Schiedam

“ Schiedam is famous as the seat of a great gin manufacture, which, carried on in more than three hundred distilleries, gives employment besides to malt-factories, cooperages and cork-cutting establishments, and supplies grain refuse enough to feed about 30,000 pigs, as well as sufficient yeast to form an important article of export. Other industries include shipbuilding, glass-blowing and the manufacture of stearine candles. ”

“ The gates at Schiedam and Rotterdam were, opened, and the ocean began to pour over the land. While waiting for the waters to rise, provisions were rapidly, collected, according to an edict of the Prince, in all the principal towns of the neighbourhood, and some two hundred vessels, of various sizes, had also been got ready at Rotterdam, Delftshaven, and other ports. ”

“ Everywhere could be seen tall women, and stumpy men, lively-faced girls, and youths whose expression never changed from sunrise to sunset.
There seemed to be at least one specimen from every known town in Holland. There were Utrecht water-bearers, Gouda cheese-makers, Delft pottery-men, Schiedam distillers, Amsterdam diamond-cutters, Rotterdam merchants, dried-up herring-packers, and two sleepy-eyed shepherds from Texel. Every man of them had his pipe and tobacco-pouch. ”

“ But long before this Amsterdam, converted into a seaport by the formation of the Zuiderzee in the thirteenth century, had risen into prominence, and by the middle of the fifteenth she had left behind all the older towns of importance-Dort, Delft, Haarlem, Alkmaar, Middelburg, and Zierikzee -while among the younger Gouda, Leiden, Schiedam, and Rotterdam were likewise active centres of industrial and mercantile life. ”

“ Flourishing centres of industry are found along the numerous river arms, including Maasluis, Vlaardingen, Schiedam, Rotterdam, Gorinchem, and Dordrecht. Here also are some of the oldest settlements, such as Vianen on the Lek, Leerdam on the Linge, and Woudrichem or Woerkum at the junction of the Maas and Merwede. ”

“ He had a great mind to fire his gun, and alarm the [Pg 44] garrison, but a little of the fear of his companions' jokes restrained him for that time. However, he drew a pistol, and refreshed his courage with a little of the genuine Schiedam, after which he ventured to look that way again. But the canoe had disappeared in a most miraculous manner, and Jan was satisfied in his own mind, that it was neither more nor less than the ghost of a canoe. There was not much consolation in this; but it was better than the five hundred Indians, with their tomahawks and scalping knives. ”

“ Leaving Rotterdam, we pass on our left Delftshaven, from which a party of the Pilgrim Fathers sailed to America in 1620; then Schiedam, noted for its "schnapps," of which there are more than [Pg 219] two hundred distilleries; then Delft, where William the Silent, the immortal founder of Dutch independence, was assassinated by a Jesuit whom the Roman Catholic persecutors of the Netherlands had hired to rid them of their great foeman, but which, I fear, is better known to some of my readers as the place where a certain blue-glazed earthenware used to be made in imitation of Chinese porcelain ”

“ They are not so nice-conscioned, but that they can turn out Religion to let in Policy; and a Dutch Woman, being the Head of the Husband, she takes the Horn to her own Charge, which she often multiplies, and bestows the Increase on her Man. The People are generally boorish, therefore [102] their Country is the God they Worship, War is their Heaven, Peace is their Hell, and the Spaniard, the Devil they hate.
From Schiedam I went to Rotterdam, the second great Emporium of this trading People, situated on the Side and Banks of the Maes, and fitted for all Conveniency of Transport and Importation. ”

“ Encouraged by this success they next attacked and took Flushing, the port of g Zeeland, which commanded the approach to Antwerp; and the inhabitants were compelled to take the oath to the prince of Orange, as stadtholder of the king. They next mastered Delfshaven and Schiedam. These striking successes caused a wave of Revolt in the northern provinces. revolt to spread through Holland, Zeeland, Gelderland, Utrecht and Friesland. The principal towns gave in in their submission to the prince of Orange, and acknowledged him as their lawful stadtholder. ”

