Maese in their course, have in consequence sent at last a kind of natural instinct-outliving many down unusual supplies, and have thus, by landfreshes alone, lifted the surface of the river to the very lips as it were of the inclosing dykes; if, at such a moment as this, the unrelenting sea-wind charges onward from the west-or if it do so when the shattered ice chokes up the channel, and the inelting snows struggle against the opposing barrier -then sure destruction awaits the dykes, and resistless floods force forward their certain way. others, and carrying him, when wearied with the cares and toils of busy life, willingly back again to his paternal farm-or, where no ancestral acres tempt him, making him more earnestly toil in his other adopted calling, that he may at length be come the possessor of fields of his own, to which he may in peace retire? What can rich merchants, as a body, do with their wealth? How can a rich mercantile country best employ its accumulating gold? To traffic there is a limit. Hoarded gold does not fructify. Ships and stores of merchandise cannot alone secure permanent power and great It is thus easy to understand how, upon the Rhine, and the Elbe, and the Neva, great epochal risings of the rivers at uncertain intervals come to be recorded. A fortuitous concurrence of circum-ness. stances is required to produce these remarkable disasters—a concurrence which can neither be foreseen nor controlled-which, according to our present knowledge, may happen to-morrow, or may be delayed till the birth of a new generation. A still more rare union of causes is necessary to produce disasters of the severest kind in the northern and southern provinces at once-on the shores of the Zuyder Zee, and at the same time along the more inland banks of the river. Such was the case, however, in 1825, when a higher flood was experienced, wider in its range, and more destructive, than any other in modern times. But these calamities are not wholly evil. From these physical disasters, as from all the more striking dispensations of Providence, moral good arises. They are, probably, one of the most real and natural sources of that bond of sympathy and political union by which the United Provinces have so long been kept together. Common fears and common sufferings beget common feelings. Those who appeal to, and help each other by turns, or who at times partake together in one more wide calamity, naturally come to regard themselves as of one family-the sharers of one family fate. Gratitude is awakened on the one hand, affection for those you have served on the other, and a constant sense of mutual dependence. The voluntary contributions thus collected in the Netherlands are often very great. The sum contributed in aid of the distressed amounted in 1809 to nearly a million, and in 1825 it exceeded five millions of florins. Commerce was the source of the rapid rise of the modern kingdom of the Netherlands. The wealth of the Indies was snatched from Spain during the war of independence. Further and further towards the American main, the Dutch commanders penetrated, in quest of the richly-freighted ships of their former masters. By degrees they founded colonies of their own, and established on a surer basis that extensive commerce, which, after the struggle for freedom was over, continued to provide the means of permanently increasing the national strength and greatness. Venice and Genoa-what European cities richer and more powerful once-what of equal historic fame are poorer and humbler now? Broad and fertile acres are necessary as the permanent basis of a country's power. Sudden defeat cannot impoverish them-hostile inroads cannot remove them; the produce of the year may be destroyed, but when the storm of war has swept over them, the elements of future power remain. Under this higher instinct-for we may call it such-the individual and political wisdom of the people of the Netherlands sought investments for their increasing wealth in the country they loved so well, and for which they had so bravely fought. A community of active merchants, whose yearly gains rendered them independent of agricultural profits, was well fitted to subdue the wide extent of sandy heath and down, of lake and marsh and bog, and sea-washed slime, which their several provinces presented, and, by long perseverance, to add them to the fixed capital and permanent wealth of the nation. The history of agriculture everywhere exhibits two periods-the mechanical and the chemical. Distinctly succeeding each other at first, they become finally blended, for the enlargement of all the resources which our increasing population requires, and which instructed intelligence can supply for the production of human food. The mechanical period expends its efforts first, in draining marshes, and bogs, and lakes; next, in tapping springs ; then in the more refined drainage, which is at present enveloping Great Britain and Ireland