which remind us of the cupboard-beds common among the poorer classes in Scotland: “The ground-floor is one large room divided into as many parts as may be required by wooden partitions without ceilings; the roof—which is, of course, leaning at an angle—is hung with nets and fishing utensils.… The bed is the important article of furniture; this is let into the wall in a kind of cupboard, into which are thrust the mattresses and other necessary articles. Two little curtains are drawn across.… It looks as much as possible like a large drawer. Sometimes considerable luxury is displayed in the bed; the pillow-cases and the sheets are embroidered with open-work, which is a special fabrication of the women at Marken—white and yellow threads crossed, something in the fashion of guipure.” The walls or partitions are mostly painted blue, the shelves are heaped with common crockery and Japanese porcelain, for which there is an extravagant demand all over Holland; a Friesland cuckoo-clock stands in one corner, a carved oak chest in another, and on this are tall glasses, bulging mugs of delf, and miraculously-polished old candlesticks of yellow metal. One of the chief worthies of Marken, Madame Klok, has the richest collection in the island: china of all sorts (Dutch and Japanese) and all colors, pictures, foreign curiosities such as sailors always fill their houses with, are there in profusion; but what she is most proud of is her carved oak chests, all of Dutch make, their panels sculptured with great art, and seeming only just to have left the hands of the artist. The women of Marken have clung to their distinctive dress, and, partly on that account, are thought very uncivilized by the
young Hollanders, to whom freedom and Paris fashion have become synonymous terms. This dress is very peculiar, and Havard says very picturesque. Here is part of his description:
“The head-dress is composed of an immense cap in the form of a mitre, white, lined with brown, to show off the lace and embroidery; it is tied close under the chin, pressing closely over the ears.… Long ringlets of blonde hair fall down to the shoulders or back, and the hair of the front is brought forward and cut square along the forehead a little above the eyebrows. The gown has a body without sleeves, and the skirt or petticoat is independent of it, and always of a different stuff. The body is brown, and generally of cloth covered with embroidery in colors, in which red predominates.… This requires years of labor. A corsage well embroidered is handed down from mother to daughter as an heirloom; the sleeves are in two unequal parts: one, with vertical lines of black and white, reaches the elbow, and the other, almost to the wrist, is of dark blue, and is fastened above the elbow.… The skirt is also divided into two unequal parts: the upper, which is about eight inches wide only, is a kind of basque with black lines on a light ground; the rest of the skirt is dark blue, with a double band of reddish brown at the bottom.… Such is the female costume of Marken, … so singular that no other costume is like it, or even approaches its bizarre appearance.”
These old Dutch settlements all possess many churches, but most of them disfigured by paint and other monstrosities. The Premonstratensian monks had a monastery at Marken, having come there from Leeuwarden; but the old Marienhot, turned to other uses, was pulled down in 1845 on account of its ruinous condition. At Monnikendam, “the town of the monks,” one of the dead cities—for Marken is only a cluster of villages—there is what is now called the Great Church, but was originally the Abbey of
St. Nicholas. It has eighty great pillars in the nave alone, and was built in the fifteenth century, though according to the style of an earlier day. It is now a “temple” (Calvinist meeting-house); the columns are whitewashed, there is a modern, bulbous pulpit with green curtains, and the nave is full of ugly, closed pews in the taste of the eighteenth century.
Havard describes Monnikendam as having a Chinese appearance through its “green trees, the red and green coloring of the houses and roofs, and the little gray wooden bridge.” In 1573 it had the honor of taking a prominent part in the great naval battle of the Zuyder-Zee, when Cornelius Dirkszoon, a native of Monnikendam, destroyed the Spanish fleet and took the admiral, Count de Bossu, prisoner. The town kept the count’s collar of the Golden Fleece as a trophy. Though the monks have disappeared, the town still preserves its arms—a Franciscan monk, habited sable (black), holding a mace in his right hand, the shield being argent, or white. The tower of the Great Church is of enormous height, and Havard, as he looked down on the rich plains below, wondered at the insensibility of the inhabitants to the treasures of nature and art within their reach. This deserted place—where the arrival of two strangers was an event of universal importance, to be talked of at least a month after they had gone, and where the old office of town-crier was discharged by a wizened individual in a black dress-coat, knee-breeches, and three-cornered hat, whose duty of fixing notices to the doors of such houses as contained patients attacked by a contagious disease reminds us of the seventeenth century—was
once “a flourishing commercial city, one of the twenty-nine great towns of Holland, when the Hague was but a village.”
Between Edam and Hoorn (the latter being the pearl of the dead cities) the tjalk encountered a terrible storm of wind, which was succeeded by as wonderful a calm. The author says:
“I turned my head (towards the eastern horizon) and saw one of the most curious spectacles I ever contemplated in my life. From the hull of the boat to the top of the mast, from the zenith to the nadir, all was of the same tint. No waves, no clouds, no heavens, no sea, no horizon were to be distinguished—nothing but the same tone of color, beautifully soft; at a short distance a great black boat, which seemed to rest on nothing, and to be balanced in space. The sea and the sky appeared of a pearl-gray color, like a satin robe; the boat looked like a great blot of ink. Nothing can give an idea of this strange spectacle; words cannot describe such a picture. Turner, in his strangest moods, never produced anything so extraordinary.”
The harbor of Hoorn is now “bordered by masses of verdure, great trees, and flowers. The place of these charming plantations and gardens was once occupied by ship-building yards, from whence sailed annually whole fleets of newly-constructed ships. Hoorn is really one of the prettiest towns which can be found, and at the same time the most curious. It is entirely ancient. All the houses are old and attractive, covered with sculptures and charming bas-reliefs—every roof finishing in the form of stairs. Everywhere wide auvents jutting out over doors and windows; everywhere carved wood and sculptured stone. The tone of color of the bricks is warm and agreeable to the eye, giving these ancient habitations an aspect of gayety and freshness which contrasts in a singular manner with their great age and ancient forms.… It seems almost ridiculous to walk about these streets in our modern costumes. It almost appears to me that there are certain towns where only the plumed hat, the great trunk-hose and boots, with a rapier at our side, are in keeping with