“ To yourself, you may do no good; but you may be, often, of considerable service to other people. A guide-post on the dyke of a canal is of some use, although it never goes to the place the way to which it points out.
That which is now the Kingdom of the Netherlands (Heaven preserve the King thereof, and the Crown Prince, and all their wives and families, and may they live long and prosper: such is the hope of Jan Daal, who drinks all their good healths in a tumbler of Schiedam) was in old times known (as you ought to be well aware, little boys) as the Republic, of the United Provinces ”

“ The excursion to Marken and the excursion to Edam and its neighbourhood take each a day; but between Amsterdam and Zaandam, just off the great North Canal, steamers ply continually, and one may be there in half an hour. The journey must be made, because Zaandam is superficially the gayest town in Holland and the capital of windmill land. In an hour’s drive (obviously no excursion for Don Quixote) one may pass hundreds. These mills do everything except grind corn. ”

“ Back somewhere in the fourteenth century, when the only maritime means of access to Amsterdam was down the Zuyder Zee, Edam held the strategical position of being its picket port. Since those good old days its 25,000 population has depreciated four-fifths in numbers. Were it not for its brand of cheese, flourishing before the gastronomic world a perpetual advertisement of the place, Edam would soon find itself mentioned in the same breath with Broek and Monnikendam. ”

“ To return to the towns—the three most important ones—Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and The Hague. The town on the Rotte is given precedence because most travellers land there. It is the Liverpool or the Glasgow of Holland, and since 1830 the powerful rival of Antwerp. As you look up the haven, and catch a glimpse of a tall, commanding windmill, you feel that you have arrived in a very Dutch town. Its cosmopolitan shipping has perhaps given it a reputation abroad of being less Dutch than other towns in Holland, but here again the activity and energy of the race are prominent. ”

“ The town of Amsterdam hath paid £40,000 with paying the two hundredth penny. They are mightily inclined to France; Monsieur d'Estrades and Monsieur d'Avaux gain vastly, and I was told that I should never do my business here. This town of Amsterdam hath a provision of corn for fourteen years; they are obliged to have it for seven: they have great credit. An action in the East India Company goes at £422; money in the bank is worth four in the hundred more than ready money. The Jews lend the King of Spain money, and he engages the excise and custom at one of his great towns. ”

“ He told me I was come into a poor country, that was quite ruined by the war, but that they should still make a shift to live, if they could continue at peace with the King of France and England; but that without trade they could not live, for that in the seven provinces there was but 500,000 acres, and 1,000,000 of people, 300,000 in Amsterdam. He offered me the civilities of the town. I went to the synagogue, and saw their service. The Jews are not suffered to be buried, in the town, but two leagues off. ”

“ I mentioned the nation’s equability to the young Dutchman in the canal boat between Rotterdam and Delft. “Ah!” he said, “you should go to Brabant. They fight enough there!” I did go to Brabant, but I saw no anger or quarrelsomeness; yet I suppose he had his reasons.
The steam-tram to Monnickendam runs on to Edam, whence one may command both Volegdam and Purmerend. Edam is famous for its cheese, but the traveller in Holland as a rule reserves for Alkmaar cheese market his interest in this industry; and we will do the same. Broadly speaking Edam sends forth the red cheeses, Alkmaar the yellow ”

“ At Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam, the Hague, but above all at Harlaem, the floral city, crowds of all classes of society, assemble at the flower-markets, which are held twice a week. There the rich attends, to make exclusively his own, by purchase, the rubies, the emeralds, the sapphires of the vegetable kingdom, formed in the depths of the earth, by the slow elaboration of ages; but the humble violet and rose are taken to the home of the poor, to light the gloom of his lowly shed. ”

“ If we consider the conflux in the present day of people to Holland, seeking by their entrance upon her territory to be reinvested in their rights as men, what must it have been at a time when the rest of Europe groaned under a heavy bondage, when Amsterdam was nearly the only free port for all opinions? ”