with a network of covered ditches; and, lastly, in the contrivance of machines by which the works of the husbandman may be at once hastened and perfected, his labor lightened, and his money economized. Sweden is in the first stage of the mechanical period; vast marshes, in some instances fifty thousand acres in extent, stretch themselves over Småland on the east, and in Helsingland, Angermanland, &c., towards the north, while numberless lakes conceal improvable tracts of land. Hence the main agricultural efforts of that rising country are directed towards the removal of their superfluous waters. France, and Germany, and Ireland, are barely as yet in the second stage of drainage. Great Britain, and especially Scotland, has fairly reached the third. Whence comes the love of rural life-the affection for green fields-the strong desire for the simple pleasures of the country-of which at one time or another almost every one is more or less conscious? To till the earth-was this so laid But in combating the permanent influence of upon man as a curse, or duty, as to have become water upon the surface of their country, no people in the world have hitherto done so much-so boldly, so perseveringly, or so expensively, as the Dutch. Their works, too, have a remarkable peculiarity. In other countries the draining of a lake involves only one operation of limited expense and duration. It is done once for all. A cut is made, the water is let out, and springs and rains flow away from the drained spot forever after, by their own gravitation. But, in the Netherlands, the labor is not to make an exit for the water, but to close up every avenue for its entrance, and to bale out, by unsleeping machinery, what falls from heaven on the new land, or rises from uncontrollable springs. The dykes prevent the entrance of waters-but the pumps and canals are equally necessary to compel the exit of those which are already present. Few persons have an idea of the magnitude and cost of the larger dykes. The foundation of a seadyke is from 120 to 150 feet in width. It is cased externally with stone, usually from the rocks of Norway; and a road runs along the top, or immediately within it. Where the exposure is great, the expense of repairs is in proportion to it. Of the well-known dyke at West Capelle, in the island of Walcheren, it is said, that, had it been originally made of solid copper, the actual cost would have been less than has been already expended in building and repairing it. In forming an idea of the power which will be required to bale out the water from a lake, or to maintain it in the state of a polder, three considerations are to be taken into account. First, the depth of water in the lake at its mean level, which will indicate the power necessarily to be kept in operation for a certain time, merely to dry the lake. Second, the average yearly fall of rain at the spot, and the average yearly evaporation, the difference between which is the amount of water from heaven which is to be removed yearly by permanent pumpings. And, lastly, the quantity of spring or ooze water which is likely to make its way into the hollow land. Six, eight, and ten feet, are mean depths of water which have frequently been removed from the surface of lands, now long empoldered and kept dry by machinery. In the Zuid plas, near Gouda, the pumping of which was begun in the summer of 1838, the mean depth of the water to be pumped out was 13 feet, and the level of this water was eight and two fifths feet below that of high water in the Yssel. To this latter level the whole was raised into a high basin or reservoir, that it might flow away on the opening of the sluice, as the water in the river fell—so that the thirteen feet of water being pumped out in the first instance to dry the bed, all the superfluous rain and ooze water must subsequently continue to be raised to a height of twenty-two feet. means uncommon in other parts of Holland. The inclosures, called polders, consist either of land which is naturally low, or of bogs from which the peat has been dug for fuel, and which have│(Simons, p. 142.) Such a height of lift is by no afterwards been embanked and artificially dried. We have been unable to learn the extent of poldered land in the Netherlands; and we are not aware that it has ever been accurately ascertained. Simons, in his work on the application of steam to the pumping of the polders, names 436 polders containing 194,000 bonders or hectares, which are worked or kept dry by 815 mills. This gives 445 hectares, or 1100 acres, to each polder; and, without taking into account the successive lifts which, in most parts of the country, the same water has to undergo, it allows 238 bonders, or about 600 acres, to be drained by each mill. Though its frequent mists convey the impression that the climate of the Netherlands is excessively moist, yet the annual fall of rain is by no means excessive. The mean deduced from the observations of nearly a hundred years, is 25 and one tenth inches, while the mean annual evaporation amounts to 22 and six tenth inches: leaving only two inches of rain to be pumped from the polders in the course of the year. To lift such a quantity of water from the land, would seem to demand no great outlay of power; but the rain falls most largely in winter, and the evaporation is greatest in summer.