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Dutch country house is able to be enjoyed. It is also possible to be somewhat precise in describing the character of these demesnes, because, unlike the English squires, the founders of these houses had no variety of site to select from. They built either close to the sand hills or inland. In either case the site was a dead flat, and the charm of outdoor surroundings had to be created, mainly by planting woods, cutting lakes and canals, encouraging the growth of wild flowers, breeding poultry, creating gardens, and preserving wild-fowl, pheasants, and hares, which swarm in the "polder" meadows. On none of these objects, except perhaps the fowls, does Dutch taste spend the money and time necessary to give that finish and completeness which we understand to be meant when we speak of a house being "well kept up." It is not that the owner cannot afford it, but that he does not think it necessary.

There is an English belief that "Dutch gardening" is something very quaint, formal, and precise. The belief must date from an earlier period of Dutch history. Even those two great adjuncts of garden neatness, the roller and lawn mower, are almost unknown in Holland. The gardeners live under the belief that the way to make a lawn is to cut it as seldom as possible, and never to walk on it. As the subsoil is usually loose peaty sand, the grass is always thin, and the edges ragged. A few tulip-beds and begonias and plenty of flowering shrubs make up the flowergarden, but the contrast of the ponds, canals, and tall woods, with the good brick mansion, makes up for the want of color. The house itself is nearly always built of small, very hard, redbrown bricks, like those used in the Blizabethan houses of England. The windows are tall, and the frames set in flush with the wall--another mark of good sense in building-and the roof is high and steep. Often the front has a handsome pediment, or a stone loggia and flight of steps. In this case there is generally a corresponding formality in the lines of canal or cuttings through the surrounding woods. But in most of

these properties the canals wind almost without design among the clearingsthey can scarcely be called lawns-and the thick wild coppices abut on both without bank or fence. These woods are the principal charms of the demesne. They surround every house of consequence, and differ from our English woods both in the growth of trees and underwood, and in the lesser vegetation of weeds and flowers. The greater part of the haut bois is elm, the sous bois mainly hazel, and trees and underwood alike are planted as thickly together as possible. This forces upward growth, and, like most things in Holland, has a definite purpose. The underwood is used almost entirely to make the fascines which form the lowest layer on which the great dykes are built, and experience has shown that it is desirable that these fascines should be as long as possible. They are bought by government, and shipped by the hundred thousand to those parts of the coast where the dykes are being renewed. The high trees usually stand for about seventy years before being felled. A really fine ancient tree, like those in our parks, is seldom seen, except in the great wood at the Hague. The subsoil of the woods is of the lightest kind, mainly black sand, never damp, harboring no mould or mildew or unwholesome rotten vegetation, but warm, dry, and covered with a wonderful growth of wild flowers. Red campion, yellow nettle, dead nettles, and wood-anemones grow to double the size which they commonly reach in England, and sweet-briar seems native to the soil. Soft sandy paths wind in every direction through the woods, and cross and re-cross the canals by nicely made bridges of lattice-work. It is difficult to define the boundaries of garden and wood, and pheasants, rabbits, and wild ducks roam pretty much where they please over beds and borders. These woods form famous playgrounds for the children. In one the writer found a small "clearing" quite surrounded by trees, in which the little boys and girls of the house had made their gardens in the sandy soil, and

stuck them full of broken bits of chestnuc with the young leaves on.

The Dutch proprietor does not, as a rule, amuse himself with a home farm. If he does, he probably has English relatives-for the connection between the upper classes of Holland and our own has remained unbroken in several of the leading families since the days of William III. But poultry-farming, or rather, the maintenance of a stock of rare or curious Eastern fowls, is a common hobby. These are kept in elaborately ornamented houses and runs, and with golden pheasants, peacocks, and other native birds, make a pretty addition to the live-stock of the house. Whatever variety taste and tree-planting give to the demesne round the house, the adjacent ground is always the same. There is none of the gradual transition from park to meadow, and meadow to cornfields of an English mansion. The woods are bounded by a canal, or a ditch-a summer-house over the ditch being usually the last piece of "finish" added to the property. Beyond the ditch lie the "polders." These are the grass meadows, artificially drained, which form the normal scenery of the "cow-keeping" provinces of Holland. There they are differentiated as dry polders and wet polders, but to our own way of thinking they are all wet. There is, however, a real difference, and when the eye becomes used to them the distinction is obvious. In wet polders the lines of water and grass are almost equal, and the vegetation is that of the marsh-side. The grass is coarse, and myriads of king-cups and cuckoo flowers cover the ground. In the bright sun of early summer the alternation of shining lines of water and of bright green and yellow between them is picturesque enough. Down these strips of dry ground the cows graze, two and two, like young ladies at a boarding school out for a walk. The dry polders are cut for hay. There the lines of water are narrow, and they can be crossed on foot. But the Dutch farmers, goodnatured and polite at all times, strongly object to trespass, and resent an excursion through their spring grass, even if

