The canals are generally at least fifty feet wide and at least six feet deep. There are many good-sized boats. The power used is of different kinds: steam, sails, horses, men, women. Steamboats are numerous. Sails are used on nearly all, at least to help. Very often a man is hitched to a rope and sometimes a woman, with a regular harness so that the pull comes on the breast and shoulders. Dogs are not used to haul canal-boats, but they are the usual motive-power in the towns for small delivery-wagons, milk-wagons and the like.
CANALLING IN HOLLAND—THE EXTENSION OF WOMAN’S SPHERE.
The people of Holland, especially outside the cities, stick to their old peculiar costumes better than do the people of any other country in Europe that I have seen. The originals of the quaint Dutch pictures are here and numerous. The women wear the foolish bonnets, funny short full skirts, woolen stockings and wooden shoes, and the men the odd hats, clothes that bag between the hips and knees, and the wooden shoes that turn up like sled-runners. The wooden shoes are not worn in the house, but shaken off as the person enters and a pair of cloth shoes substituted. I suppose that is a ground rule made by the Dutch housewives, whose propensity for scrubbing and cleanliness is well known. But in spite of the deserved reputation, I do not think that Holland is as clean a country as it is advertised. The canals are close to being stagnant water, and as all the dirt and sewage goes into them there is an odor about Holland that comes near the smell you get from old cheese. Especially in the towns and cities where the canals form the principal streets, I can’t escape the idea that they are a good deal like open sewers. The water is changed by pumping, but not often, and after it stands a while over the stuff thrown in one would think from the noticeable odor that it would breed sickness. They say it is not very bad, but it would cause a big kick in America—the newspapers would go after the city council a plenty for permitting such a nuisance.
A good deal has been said and written in the United States of recent years in regard to the “emancipation of women.” The extension of civil and legal rights to persons of the female sex has been properly the subject of general congratulation. The club movement has done a great work in forcing a recognition of the work of women equally with the work of men. Prior to coming to Europe I had supposed that the women of the United States had made more progress along these lines than those of any other country. But I was mistaken. The women of Europe are far ahead of the women of America in the equality of the sexes. A women in continental Europe not only has the right to go out in the field and labor, but she can work on the roads, and she can engage in any business that a man can. In Italy I saw women harnessed alongside of dogs and in Holland I find them harnessed to canal-boats, the same as men. If there is any kind of work in Europe that a man can do in which women cannot and do not engage I have not discovered it, except the occupation of wearing military uniforms. The mercantile and shopkeeping business is almost entirely given over to women, and the right to carry trunks, shine shoes, sell papers and act as porters is not denied them. The men seem to be perfectly willing to let the women do the work, and the emancipation seems to have been accomplished without trouble of any kind.
The Dutch language is more like the English than like the German, with which it is classed. With my little knowledge of German I can read the Dutch signs and make a stagger at the newspapers, for there is more English than German in the written words. But the Dutch as a spoken language is like neither the German nor English. When two Dutchmen have a social, quiet chat it sounds like a buzz-saw. I can usually make a Dutchman understand me, but when it comes to my grasping the meaning of his talk I had as soon try to interpret the remarks of a file. It is ridiculous the way you have to change language every few hours’ ride in Europe. But I quit trying when I came to the Dutch. They will have to talk English or make signs in order to get my money; and again I am brought to the conclusion that no matter what is the language of the country, “money talks.”
THE DAM DUTCH TOWNS.