* Occasional very heavy falls of rain also come down, which alone would for a length of time flood the land; and it is of especial consequence that the surface should be laid dry early in It is stated, we do not know on what authority, that there exist about 9000 of these mills in Holland. Assuming this number, and that each mill drains 600 acres, the extent of poldered land would amount to five millions four hundred thou-spring, and should be kept long dry in the autumn sand acres. That this is greatly beyond the truth, is obvious from the fact, that, in 1833, the total cultivated land in the kingdom of the Netherlands, exclusive of Limburg and Luxembourg, amounted only to five millions three hundred thousand acres, while two millions lay uncultivated. All we are safe in concluding, therefore, with our present information, is, that a very large proportion of the surface of the low countries owes its agricultural value and its habitable condition to the operation of countless windmills. By slow degrees only can the vast capital have been amassed, by which, through the addition of polder to polder, the productive surface and agricultural resources of this part of Europe have been so largely increased. and early winter. All these circumstances demand the provision of a much greater amount of mechanical power, than, from a mere comparison of the average annual fall and evaporation, might be considered necessary. The spring or ooze water varies with the nature of the soil, with the substance and construction of the dykes, with the proximity of high canals and *The fall of rain and the evaporation respectively in the two halves of the year, is nearly as follows, in inches :— Fall of rain, Evaporation, Total. Summer. Winter. 25.15 22.6 247 rivers, and with the age of the polder itself. | entire management, of all these dykes, canals, and Therefore, no correct estimate can be made of it drainages, has, from the earliest times, been more from purely theoretical considerations. rience must be the main guide in ascertaining the Long before the Spanish dominion, the provincial Expe- or less a care of the government for the time being. increase of power which different localities may dukes and governors knew how to extend and from this cause require. The average result of strengthen their power by the improvement and experience, in reference to the rain and ooze extension of the dykes. In the Spanish times, the taken together, is, that all the water which is to general oversight of every extensive local drainbe removed from 1500 acres of land, may be lifted age was in the hands of the crown; and the apone ell (3.28 feet) by one first-rate windmill; or pointment of bailiffs, dÿkgraafs, and heemraads to that, if steam be employed, one horse-power is each, was a valuable part of the patronage of the equal to lift, one ell high, all the natural water actual governor, or viceroy, of the Netherlands. from 300 acres of land.-(Simons, p. 25.) Once, therefore, erect the dykes, canals, reservoirs, slui- erything which belonged to the church and the During the war of independence, when evces, and pumps-thus clear the land of water-crown was confiscated, and, to meet the national and to keep it dry afterwards does not appear to wants, as far as possible converted into money, be a very herculean task. the despair of the Prince of Orange had been so these appointments were sold. Previous to 1576, great, that he had seriously proposed to the pa But the height to which the water is to be lifted must be taken into account; and on this indeed the question of probable profit or loss in all drain-triots of Holland and Zealand, that they should ing speculations, especially turns. soil which gave no security to freedom." If the water, destroy their dykes and "abandon to the waves a in this year, when hope began again to animate But them, and the spirits of the people were risingwhen a new confidence in the stability of their country had been created, and the states were as in the Zuid plas, has to be lifted nearly seven ells, or twenty-two feet, then every 300 acres will require the employment of seven horses' power to keep it dry; and the annual minimum profit from the drained land must be greater in like proportion, before the necessary expenditure can prove remu-making new efforts to raise the means of prosenerative. The cost of erecting a mill varies from sixteen to twenty-eight hundred pounds, while that of maintaining and working it is about sixty pounds a year. But the dykes, ditches, and sluices, have also