Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/701

Rh himself, and learning the art of ship-building by personal experience in the dockyards of Holland. Accordingly, in the year 1697, leaving the government in the hands of three nobles, he set out incognito for the Netherlands. Upon arriving there he proceeded to Zaandam, a place a short distance from Amsterdam, and there hired out as a common laborer to a Dutch ship-builder.

Notwithstanding his disguise it was well enough known who the stranger was. Indeed there was but little chance of Peter's being mistaken for a Dutchman. The way in which he flew about, and the terrible energy with which he did everything, set him quite apart from the easy-going, phlegmatic Hollanders.

To escape the annoyance of the crowds at Zaandam, Peter left the place, and went to the docks of the East India Company in Amsterdam, who set about building a frigate that he might see the whole process of constructing a vessel from the beginning. Here he worked for four months, being known among his fellow-workmen as Baas or Master Peter.

It was not alone the art of naval architecture in which Peter interested himself; he attended lectures on anatomy, studied surgery, gaining some skill in pulling teeth and bleeding, inspected paper-mills, flour-mills, printing-presses, and factories, and visited cabinets, hospitals, and museums, thus acquainting himself with every industry and art that he thought might be advantageously introduced into his own country.

From Holland Master Peter went to England to study her superior naval establishment. Here he was fittingly received by King William III., who had presented Peter while in Holland with a splendid yacht fully armed, and who now made his guest extremely happy by getting up for him a sham sea-fight. Returning from England to Holland, Peter went thence to Vienna, intending to visit Italy; but hearing of an insurrection at home, he set out in haste for Moscow.

Peter's Reforms.—The revolt which had hastened Peter's return from the West was an uprising among the Strelitzes, a body of