Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 127.djvu/631

Rh  in making the acquaintance of an austere but comparatively adventurous mariner, owner of a tjalk of sixty tons. Captain Sluring knew as much of the Zuyder Zee as most men, and was willing to risk himself to a certain extent in exploring. But he stipulated that he should never have to sail of a Sunday, or when he did not like the look of the weather. That second condition shows the risks that seafaring men must run in these inland waters, for Sluring did not lack courage; and another of the preliminary arrangements of the party was equally suggestive in a different way. They had to arrange the means of storing a great provision of good drinking-water, for in all the districts they intended to visit, the water was so brackish as to be "detestable in taste, and prejudicial to the health of those who are unaccustomed to it;" which goes to confirm our assertion, that the Dutch are excusable if they indulge somewhat freely in gin.

The voyage began with a disembarkation on the isle of Marken. Many ordinary tourists must have sighted it, yet the inhabitants live in almost perpetual isolation. They expect to be swamped every winter, and take their precautions accordingly. Groups of the houses are clustered on the top of artificial mounds, where the people take refuge, with all their portable property, during the annual inundations. At these times communication between the hamlets can only be kept up by boat. Live stock they have none, although the island is all in pasture, except a cow or two to prove the rule, and a few disconsolate sheep. They cut their grass to sell on the mainland, living chiefly by their hay and their fishing. When they die, they are "flitted," as we should say in Scotland, to the top of one of the other mounds, more strongly bastioned than the rest, and bearing the name of the kerkhof. Of course there is neither wood nor stone in the island, so that their houses are built entirely of imported timber; and in the event of a fire breaking out, it generally spreads to a conflagration. Considering how often the Markeners are washed out or burned out, it is strange that the little island should boast some very remarkable collections of old specimens of domestic art. In more than one of the cottages, to say nothing of quaint delft ware and Japanese porcelain, of venerable glass and wonderful metal-work, M. Havard found a half-dozen of venerable armoires of beautiful workmanship, admirably preserved. It shows that there is no village in Holland so remote that the good housewives do not indulge their pet vanity of acquisition, accumulating treasures in a state-chamber, which they only open at intervals to provoke the envy of their neighbours.

Opposite to Marken lies Monnikendam, characteristically named after its founders, and the first works they undertook. In the thirteenth century or earlier, the monks in the northern German convents used occasionally to throw off swarms like bees, sending out their surplus population like the Scandinavian vikings, although the adventures they went in quest of were spiritual. It was a wandering band of the kind that set up the first tabernacles in Marken, and made a settlement on the coast opposite. The arm of the sea that lay between the two monasteries naturally took the name of the Monnikenmeer; and the monks in the mainland having begun by damming, their settlement was naturally christened the monks' dam. Monnikendam is now a place of as much consequence as some of its more northerly neighbours; yet in the days when it had its share of foreign trade, it must have supported a far larger population than at present. Now it would seem, from M. Havard's description, that the people are nodding over their milk-pails, feeling they have nothing particular to do, between the hours when the cows must be attended to, when once the cheese-presses have done their work for the day. The streets and places were grass-grown and deserted; there were few barges to stir the duck-weed on the canals; and the arrival of the little vessel that brought the strangers would have created a sensation, had there been inhabitants enough abroad for a sensation to spread among. As it was, when, in the way of business, they called on a "tinman" some ten minutes after setting foot on shore, they found that the news of their arrival had reached him already by some mysterious means. Yet these drowsy Monnikendammers, phlegmatic as they seem, are not without a sense of poetry. The monks' sea was a poetic appellation enough for the channel between Marken and the mainland; but in modern times it has been rechristened as the "Sea of Gold," which strikes us as a singularly graceful way of paying a tribute of gratitude to the richness of the bottom over which it rolls. The neighbouring dairy-farmers dredge up the sandy mud and spread it as manure over their water-meadows, which are renowned for magnificent pasturage. The next town to Monnikendam is no other than Edam, 