to be made and maintained. annual expense of maintaining mills and dykes Yet the total rarely exceeds five or six shillings an acre, even when the lift is eighteen or twenty feet. cuting the war-the city of Rotterdam purchased of the states of Holland the bailieship or dÿkgraafship of Schieland for four thousand pounds, of forty groats to the pound. The polders of Schietwo canals which terminate, or have their most land are drained by the Rotte and by the Schie, important sluices, in the town of Rotterdam. It The draining of a plas (lake) or marsh, and the that the chief authority over them should be vested was, therefore, for the general benefit of all parties transformation of it into a polder, is usually exe- in the city-but especially important that the pacuted in one of two ways. Certain individuals triot burghers should have the command of the consider the speculation worth entering into; upon chained-up waters, which it might, on occasion, which, having obtained from government, or pur-be necessary to let loose for their own preservation, chased from private parties, the necessary conces-or for the destruction of the enemy. sion or authority, they form themselves into a company. They fence the plas round with a double dyke and a ring canal; they erect mills, make the land dry, and then divide it among themselves, or sell it to others. The purchasers nom-cheapest and most efficient methods of preserving inate a dÿkgraaf, who presides over a board of management, under whose directions the dykes, mills, and sluices, are kept in an efficient state, at the joint expense of all. velopment proceeds withont immediate reference to Now that better times have come, and social dehostile invasion, the functions of local boards of management are confined to the application of the the canals and dykes, and of maintaining the polders in the most profitable condition. special supervision of the sea-walls and great river But the Or, when the undertaking is large, and the they concern the national good, continues to be in dykes, and of all canals and sluices, in so far as profit doubtful-as in the case of the Zuid plas, the hands of the government and the general the Haerlem sea, and others-the work is under-states. taken by the government. The land is dyked and laid dry at the public expense, and is then sold;partment of civil engineers has been created-the The general superintendence, supervision, or to administer. The Dutch are proverbially a slow, but they body of water, and, with double speed, a second are a progressive, people. The physical character barrier is overcome, until a third and a fourth lake of their country has moulded and fashioned their in succession are merged in one widening expanse. habits; and the one idea to which its early con- Thus the watery dominion kept extending itself dition gave birth, has regulated every important over the entire country. The Haarlem meer had step in their social progress. They began, as is leaped from lakelet to lakelet, engulfing a large done now on the coast of Sleswick, to enclose the tract of land; in the same manner, that the northfat, slimy, self-raised banks of the rivers, and the ern waters had long ago broken the broad southern shores of their stiller seas, that the higher waters barrier by which they were separated from the and tides might no longer overflow them. Dykes historical lake of Flevo, and had given rise to the were next drawn round those portions of land present wide and salt southern sea (Zuyder Zee.) which were dry only at the lowest waters. Then To preserve the existing soil, therefore, as well as the thought occurred of employing machinery to acquire new, and to lessen the cost of erecting worked by the wind, to dry such land more effec- and maintaining barriers against the roughening tually, and at all times. This again taught them waters of so many lakes, it became a matter both to be independent of a natural outfall or of unsteady of economy and national policy, to convert them tides, and still lower lands were drained, till by de- into polders. grees they have come to lift the water from twenty to twenty-five feet; so that at present it is the expense of lifting which chiefly limits the depth of their poldered fields. The progress of general knowledge has greatly facilitated the execution of such works. The first polders were comparatively small inclosures. Ambacht (manor) after ambacht was secured. These From the rich slimes of the sea and rivers, they were gradually united into Heemraadschaps and ventured upon marshy bogs, where a black peat-Hochheemraadschaps-that is, into large districts, unmixed in some cases, in others partially solidi- superintended by separate heemraads, or inspectors, fied by sand and clay-presented less inducement to the cultivator. The shallow lakes with peaty bottoms succeeded these; and though the balance often trembled when profit and loss were placed in the opposing scales, yet