A Year in Europe

by Walter W. Moore

Two centuries and a half ago, at the time of the "Tulip Mania," there was as wild speculation in bulbs as there has ever been in our day in stocks. Enormous prices were paid for the rarer bulbs. For instance, a single bulb of the species called "Semper Augustus" was sold for five thousand two hundred dollars. This statement will not seem incredible to any of my readers who have had bitter experience with the fictitious values created by the "booms" which cursed and crippled so many of our Southern communities a few years ago. The tulip craze in Holland had the same history: the mania subsided, the prices fell, many of the speculators were ruined, and before long a "Semper Augustus" could be bought for twenty dollars. Even that will seem to most people a pretty high price for a single tulip bulb.

A Small Country.

We did not stop at Haarlem, as it was not the right season for the gorgeous display of flowers above referred to, that is, the latter part of April and the beginning of May, but pushed on to Amsterdam, which is only ten miles away. If the reader has taken account of the distances between these populous cities as they have been successively mentioned, and has observed how short they are, he will have received a very strong impression of the smallness of the country.

Amsterdam.

Amsterdam, the largest city in Holland, with a population of more than half a million, is built upon nearly a hundred islands, separated from one another by a network of canals and connected by means of some three hundred bridges, and is, therefore, sometimes spoken of as "a vulgar Venice," but, with its prodigious vitality, its crowded streets, its busy waters, and its financial eminence, it must be far more like the Venice which was Queen of the Adriatic some centuries ago than the stagnant and melancholy town which bears that name to-day.

Odoriferous Canals.

The water in the canals is about three feet deep, and below this is a layer of mud of the same thickness. It is said that, in order to prevent malarial exhalations, the water is constantly renewed from an arm of the North Sea Canal and the mud removed by dredging. I hope this process is effective, but there were unmistakable exhalations from the canals when we were there. Whether they were malarial or not I cannot say, but certainly they were unfragrant to a degree. Still, the evil smells of Amsterdam are not to be named in number and vigor with those of Venice.

A City Built on Stakes.

As in Venice, so here, all the houses are built on piles which are driven fifteen or twenty feet through the loose sand near the surface into the firmer layers below. Hence the jest of Erasmus, that he knew a city whose inhabitants dwelt on the tops of trees like rooks. They are not so secure on their perch, however, as the rooks. For, although the preparations underground are often more costly than the buildings afterwards erected above, yet, such is the difficulty of securing a firm foundation, and such the ravages of the wood worm among the fir-tree piles after they are driven into the sand and built upon, that many of the brick houses which were once erect are now considerably out of the perpendicular, and lean backwards or forwards or sideways, according as the piles have given way at one place or another. In 1822 thirty-four hundred tons of grain were stored in a grain magazine originally built for the East India Company, and, the piles being unable to sustain the weight, the building literally sank down into the mud.