generally by means of wind mills. So wherever you go, throughout all Holland, you find an immense number of wind mills. These wind mills are very curious indeed. Some of them are immensely large. They look like lighthouses. The large ones are generally built of brick, and some of them are several hundred years old. The sails of the big ones are often fifty feet long, and sometimes eighty feet. This makes a wheel one hundred and sixty feet in diameter. When you stand under one of these mills, and look up, and see these immense sails revolving so high in the air that the lowest point, when the sail comes round, is higher than the tops of the four story houses, the effect is quite sublime.

"With these wind mills they pump the water up from one drain or canal to another, till they get it high enough to run off into the sea. In some places, however, it is very difficult to get the water into the sea even in this way, even at low tides. The River Amstel, for instance, which comes out at Amsterdam, and into which a great many canals and channels are pumped, is so low at its mouth that the sea is never, at the lowest tides, more than a foot and a half below it. At high tides the sea is a great deal above it. The average is about a foot above. Of course it requires a great deal of management to get the waters of the river out, and avoid letting the water of the sea in. They do it by immense sluices, which are generally kept shut, and only opened when the tide is low.

"In the mean time, if it should ever so happen that they could not succeed in letting the water out fast enough, it would, of course, accumulate, and rise in the rivers, and press against the dikes that run along the banks of it, till at last it would break through in some weak place; and then, unless the people could stop the breach, the whole polder on that side would be gradually overflowed. The inundation would extend until it came to some other dike to stop it. The polder that would first be filled would become a lake. The lake would be many miles in extent, perhaps, but the water in it would not usually be very deep—not more than eight or ten feet, perhaps; though in some cases the polders are so low, that an inundation from the rivers and canals around it would make the lake twenty or thirty feet deep.

"Of course, in ancient times, when a portion of the country became thus submerged, it was for the people to consider whether they would abandon it or try to pump all that water out again, by means of the wind mills. They would think that if they pumped it out it would be some years before the land would be good again; for the salt in the water would tend to make it barren. So they would sometimes abandon it, and put all their energy into requisition to strengthen the dikes around it, in order to prevent the inundation from spreading any farther. For water, in Holland, tends to spread and to destroy life and property, just as fire does in other countries. The lakes and rivers, where they are higher than the land, are liable to burst their barriers after heavy rains falling in the country, or great floods coming down the rivers, or high tides rise from the sea, and so run into each other; and the people have continually to contend against this danger, just as in other countries they do against spreading conflagrations.

"In the case of spreading fire, water is the great friend and helper of man; and in the case of these spreading inundations of water, it is wind that he relies upon. The only mode that the Dutch had to pump out the water in former times was the wind mills. When the rains or the tides inundated the land, they called upon the wind to help them lift the water out to where it could flow away again.

"There was a time, two or three hundred years ago, when all the wind mills that the people could make, seem not to have been enough to do the work; and there was one place, in the centre of the country, where the water continued to spread more and more—breaking through as it spread from one polder to another—until, at last, it swallowed up such an extent of country as to form a lake thirty miles in circumference. This lake at last extended very near to the gates of Haarlem, and it was called the Holland Lake. You will find it laid down on all the maps of Holland, except those which have been printed within a few years. The reason why it is not laid down now is, because a few years ago, finding that the wind mills were not strong enough to pump it out, the government concluded to try what virtue there might be in steam. So they first repaired and strengthened the range of dikes that extended round the lake. In fact, they made them double all around, leaving a space between for a canal. They made both the inner and outer of these dikes water-tight; so that the water should neither soak back into the lake again, after it was pumped out, nor ooze out into the polders beyond. The way they made them water-tight was by lining them on both sides with a good thick coating of clay.