it be only a few inches high, as strongly as an English owner would a trespass into a knee-deep hayfield in June. As the cows are kept indoors throughout the winter, the polders then lie perfectly quiet, and are full of wild fowl, not massed in numbers on separate sheets of water, but scattered everywhere up and down the ditches. Nearly half the wild ducks brought to the London market are shot or netted in the Dutch polders, and it is noticed that nearly ninety per cent. of these are mallards. In very hard weather they leave not only the frozen polders but the whole area of Holland, and fly across the North Sea to the coasts of Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk. This is because the Dutch coast offers no food for them, the entire sea-board being one vast stretch of sand.

In spring the coast birds, godwits, redshanks, peewits, and oyster-catchers, migrate to the polders to nest and bring up their young. Their incessant calls and whistles, and restless flight, suggest an idea of wildness and isolation which it is difficult to reconcile with the highly domestic character of the other animals which there cover the meadows; the jacketed herds of cows waiting to be milked in the open, while the barge waits in the dyke to carry the brass milk-can to market, and the sheep, tethered on the embankments that they may not stray and drink the water below, in which lie the germs of "fluke" and other parasite creatures of the marsh.

Along the whole coast line of North and South Holland the change from this highly artificial area of polder and canal to a region, wild, uninhabited, and left almost entirely to the influence of nature, is as sudden as it is unexpected. When a Dutch gentleman feels the impulse which makes an Englishman rent a Scotch or Yorkshire moor, he hires an estate in the sand dunes. There in spring he can pass hours without seeing a human being, in air as crisp and pure as that of a Norfolk heath, surrounded by vegetation as characteristic and specialized as the flora of the Alps, and by a mixed and

teeming population of the birds of the shore, the forest, and the moorland, all living and thriving among conditions of soil and climate to which they have adapted their habits much as the shrubs have modified their form and growth to suit this arid tract. Except, perhaps, in the sandhills of the Moray Firth, described by the late Charles St. John, we have nothing quite like the "dunes." They are no ordinary row of sand-mounds by the sea, but a tract of tumultuous ground, often extending for a couple of miles inland, where the visitor is surrounded by a bewildering profusion of broken, conical hills, sometimes rising to a height of two hundred feet. The whole scene leaves a sense of confusion on the mind, which has a logical basis. These hills ought according to the ordinary course of nature, to be connected in systems, to be intersected by continuous valleys, and to conform to a certain order. That is the unconscious feeling which arises in the mind of any one who has lived among hilly landscape as it is ordinarily made. But here the usual process of the formation of landscape has been reversed. Instead of being carved out by water, the hills have been built up by wind, which night and day from century to century blows in a grey rain of sandgrains from the fringe of the North Sea, a rain which builds in place of destroying. It forms hills and hollows, but neither lines of hills nor continuous valleys. Sometimes the polders run up to the very edge of the dunes, separated from them by a narrow ditch, on one side of which grow the plants of the marsh, on the other the herbage of the desert. More often a belt of sound meadows with a soil of mixed peat and sand intervenes. Sheep can be fed all the year round on these without danger from fluke. Then the dunes begin, at first in little rolling mounds, and gradually rising into steep hills and hollows. The seaward side undergoes a kind of cultivation. Wherever the sand is blowing, it is planted with little branches of maram grass, or "helm," as it is called in Holland. This is a State work, supervised by a kind of local gov