“ The governor-general of the colony may revoke the toelatings-kaart of any one, Dutch as well as alien, [120] and order him out of Netherlands India; and a resident is such an autocrat that he can order any planter or trader out of his domain if it is shown that he habitually maltreats or oppresses the natives, or does anything calculated to compromise the superior standing or prestige of the white people. The Dutch are severe upon this latter point, and the best of them uphold a certain noblesse oblige as imperative upon all who possess a white skin. ”

“ There are such clubs in every town on the island, the government subsidizing the opera and supporting military bands of the first order; and they furnish society its center and common meeting-place. One sees fine gowns and magnificent jewels; ladies wear the heavy silks and velvets of an Amsterdam winter in these tropical gardens, and men dance in black coats and broadcloth uniforms. Society is brilliant, formal, and by lamplight impressive; but when by daylight one meets the same fair beauties and bejeweled matrons sockless, in sarongs and flapping slippers, the disillusionment is complete. ”

“ For "Amsterdam," the fashionable residential suburb of Bulungan village, was fighting the same enemy as "Rotterdam," the town below, an enemy more terrible than Dyak blow-pipes and Dyak poisoned arrows, the Bornean sun.
Like Bogoru, the fisherman, and Tagotu, the fruit-vender, Cho Seng, Mynheer Muller's valet and cook, had seen the threat the sunrise brought. The sun's copper disc was dyeing the purple and blue waters of the bay with vermilion and magentas when he pad-padded out on the veranda of the controlleur's house. ”

“ The road, leaving Amsterdam, passes beside the Dimmermeer, the polder (the drained lands are called polder) which is the deepest in Holland, and runs along the branch of the Rhine called Vecht, then winding among villas and kitchen-gardens, reaches Utrecht, which is seated in the midst of a most fertile country watered by the Rhine, crossed by canals, and sprinkled with houses and gardens. ”

“ This is the sense of the States, and this Monsieur Van Lewen hath order to acquaint you with at London. The town of Amsterdam, saith the Prince, which every one knows hath been such a friend to France, is now forwarder against them than I myself, for that they regard nothing but just their own interest; the rest he would leave to the Pensioner and Monsieur Van Beuninghen, who hath been very instrumental to bring the town of Amsterdam into the good temper it now is in. ”

“ All the iniquities and horrors of the Dutch management of the cinnamon-gardens of Ceylon, and all the infamy of the Dutch East India Company’s misrule in Java during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were stupidly mixed up with and charged against the comparatively admirable, the orderly and excellently devised culture system of Governor Van den Bosch. Contractor planters vainly urged that the only tyranny and oppression of the people came from their own village chiefs ”

“ The whole force then marched in, the Dutch companies under Colonel Pyion being first, Lord Willoughby's men being second, and Sir Philip with his Zeelanders bringing up the rear. The garrison, between five and six hundred in number, though surprised, resisted gallantly, and were all put to the sword. Of the invaders, not a single man lost his life. Sidney most generously rewarded from his own purse the adventurous soldiers who had swum the moat; and it was to his care and intelligence that the success of Prince Maurice's scheme was generally attributed. ”

“ All the toil they had undergone was forgotten in the delightful spectacle, and every man who had had a hand in it, however insignificant he might be, assumed to himself a portion of the honor which the successful execution of so gigantic an enterprise conferred on its illustrious projector. On the other hand, nothing could equal the consternation which seized the citizens of Antwerp when intelligence was brought them that the Scheldt was now actually closed, and all access from Zealand cut off. ”

“ Antwerp received, in the sixteenth century, the trade which the luxuriousness of the Flemish towns had banished; and under the government of Charles V. Antwerp was the most stirring and splendid city in the Christian world. A stream like the Scheldt, whose broad mouth, in the immediate vicinity, shared with the North Sea the ebb and flow of the tide, and could carry vessels of the largest tonnage under the walls of Antwerp, made it the natural resort for all vessels which visited that coast. Its free fairs attracted men of business from all countries. ”