A tour through Holland

by Sir John Carr

The treckschuyt is a long barge divided into two apartments; the after one, called the ruif or roof, possesses superior accommodations, and will hold from eight to a dozen persons, and the other from forty to fifty: this vessel, which is drawn by a single horse, moves so precisely at the rate of four miles an hour, that the Dutch always compute by the hour instead of the mile.[^[1]] In the cabin or roof, there are four oblique windows, which move up and down, a table in the middle, with a long drawer filled with pipes. The seats are covered with handsome cushions; but the prime accommodations are a spitting-box, and a little iron pot filled with burning turf, to furnish the smokers with fire for their pipes. The price is about three pence an hour: this part is generally occupied by persons of a superior condition. So steady is the motion of the vessel, that the passenger may read, write, or draw in it, without interruption.

[1]. The Dutch boors are also so regular in smoking their pipes, that in calculating the distances of places, they say they are so many pipes asunder.

The treckschuyts preserve an easy intercourse between the most distant parts of the kingdom, and the cheapness of their conveyance places them within the reach of the most slender purse. Every thing relative to these vessels is conducted with such admirable punctuality, that the passenger can tell to the smallest cost in the kingdom what his expenses will amount to, and to a minute when he shall arrive at the end of his journey, in which, if it be long, he carries his provision with him, or purchases a frugal meal at the house where the boat stops a few minutes for that purpose. At those places where the treckschuyts stop on account of the course of the canal being interrupted, and where passengers are in consequence obliged to quit one vessel to go to another, there are females who offer refreshments for sale, consisting of little rolls and small birds, and slices of cold baked eels, fastened to a small stick.

The treckschuyts are all under the direction of government, and are truly punctual, convenient, cheap, and agreeable. The town of Delft was about twelve miles, or three hours distant. On the sides of the canal, the surface of the water was frequently covered by the nymphæa alba, a magnificent white water-lily, whose expanded and unsullied flowers had a charming effect, particularly when intermixed with menyanthes nymphoides, the yellow fringed water-lily, which are very uncommon in England.

We passed by several sawing or wood mills, which are moved by wind: the machinery of those buildings, which I afterwards examined, is very curious; they were originally invented by Corneille Van Uitgust. The flies of the mill are fixed to a large beam, which turns on an axis; in the centre of the beam the principal wheel is fixed, which impels one immediately below it, which is also fixed on the middle of a piece of timber, hanging on an axis, to which four perpendicular saws, ten in each compartment, are fastened, which, as the wheel revolves, are elevated and depressed. Two iron hooks are fastened at the end of this beam, which catch a wheel, and as the saw rises and falls, move this wheel one cog; that wheel impels another, which catches into a piece of iron, and draws it towards itself; at the end of this iron there is a cross bar, which presses against the end of the tree, while the other end is sawing, and gradually forces it on to the teeth of the saws, as they proceed in cutting.

I remember at Memel, in Polish Prussia, the sawing mills there had another mechanical power, that of drawing up the trees from the barks in which they were brought in the river, into the yard or store-house. I believe mills for sawing timber have been introduced only partially into England. All the mills in Holland rise to a very great height, to secure as much wind at all times as possible. Many of these mills were thatched on the sides as well as the roof.

A very ingenious discovery, infinitely more curious than the Dutch sawing-mill, has, however, been recently made in London, by Sir George Wright, Bart. of machinery for sawing stone, for which a patent has been obtained, now the property of Samuel Hill, Esq. who has added many improvements to it. By means of a steam-engine, a number of saws are set in motion, by which a solid block of marble or stone, rough from the quarry, can be cut into shafts of columns of diminishing diameters, one within the other, at the same time: the blocks fixed in an iron circular frame, resting upon four small wheels, by which they can be turned round by the person who has the care of a certain number of them, to keep the saws, which are almost in a horizontal position, constantly acting upon them; the blocks are a little inclined, to enable the saws to be supplied with water from a trough above, conducted by means of tin pipes to the respective orifices.

By means of this admirable invention, a saving of three-fourths of the stone is produced upon a block of large diameter; the outer cases being as strong as the cube, five men can perform the work which occupied forty before the discovery; and stone columns are reduced to the price of wooden ones. These saws can also cut out an entire gothic window, which they effect at a saving of eighty per cent. with great beauty and precision, and which in its former construction was divided into six different parts; the last savings or cubes, upon being cemented together, constitute a complete gothic column, and the concavity of the divided outer case of a large column forms an entire recess; a block will also, after it has afforded several shafts of columns, form a handsome series of chimnies. The pipes for conveying water by this machinery are much preferred, on account of their durability: the proprietors of several public works have adopted them in preference to those of wood, which are continually wanting repairs. This highly ingenious discovery has been matured and prosecuted with great public spirit and expense by the proprietor, and promises, from its great utility and economy, to become an object of high national importance.

In our treckschuyt, I witnessed a strong contrast to the spirits and loquacity of the French and Germans; all was smoke and silence, save when it yielded to a few short sentences, in which the word mi vrow frequently met my ear. One very grave elderly gentleman, who wore an enormous curled and powdered wig, and who somewhat resembled Lord Burleigh in the Critic, spoke but once all the way, and that was in the following oracular sentence; “Wat is goed voor de man is ook goed voor de vrow—What is good for the husband, is as good for the wife;” so similar in many instances are the Dutch and English languages, that some of our witlings have observed that bad English will make very good Dutch. M. Siegenbeek, minister of the anabaptist church at Leyden, and the first who has occupied the chair for Dutch literature and eloquence in the university of that city, in which, by his genius and attainments, he reflects honour upon his country, has published a very ingenious work, entitled, Verhandeling over de Nederduitsche Spelling; a Treatise on Dutch Orthography, tending to render it uniform: this work and another by the same author, called Verhandeling over den Ionsted, &c. or a Treatise on the Influence of Euphony or agreeable Sound, and of the Facility of Pronunciation, on the orthography of the Dutch language, were, at the instigation and by the able exertions of M. Vander Palm, the agent of national education, some years since published, for the improvement of the national language and poetry. The late Batavian government adopted the system of orthography proposed by M. Siegenbeek, and ordered it to be used by all the offices of administration.

It is generally understood that the language of Holland is divided into High and Low Dutch, whereas there is but one pure language, as in England, which is called Neder Duitch, the language of the Netherlands, or of a country lying very low. In Holland, as in every other country, there is a variety of provincial idioms; for instance, a raw native of Friesland would not be understood at Amsterdam.