I suppose that few travelers trouble themselves to study windmills from the inside. Perhaps these structures are best regarded as artistic objects. They certainly set off landscapes very well. Standing on little elevations, flinging out their gaunt arms against the evening sky, they kindle the fancies of the beholder. A brain cooler than Don Quixote’s might imagine them endowed with life. I confess to an ancient desire to know something of the internal economy of windmills. It was hard to understand how such slender, graceful towers could contain the machinery for doing any really serious work, and, still more, that the arms could have hurt Don Quixote very much when he pitched into them, lance in rest. Revolving lazily in a moderate breeze, they look harmless enough. An inspection of the works of one of the windmills on a hill-top in Bremen has enlightened me a little. That which looks so small and fragile at a distance, is a four-story house. It is at once a granary, a mill, and a residence. The miller and his family have in it their roomy parlor, dining-room, kitchen, and chambers. These apartments are all comfortably furnished, and so well isolated that the floating meal, of which the air is full in the mill itself, does not invade their home. I have never seen anything neater, snugger, and more generally habitable than the set of rooms which the miller’s good wife was pleased to show us. When the wind stirred, there was no idleness on those premises. The arms—monstrous when measured from the upper platform—turned three great mill-stones, and had power to spare. The miller and his boys strained every muscle to feed the ravenous maws and bag the meal as fast as produced. Americans in Europe are too apt to think ill of the old-fashioned modes of working here. Windmills are often cited by them as specimens of antiquated notions. They would change their minds if they could see, as I saw, how simply, effectively, and above all how cheaply, a windmill can do useful work for mankind.
CHAPTER XXXIV. DIAMOND-CUTTING AT AMSTERDAM.
There is something in the business of diamond-cutting that appeals strongly to the imagination.
It must be extremely interesting to see the precious stones at the mines disclosing themselves to the anxious seekers. Any chance blow of the pick may bring to light a mate for the Koh-i-noor, the Orloff, the Shah, the Sancy, the Pitt, the Hope, or any other of the great diamonds of the world. In a moment the digger may become a rich man. His occupation has all the excitement of gambling, with the essential difference in his favor that he can make a steady living at it, though he may fail to draw one of the capital prizes. Work in the diamond-fields of Brazil and South Africa is a legitimate pursuit, and, when well directed, wrests a subsistence from the stony earth as surely as from a corn-patch or a cabbage-garden. It is, perhaps, more seductive to the outside observer than to the fellow down there in the pit who does all the grubbing.
The traveler who can not make it convenient to go to South Africa or Brazil to see diamonds found, may, by visiting Amsterdam, see them cut. That old Dutch city—famous for its grave men, its plump women, its dikes, its canals, its quaint houses, its commercial push, its thrift and consequent wealth—enjoys the unique distinction of cutting the diamonds of the world. Within a few years some other cities have engaged in the business in a small way. But Coster, of Amsterdam, still handles most of the rough stones which reach Europe. At his establishment the Koh-i-noor was recut, and its latent fire fully revealed. He gave to the Star of the South—the largest stone ever unearthed in Brazil—the blaze of light which justifies its brilliant name. He may truly be said to find the real diamond under the dull, opaque crust which often hides its glow in the native state. He is even more the discoverer of its beauties than the man who picked it out of its gravelly bed.
If Baedeker had given me some account of Coster’s way of cutting diamonds, I might not have taken the trouble to look him up in Amsterdam, where there are so many other things to claim the tourist’s attention. But, in the absence of such information, I was impelled to seek it for myself.
In books one may see pictures of diamond-mining in Brazil, where the slaves are represented as toiling with shovels and hoes in rich gravel, while overseers stand in sentry-boxes all about, watching every movement of the men lest they may conceal some gem in their scanty clothing. He wonders if they keep up that kind of espionage at Coster’s, where the opportunities for stealing diamonds must be very great. I supposed there would be some difficulty in gaining admission to a place where pecks of stones were lying round loose in various stages of treatment, and even the air was full of diamond-dust. This was romance. Now let us look at the reality.