! ^ EORGE E.WutING Jr. The Uaden Faster: Thbs WEBKLT Iridcne, »opi. ,10, p «,Lt column. Very good many tbauKs M ^CoiWaxing farms by proxy " I take the direct I rol of 'MO acres of land and 01 a hi go bdrket garden and gi»en?iou»e3. My only piov- ita" aro my three foremen, who carry out my or- 1&8. Never n.ind oarteotang, now, only do n t do bo anymore. I worked in the neid until my work ex- tended ho much I had 10 have help and now I c aim to be a practical business fanner, having the daily control of my work, ~ij/l GyiwLccLA^ C>r >iioM Ccl^A jDa^, Copyright, 1875. SCRIBNER & CO. Copyright, 1875. GEORGE E. WARING, Ji TO COLONEL SIR JOHN LE COUTEUR, UF BELLEVUE, JERSEY, AMI MR. J. W. M. VAN DER POLL, DIJKGBAAF haablemermeebfolder, «Tl)c^c papers. WHICH OWE SO MUCH TO THEIR KINDNESS, MOST CORDIALLY INSCRIBED. -'■} CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. HOLLOW-LAND 13 CHAPTER II. DROOGMAKERIJ 46 CHAPTER III. DUTCH FARMING 93 CHAPTER IV. THE BIGHT OF LA MANCHE 122 CHAPTER V. OLD JERSEY 161 CHAPTER VI. GUERNSEY 210 CHAPTER VII. SAUK 231 CHAPTER VIII. TIIK CLIMATE OF THE CHANNEL ISLANDS |tf POST SCRIPTUM ILLUSTRATIONS Tin 1 cntB which in the following list are marked • are taken from Mrs. Palisser's " Brittany and irked t are from ANBTED'S '•Channel Islands." HOLLOW-LAND. h i:\p-dress of groningen peasant l8 Bead-dress of the Island of Ameland 1!> A Street in the Edge of Groningen SO Botbr-Maret at Lkf.u warden 22 Costume of Hindeloopen 23 Wind-Mills at Amsterdam 27 Gaff and Pennant of a Dutch Canal-Boat 29 A Ditch Drawbridge 30 Bead-Dress of Zaandam and Krohhente :::; A Pail-Bearer at the Cabin of Peter the Great,— Zaandam . . . 34 A Wind- .Mill in the Dry Region :;."> 'I'm: Canalization and Drainage of the IJ ::t A Ditch Bathino-Machine 42 The Beacb at Scheventngen 42 From Scheventngen to the Hague 43 Scheventngen Fish-Wife . 44 (in tin: Canal from the Bague to Delft 4."> DROOGMAKERIJ. Map of the probable former Condition of the Province of Frtbbland. 47 Map of Norte Holland in i. ">:."> 4^ Present Map of North Holland BO A Row of Giantb 56 Construction of Pumping Wind-Mili B7 Ground-Floor of Wehd-Mili 57 Mm- OF thf RlJNLAND BEFORE thf. DRAINING OF the HAARLEM Lake . . 60 Cross-s Diees and Encircling Canai viii ILLUSTRATIONS. Dike with Jetties 65 Elevation of the Pumping-Engine " Leeghwater " 68 Cross-Section op Engine and Pumps, " Leeghwater " 69 The Archimedean Screw VI Elevation of Pumping-Wheel 77 Dutch Draining- Wheel 77 Section of Water-Wheel and House 78 Elevation of Steam-Works at Halfway 78 Arrangement of Sluices and Machinery at Halfway .... 79 Map of the Division of the Haarlem Lake Polder 82 DUTCH FARMING. Plan of Barn, etc., on a small Farm in the Province of Groningen . 98 Hook and Sickle for Reaping 100 A Beemster Laundry 102 A Dutch Grain-Fork 110 A Dutch Scythe 110 A Dutch Wagon-Tongue Ill Curd-Knife 115 Manner of using Curd-Knife 115 Manner of cutting the Curd .115 Dishing out the Whey 115 Draining the Curd 116 Pouring off the last of the Whey 116 Cheese-Mould 117 The Cheese-Press 117 The Salting-Cup . 117 Cheeses shelved for Drying 118 Salting-Cup Tray 118 An Improved Dutch Plough 120 Side View of Dutch Brush-Harrow 120 Top View of Dutch Brush-Harrow 121 THE BIGHT OF LA MANCHE. Map of the Bight of La Manche 122 Ploughing in the Valley of the Seine 123 La Basse Vieille Tour, Rouen 124 Tour de la Grosse Horloge, Rouen 126 LLLUSTEATION& i\ Toub Jeanne d'Abi , Bonis .... Hotel St. a.m.\m>. Roubh .... Palais de Justice, Bouse .... Mont St. Michel, fbom the East . Le GOUFFBB, Mont St. Michel . Hbad-Dbbssbs of These Nobmab Towns Peasant-Gibl of Cancalb* . Peasant- Woman OF < 'hateallin * . PSASANT-I ; I ki. OF < »i»ANT* .... AbaBESQUE over Tomb, — Cathedral at Dol* Menhir nkak Dol* La Grande Porte, St. Malo .... St. Malo, from Grand Bey* dlnan, from the range Porte St. Malo, Dinan .... Tomu of Jeas de Beaumanolb* The Chateau of La (Jaraye* 127 1 I'- ll".! 