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32 the lakes struggling to get out, and the overflowing canals, rivers, and ditches, in many districts there is no water fit to swallow: our poor Hollanders must go dry, or drink wine and beer, or send far into the inland, to Utrecht, and other favored

localities, for that precious fluid older than Adam, yet young as the morning dew. Sometimes, indeed, the inhabitants can swallow a shower, when they are provided with any means of catching it; but generally they are like the albatross-haunted