Windmills By Scores, Some Grinding Corn, But Most Of Them
Pumping Water Out Of The Meadows And Pouring It Into The Channel, Stood On
The Bank And Were Swinging Their Long Arms Madly In A High Wind.
On arriving at Rotterdam, you perceive at once that you are in Holland.
The city has as many canals as streets, the canals are generally overhung
with rows of elms, and the streets kept scrupulously clean with the water
of the canals, which is salt.
Every morning there is a vigorous splashing
and mopping performed before every door by plump servant girls, in white
caps and thick wooden shoes. Our hotel stood fronting a broad sheet of
water like the lagoons at Venice, where a solid and straight stone wharf
was shaded with a row of elms, and before our door lay several huge
vessels fastened to the wharf, which looked as if they were sent thither
to enjoy a vacation, for they were neither loading nor unloading, nor did
any person appear to be busy about them. Rotterdam was at that time in
the midst of a fair which filled the open squares and the wider streets of
the city with booths, and attracted crowds of people from the country.
There were damsels from North Holland, fair as snow, and some of them
pretty, in long-eared lace caps, with their plump arms bare; and there
were maidens from another province, the name of which I did not learn,
equally good-looking, with arms as bare, and faces in white muslin caps
drawn to a point on each cheek.
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