137 1-11 14. -, i a l ;•; L46 117 1 18 149 ISO 15] 162 OLD JERSEY. General Map of the English Channel 10] |£ap of the Island of Jersey- L62 Lane at Rozel, Old Jersey L64 Lam: at Vinchelez, with Xorman Arch 1';} Elizabeth Castle, fbom our Windows! L65 St. I'.rei.ade's \\x\-\ 166 Cavern at Greve au Lanconj 167 St. Martin's CHURCH, Old Jersey 168 St. Bbelaof/s ChubchJ lis Has i I toe bil Castle 17" Gate-Was to Mont Obouell Castle! l T l St. < aiheiune's P.ay f 178 HeBMITAGB <■: St. Hi i i nirs f 173 ■r Beau PoBTf 178 I.i. Falls's Cldcatoloot (2 cuts) 180 Fabm-Houses in St. Peter's Valley 188 v "Gbandk < Ihabbue " 1-7 The Jesse? Cow at Home 188 Stoke Anchob and Martei.i.o Tower f x ILLUSTRATIONS. GUERNSEY. Map of Guernsey and Sark 210 Old Cow Lane, St. Peter Port! 212 Residence of General Huysh, Guernsey 214 HART'S-TONGUE FERNf 215 "Water-Lane at the Couture, Guernsey .* 216 Fermain Bay and Martello Tower, Guernsey 216 A Cottage Doorway, Guernsey! 217 Chapel of St. Apolline, Guernsey f 217 Gate-Way to Vale Castle, Guernsey f . . 218 Vale Church Porch, Guernsey! 218 Interior of a Guernsey Cromlech f 218 A Druidical Menhir, Guernsey! 219 Ancient Pottery found in the Islands! 219 Ancient Implements found in the Islands! 220 Drawing-Room of Hauteville House, Guernsey 221 Porch of St. Martin's Church, Guernsey! . 221 Some Guernsey Plants! ... 230 SARK. Rocks on the West Coast of Sark 232 Entrance to Seigneurie . . . 233 An Old Fountain in a Sark Valley! 234 The Coupee, Sark 235 The Seaport of Sark 236 The Gouliot Rock from the Havre Gosselin, Sark 237 Cur ex Harbor, looking outward! 237 Tunnel Entrance to Creux Harbor! 238 The Burons, Sark! 239 Two " Chasse-Marees"! 244 The Casquets! 244 The papers hero collected ai-e notes of a trip through some of the Nether- land Provinces, parts of Normandy and Brittany, and the Channel Islands, mado in August and September, 1S73. A FARMER'S VACATION CHAPTER I. HOLLOW-LAND. WE had stopped to change coaches at the hamlet of Bunde, near tin- Dutch border of East Friesland, and to take our last glass i man beer in the little parlor of the Post-house, where a few Dutch ornaments had crepl in among the more familiar forms. A vehicle of a new shape drove up, the mails and luggage were loaded, we climbed to the narrow seats of the half-open interior, the horn booted, and away we rattled over the brick pavement that wound through the village and out into the flat open country, between roadside ditches nearly filled with Mater. Presently we drew up, under the raised bar in front of a wayside custom-house. The examination of baggage was soon made, and we clattered on into the Kingdom of the United Netherlands, — which we entered by its hack door. Instantly the aspect of the country changed, and we realized the presence of the transforming hand of the Dutch Wizard of I train In East Friesland the ditches had been full nearly to the brink, tation showed the ill effect of a wet Boil, and then- wi ral air of swamp and fog over the land and its people Here, the water was three or four feet below the Burface, the land was dry, the growth was magnificent, and. though the country was flat as the sea, there was no suspicion of wetness anywhere. The few people whom we met hardy and red-cheeked. The farm-houses and barns grew larger, and hay and -Tain ricks multiplied. Perhaps nowhere else in the world is such 1 I A FARMER'S VACATION. a Budden change of condition, due entirely to art, to be seen in a country of precisely the same original character. We 800D reached the little walled village or fort of Nieuwe Schans. We had dismounted at a hotel, outside the fort, adjoining the post-station and overlooking a canal. It was raining and chilly, and the desolate house was mouldy, damp, and uncomfortable. There was no especially foreign air about any part of the establishment, — the same sort of discomfort is still to be found in the Dutch villages east of the Upper Hudson. Almost the only odd-looking thing was a tall stand filled with long clay pipes, suggest- ing the evening congregation of the men of the neighborhood. The land- Lord, already, at midday, well stupefied with gin, grumbled in his imperfect (i en nan about the dearth of good servants, and cooked for us, himself, an unsavory mess of fried beef and onions. During our short stay he paid fre- quent visits to the bottle-closet, and became more and more disconsolate. I n front of the house, moored to the shore, lay a canal-boat w r ell stocked with crockery arranged for sale. The merchant and his family had their home in the cabin, and their kitchen and scullery on the quarter-deck. This was our first example of an institution peculiar