Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/314

276 pasture lands with thousands of wind-mills and quiet orderly villages will mark the site which is still a waste and a sea in our atlases!

Leaving Amsterdam I came to the historic town of Zandaam within a quarter of an hour. What a forest of wind-mills here! What vast store-houses of timber here, what an industry in wood work and planks! An Emperor of a great country once came to this place and worked in disguise as a carpenter to benefit his kingdom! The very cottage in which Peter the Great worked is still pointed out to visitors. But Peter could not preserve his incognito long, and so went back to Amsterdam where he worked unmolested in the Dockyards of the company. The history of kings and princes does not often preserve episodes like this!

The next important station after I left Zandaam was Alkmaar meaning All-sea, as the place was, before human industry made it into a town. The town now contains a population of nearly 15,000 and is renowned in Dutch history for its stout and successful resistance against the Spanish in 1573. The place is now the centre of the extensive cheese trade of North Holland. The market meets on Fridays and is frequented by the whole of the peasantry of North Holland in their quaint dresses and gaily painted waggons.

The last place on the line is Helder where the North Holland Canal terminates and runs into the sea. In the last century