ernment board exercising general control over this natural barrier in the interests of the public. It can even compel owners to kill down the rabbits, if their numbers threaten to destroy the cohesion of the surface. But the greater part of the hills is covered by natural vegetation, so beautiful and so adapted to its place that the visitor is kept in a constant state of admiration as he recognizes its place in the general scheme of nature round. When the sand begins to set among the "helm" it is soon covered by the dwarfed vegetation of the dunes. This reduction of plants to almost microscopic size is a common phenomenon of barren or inclement tracts. It is seen in the upper levels of mountains and on the fringe of the "barren lands" of North America. But there climate rather than soil is at fault. In the dunes the climate is perfect, and the soil only is deficient. The plants live on air, not by water, and flourish gaily in a kind of vegetable Liliput. The first to appear are tiny spots and spores of moss, among and around which is fine grass hardly higher than the pile of plush velvet. Among this are wild pansies and blue violets, so tiny that an elf of the court of Queen Mab might wear them in his buttonhole. A little scarlet-leaved creeper, with white blossoms and orget-me-not flowers of the brightest blue, but no larger than a pin's head, also grow thickly in the grass. Bushes dwindle to creeping plants. A dwarf-willow runs over the sand, and blossoms with masses of green flowers, on which the bees work busily, walking from flower to flower on the sand. The birch becomes subterranean, descending on to and below the surface like a strawberry runner and throwing out leaves from the ground. Brambles do the same, and that beautiful bush the buckthorn, with grey leaves, orange flowers, and short thorns, dwindles to the size of rest-harrow. Further on in the dunes, where the hills grow higher and more breezy and the hollows deep and stifling, the vegetation increases in size until it becomes normal. The moss is thick and deep, the grass long and

rank, the buckthorn forms thickets, and the willows are large enough to shelter innumerable small land birds. Dense copses of fir and pine cover the inner dunes, and in these the song of the nightingale, the call of the cuckoo, and the crow of the cock-pheasant are heard from every side in the spring days. Hundreds of rabbits and big hares are moving in the hills, and pairs of partridges whirr up from the hollows. Peewits, oyster-catchers, and curlew also nest in numbers in the dunes; their presence might be expected there by any naturalist. But the number of singing birds and game birds in this apparently waterless region is quite astonishing. On the writer's first expedition into the dunes he pointed out this anomaly to a friend who had been some years resident in Holland, and remarked that the appearance of birds in this way is described by travellers in the Soudan and Arabian deserts as a sure indication of the presence of water. So it is in the dunes of Holland. When the North Sea canal was cut some English engineers were discussing the need for a good water supply for the Hague. As all the land is flat, except in the big sand-hills, a pure supply seemed an impossibility. A sportsman present, who knew the dunes well, declared that to his knowledge there was fresh water in the sand-hills. There were certain spots, he said, where the grass was always green, and where, after rain, hares and birds came to drink. This was found to be the case. The Municipality of the Hague acted on the hint, and cut a deep trench, some two miles in length and twenty yards wide at the bottom, through the heart of the dunes four miles from the town. This is one of the many surprises awaiting the explorer of the sand-hills. After walking for miles in the waterless dunes he is confronted by this trench, like a deep railway cutting, at the bottom of which lies the long dark line of water, lapping against the timber which lines the lowest levels of the trench, and bordered by masses of burdocks, willow-herb, meadow-sweet, and other stream-side plants. In autumn there is capital rough shooting in the dunes,