to the Netherlands, where so much of the life is on the canals, — merchants of many sorts living and rallying on their traffic in canal-boats, moving from place to place in search of a market, and sometimes setting sail aud standing for Amsterdam to replenish stock. Canal-boat living is scrupulously cleanly, the abundant water at hand allowing the Dutch passion for scrubbing and scouring a field for its fullest sway. The narrowness of the quarters seems to be no inconvenience, much of the life being on deck. The occupations of these floating people appear exceedingly simple, the men smoking and the women knitting with faith- ful constancy. After some hours' waiting for train-time, we started for the station, the Landlord insisting on carrying our small hand-bag. But he was too far gone, and his oft-changed hands refused their grasp. He soon allowed me to BOLLOW-LAND. i:, relieve him, — apologizing that it was an "ungewohnte arbeit," an unac- customed work to which his sinews had not been hardened by use. Be said he was of gentle blood, and offered as his maudlin proof a Curiously ornamented <»ld watch and chain of the sixteenth century, which had de- scended from his forefathers. The railway limn Nieuwe Schans to Groningen has been recently opened, and everything about the frequent stations is new and raw-looking, 30 that the i i n pression the traveller gets is in one respect similar to that given by our own Western prairie regions; and the broad windy stretch of flat country, without much wood, and lying open to the gales of the North Sea, has a little of the same bleak, unhomelike air. But with this is mingled a most unaccustomed aspect of novelty. These fields arc cultivated with the care of suburban market-gardens, and are separated by Long straight V-shaped ditches, in which the water runs some feet below the surface of the ground. Looking across them, we see broad, dingy sails moving in various directions among the growing crops; the railway is on an em- bankment, and we are running well above the land; we frequently CT08S canals, lying far enough below us for the deck-loads and the lowered masts of the barges to pass under the road, without the need of drawbridges. Scattered over the whole landscape are the remarkable habitations of the farmers and their herds. Many of these houses were near enough for us to examine them, others only suggestions of .similar farmsteads far away over the wide plain. As well as we could judge, theywere all of similar character, — large, hand- some, three-story stone or brick houses, well built and substantial, with a hedge-like row of clipped trees along the front, — cut low to admit the sun to sleeping-room windows, — and, in front of these, neat gardens with good grass ami showy flowers; running out from the back of the house, which its peak often overtops, and beyond which its low eaves project far on each side, is the huge red-tiled roof of the barn, — large enough for the complete housing of the crops of the farm, for the comfortable accom- modation of all its live-stock, and for the sheltering of all implements. The evidences <<{' wealth on every side, and the absence of all evid 10 A FARMER'S VACATION. hi ] H ivert v, suggest an unequalled richness of soil, no less than a most skilful and industrious people. It is a region fairly teeming with fertil- ity, bustling with activity on land and water, and stretching its productive fields, one after another, to the far-away sand-dunes of the north coast. As we neared Groningen — our first Dutch town — we were curious as to our accommodation and personal comfort. The guide-books made it seem a chief advantage of one of the hotels that we need not sleep on leathers, and confined its general information mainly to the statement that the city has a population of forty thousand (all Dutch, of course), is situ- ated at the junction of two principal canals, and is an important Dutch seaport. Those who have been bred in America, with its generous culti- vation of the instincts in favor of foreign (and especially of "Dutch") ways and doings, will understand that we were imbued with a proper superiority of feeling, and were prepared to accept the oddities and pro- vincialisms of Groningen without severe criticism; to make the best of what it had to offer