still adventure went on, and the wealth brought in by commerce procured for many a landless merchant the comfort of a private Jagt, or hunting-ground. The natural fuel of the Netherlands is peatthe brown spongy peat of Frieseland, and the black, solid, and more earthy peat of North Holland. The surface of the bogs of the latter country is rarely above the level of the sea. From Rotterdam to the Helder they cover a very large area, and have proved rich mines of fuel for many ages. But where the peat was extracted, stagnant water took its place. Scooped up from beneath this gathering water, as long as any available turf existed, or as long as it could easily be reached, the quaking bogs of old time were succeeded by lakes -often deep, sometimes of considerable extent, scattered in numbers over the country, and frequently separated only by narrow intervals of unsteady land between. Could not the drainage of natural lakes be extended to the exhausted bogs? Would not the more solid bottom of a worn-out turbary yield a better soil than the surface of a native moss? The depth of the water was now no objection; and soon, where peat earth had formerly been fished up, cattle were seen to graze, and flax and corn to luxuriate and ripen. Another consideration also guided their proceedings. Their many lakes and lakelets are swept over by an unresisted wind. Unlike the lakes of Goldsmith's "Traveller," which "slumber in the storm," their waters roughen, and fret, and dash themselves against their feeble banks. The peaty soil gives way—the water flows on gladly, and two lakes become united into one. Another storm propels with greater force the larger and single boards of management. Larger encircling canals and reservoir canals of many miles in length,† formed time after time, increased the efficacy of the drainage, while the cost per acre was diminished. It thus became evident that great undertakings were most likely to remunerate, and that wealthy companies would reap the surest profits. The limited extent of any private means has compelled the government occasionally to execute the more extensive drainages; disposing of them afterwards to private individuals. Such was the case with the Groot Zuid plas; by the drying of which the extent of water between Rotterdam and Gouda has been greatly diminished, and the danger from it lessened. This work was begun in 1836, and has now been for some time completed. Two questions about this time began to be agitated in the Netherlands. In various parts of the country attempts had been made, from time to time, on a small scale, to supersede the wind-mill by the steam-engine in the draining of the land—but without any satisfactory success. Through the influence chiefly of Mr. Simons, a more skilful trial was made at the expense of government, by the erection of two engines of thirty horse power on the Zuid plas. By the use of proper precautions, this trial was attended with complete success. advantages of steam are, that the power is under The *We can form à priori very little idea of the actual power of the wind in propelling bodies of water, and causing them to accumulate in its own direction. Smeaton states, that in a canal four miles long, the water at one end has been raised four inches higher than at the other, by the blowing of the wind along the canal; and Rennell mentions, that in a lake ten miles broad, and six feet deep, one side has been driven to the other by a strong wind in such volume as to render it sixteen feet deep, while the windward side was laid entirely dry. + In North Holland there are about eighty polders comwhich are now all pumped up into a common canal reserprising upwards of one hundred and fifty thousand acres, voir, the Schermer Boezem. are not easily changed, nor the tools forsaken with which, for hundreds of years, our forefathers have performed the work which still remains for us to do. But in the battle of the powers, the victory is now palpably with steam; and the winds must be content slowly to recede. perfect control, and can be exactly adjusted to the | Russia, and Germany, and America, for her defiwork that is to be performed. During wind and cient corn, and upon the world at large for outlets calm it is equally ready for work, and can be set to her manufactures. Let railroads annihilate on or let off as the exigencies of the seasons require. inter-national barriers, making the broad land as The number of machines to be erected is also very free to pass over as the sea, and let the post-office much fewer; the cost of erecting and maintaining and the electric telegraph mingle by millions the them is less, and their work is always more effect-kind thoughts, and the more serious reflections, ually done. But the customs of many generations and the tidings of mental and physical progress, from all the corners of the earth—and then, neither the whims of autocrats, nor the squabbles of royal houses, nor disputed