especially in those belonging to the queen of Holland. Teams of spaniels are the best dogs for use, as the cover is often thick, and the swarms of rabbits lie out in the "helm," buckthorn bushes, and little dwarf-pine copses. The great art of rabbiting in the dunes is to creep carefully to the top of the sand-hill, then run over the crest, and get a snapshot at the rabbits as they disappear on the other side. The partridges lie well in the hollows, and at certain times there are plenty of woodcock, which feed in the wet "polders" at night and lie in the dunes by day. There is another form of sport of a humble kind very dear to the poorer people, who have scraped out little farms of a few acres on the edge of the dunes, and grow crops of vegetables and potatoes on the peat uncovered by their labor. It is the catching of small birds on "vinkie baans." A "baan" is the Dutch name for any flat place, and "vinkies" are, of course, our “finches." In spring not a bird is molested in the country, except those, like the plovers and redshanks, whose eggs are eaten, but in the autumn migration every small bird which arrives is, if possible, netted or snared. The tens of thousands of hen chaffinches which cross the North Sea are the main harvest of the season, as they are used to garnish dishes of pheasants and other game. The "vinkie baans" are smooth places levelled near the netters' huts. Call birds, birds in cages, and chaffinches tied to strings, surround the clap-nets; and in these from two hundred to three hundred chaffinches a day are taken, the wholesale price for which is 38. 4d. a hundred. As the season goes on the number decreases but the price rises; so the "vinkie baan" is still profitable. Woodcocks are also netted in the rides in the woods. But no one can do this without a license, and such licenses are only issued to landowners. In the absence of running streams the woodcock can find no food in Holland when a frost sets in. Till then they are plentiful through October and November, and even later in a mild season. Fishing does not rank high among the country pursuits of Holland; though as a busi

ness, on the coast, it is managed with gigs to race abreast. A score of entries great skill and profit. The salmon is not uncommon. The horses are netting in the upper tidal waters of the owned by men of all degrees, count, Scheldt is also practised with great suc- baron, or farmer, and the gigs picked cess. But there are no trout; and tench out with gold, and the animals decoare the main object of the canal fisher- rated with ribbons make a fine show. man. In April the tench begin to move, The pairs go off with a flying start, at and travel in great numbers to different the sound of a bugle, and if the two waters from those which they lay in vehicles are not level when they pass during the winter. Then they are the line the bugle sounds again, and netted, and later in the year, when they they start afresh. The horses are are in better condition, are angled for. steadied, and as they once more pass But the people are habitually too busy the line the driver shakes the reins-for to take readily to the contemplative no whip is allowed, and the pair fly recreation of the "bank angler." down the avenue at top speed, their What they really enjoy is a fair, skat- hind legs tucked under them, and their ing, or the one distinctly Dutch sport, fore feet coming out like pistons. the Hardriverij. This delightful word When the final heats are run the excite(pronounced "hard-drivery") is Dutch ment grows intense. Unlike our flat for a trotting match. It was from Hol- racing, the Hardriverij victory often land, through the old Dutch settlers of falls to some comparatively poor owner the colony, before new Amsterdam was of a trotter. The count and the farmer taken by the fleets of Charles II. and shout encouragement as their gigs rush re-named New York, that our American by, and the friends of each are equally cousins got their taste for trotting demonstrative in their different ways. horses. All classes, from the nobleman If the farmer wins the success is celeto the farmer, grow excited over the brated that evening with an enthusiasm survivals of the chariot race, and their which could not be exceeded in Yorklevel roads have naturally led to the shire. The Dutch are generally considbreeding of horses exactly suited for ered a phlegmatic race; but they keep gig driving at high speed. The breed is an immense reserve of excitement indigenous to Friesland, though many strictly suppressed, and when this finds are bred in Guelderland. Most of the vent, not even Italians can be wilder. horses are shaped like a small edition That evening half-a-dozen well-to-do of the English shire horse, short and farmers and their wives may be met compact, with very strong quarters and dancing arm in arm down the Spui well sloped shoulders. They do not Straat, singing at the top of their voices, show the quality of the Norfolk or the owner of the winner beating time as Orloff trotter, as the neck and head are he dances backwards in front of them. coarser, and they have generally a good deal of hair at the heels; but for pace, over a short course, it is doubtful if either could equal them. The trotting matches are run in heats like coursing matches, except that in each a horse must win the best out of three courses. At the Hague these races are held in a fine avenue running from the great wood to the "Maalibaan" or parade ground. The course is on pounded cockle-shells, and wide enough for two

At the end of April or the beginning of May outdoor life in Holland is most enjoyable. The tulip fields still show the flowers of the later sorts, and the bird life is most interesting when the nesting season is beginning. Locomotion is so easy in a country where every road is flat, stream trams and light railways common, and the roads perfect for cycling, that all the varieties of country scenery may be enjoyed without sleeping away from the hotel.

C. J. CORNISH.

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