They parted very quietly, and for the first time Bianca and Marion said good-night to each other without appearing to remember that they were lovers, or remembering it so seriously that no one else was reminded of it.
The Signora went to her room thankful and contented. In spite of her courage, what she had done had been very difficult for her, and nothing but her position toward the others of hostess and cicerone had made it seem proper to her. The ice was broken, however, and successfully; they had gone together to their Heavenly Father, and they could never again be strangers to each other nor to him. She was thankful and contented.
TO BE CONTINUED.
SOME QUAINT OLD CITIES.[195]
The Zuyder-Zee will soon be a thing of the past, and in the meanwhile it is but little known. M. Henri Havard, known as an art-critic, has given us a glimpse of it, with its decaying ports, its old-fashioned population, its wonderful atmospheric “effects”; and his book is, strange to say, newer to most readers than one treating of the South Sea Islands or the Japanese Archipelago. Not only is the Zuyder-Zee comparatively unknown to foreigners, but, according to Havard, “it is more than probable that not ten people in Holland have made this voyage, and among writers and artists I do not know a single one.”
The navigation of this sea is difficult and dangerous; narrow channels run between enormous sandbanks hardly covered with water. Tales of shipwreck abound in every page of the history of the Zuyder-Zee, and great carcases of ships, breaking up or rotting away, call to mind its dangers. There is no regular communication between the various ports, and M. Havard and his companion, M. Van Heemskerck, had to hire a vessel, engage a crew, and purchase provisions for the voyage. The vessel was called a “tjalk,” and drew only three feet of water; her burden was sixty tons. The crew consisted of the “schipper,” one sailor or “knecht,” and the wife and child of the former. The travellers put up partitions forming kitchen, dining-room,
and bed-room, and did the cooking by turns. They started in June, 1873, leaving Amsterdam in the early morning; and, says the author, after a minute description of the Preraphaelite country surrounding the principal sea-port of Holland, “the sun which brightened this magnificent spectacle rendered the atmosphere clear and of a silvery transparence; reflected by the water, the effect was splendid.” The first object of interest which they met with were the sluices at Schellingwoude. “These blocks of granite, imported from distant countries, massed one upon the other, form an immovable mountain; the great gates, which allow five ships to enter abreast, have something majestic about them which impresses the beholder. I know nothing finer than these sluices, save, perhaps, those of Trolhätten in Sweden.”
The drowsy, pleasant, monotonous impression of the interminable green meadows, or polders (reclaimed from the sea), the huge windmills, the few church-steeples of fantastic shapes and varied colors, the yellow sand-banks, is minutely described, and then the travellers come upon the island of Marken, like “a green raft lost in a gray sea.” Seven villages are built on as many little mounds, with a mound used as a church-yard. The wealth of Marken is in hay and fish. The meadows are flooded once a year. Trees never grow on the island, and most of the houses are raised on piles, and look like “great cages suspended in the air.” There is a peculiarity about the bed-rooms