marriages, nor dyspeptic ministers, nor polemical differences, nor desert corners of land, will long be permitted to endanger the lives and comfort of millions of human beings. Under the possibility, in which the patriotic Hollanders have discerned an obstacle to the general introduction of steam into their national works, we see only a sign and beginning of further good-the first heating of the bar from which a new link is to be formed, to bind her more closely to the community of nations. They need never fear being deprived of fuel. Even on the supposition of hostilities with all coal-producing countries at the same time, as they are said to have once sold gunpowder to their enemies, their enemies will find ways of letting them get their coal. Another obstacle, however, not wholly discreditable to so patriotic a people, rose up against the employment of steam. The boiler fire must be fed, and fuel must be provided. The digging of the native fuel has formed many of the lakes which the steam-engine is to be employed to dry. Will you make new lakes in order to feed your fires? or will you work your engines with imported coal, and hazard the entire drainage of the country upon the doubtful maintenance of European peace? If nation is to be forever separated from nation-if, dwelling apart in proud and distinct individuality, they are grudgingly to recognize the virtues and deserts of those from whom only a river, or a strait, or a custom-house, divides them-if the brotherhood to which Christianity appeals, is never to become more than a name-if the bountiful provisions of Providence are to be forever thwarted, and what one corner of the world produces abundantly, another shall not be permitted to share in, lest the one should cease to force the growth of the same produce from its own unwilling soil, or the other, upon any whim of its rulers, should refuse to part with its excess-if such things are the best, then let England gird her wooden walls more tightly round her, let Holland heighten and strengthen her dykes, let railroads and Atlantic steamers be forbidden, and let coast-guards and Zollbeamten more jealousy watch all shores and frontiers, that man hold not inter-communion with man, and communities be thus gradually drawn into dependence on each other. As soon as experiment and discussion had satisfied the public mind of the powers and capacities of steam in the draining of lakes and maintaining of polders, the recollection was revived of certain greater undertakings which had at times been projected, but which, on account of their difficulty and expense, had been delayed or abandoned. The meer of Haarlem, in the course of the sixteenth century, began to assume a very formidable aspect. At first comparatively inconsiderable in size, the wind caught its waters, lifted them over its natural bounds, and at once united five adjoining lakes in one broad expanse. Every new storm added to its conquests from the adjoining land; and it threatened, at no distant period, to convert Horth Holland into a separate island. This catastrophe has been averted, only perhaps by the lofty downs which separate its northern extremity from the sea. At present, the meer covers an area of about seventy square miles, and the works of defence erected from time to time to arrest its ravages, require an annual outlay of four or five thousand pounds to maintain them. But if national independence be consistent with the largest amount of mutual demand and supply between kingdom and kingdom-if commerce and intercourse forge common links among communi- It was in the beginning of the seventeenth centies, whether near or distant, which it will equally tury, when so much was daily occurring to aniinjure all suddenly to snap asunder-if general mate and inspire the Hollanders, that the greatest traffic create new wants everywhere, which home of their existing drainages were performed. Withproductions cannot satisfy-then the more one out a rival on the seas-possessed of twelve hunnation, in this sense, is made to depend upon an-dred large merchant vessels, and seventy thousand other, the more numerous will become the guar-seamen-building two thousand vessels of all sizes antees for that lasting peace by which the highest in a year, and enriched by the prodigious success advancement of our race is to be promoted. of their Indian trade, there was no attempt to which Let Holland then depend upon England and their spirit was unequal-nothing which wealth Belgium for the coal which is to dry her polders. could accomplish that they were unable to achieve. Let Norway, and Russia, and Belgium, and the Among the remarkable men of this active period United States of America, depend upon the Eng-was Jan Adrianszoon Leeghwater. Born in 1575, lish market for the sale of their timber, their hemp, in De Ryp, a village of North Holland, he early and flax, and cotton. Let England depend upon distinguished himself as an engineer and mill |