that was good or interesting, and to put up with or to disregard its shortcomings, — making due allowance for the disadvantages of a people who had been born Dutch. The strong infusion of Dutch blood in our own veins need not be considered, for we had that myste- rious inner light that comes of American birth and education, and gives the look, from above downward, with which we so justly scrutinize the less favored civilizations of Europe. This spirit had been shaken in some of our earlier experiences of travel, but nowhere had it been so chastened as it was at Groningen; and I meekly confess, at this point, that by the time we had crossed the Bel- gian frontier, some weeks later, it was entirely and forever laid. A town of forty thousand inhabitants is not of itself remarkable. We have plenty such at home, but we have no small town at all comparable to Groningen in the evidences of good government and general refinement and cultivation. Much of its advantage, is due to its great age, but more to the wise use of the means of improvement with which it has been blessed, and to the thrift and far-seeing intelligence of its people. The HOLLOW LAND. 17 approach from the station leads over a massive and well-shaded bridge that spans tin; moat-like canal, busy with moving craft, and through a handsome archway in the wall of the town. The well-kept and park-like walks outside the walls wen frequented by well-dressed pleasure-seekers, and the whole scene at this point was no less charming than unexp Within the walls we found a well-huilt city, much less strange to us than many towns we had seen, and, indeed, with an air very much like that of Philadelphia, — especially in its red brick and clean white doors and window-frames. While obviously old, it seemed to have always beeu thriving and well kept The hotel was excellent, and the shops and private houses were often fine. This is the most important of the north- ern towns of the country. It has an excellent university, a museum of natural history, a botanic garden, institutions for the instruction of the Mind and of the deaf and dunih, and a school of painting, sculpture, and architecture. The Breedemarkt is one of the largest plazas in the kingdom, and it is flanked by some very fine churches and public build- ings These detail- are mentioned, notwithstanding their guide-book air, because they are so entirely different from what we had an idea of finding, and as indicating the completeness with which we with- drew our estimate of what it must imply to be I hitch and to live in ( Sroningen Y ■ in spite of the modem air of the shops and of many of the houses, there was enough of novelty and quaintness in the life of the streets to attract the interest of the traveller. Opposite our window was a Btreel pump, about which women and girls were constantly awaiting their turns to till the pails that hung from their wooden neck-yokes. Here they stood chatting, heedless of the rain that was falling. Their stout woollen d] were evidently used to it, and they themselves looked hearty enough to withstand any exposure. Like all the women of their class whom we saw, — including the itiner- ant venders of milk and vegetables, — they had their heads done up after the marvellous fashion of their province. Whether they are a hairless race could not lxj told; hut not a trace of hair was to be seen, nor did there seem room for tresses under their triple coife, which consist of a ■2 18 A FARMER'S VACATION. HKAD-DKKSS OK (,R(iMM closely fitting cap of white cotton; another, equally close, of black silk; and over these a solid plaque of shining -old or silver, covering the whole head, save a small space at the crown, and a narrow slit at the top, "where got the ap- ple in." The side wings reach nearly to the eyes, and they nearly join at the top of the head. They are quite as large as an ordinary pair of rounded horse's blinders; the band by which these are joined at the back is fully three inches wide. This is the head-gear with which the work- ing-women turn out in the early morning, and in which they do their drudgery ; but they are usually seen with the added decora- tion of engraved, or embossed, or filagree ornaments of the same metal, nearly two inches across, attached to the front of the plate, and making the effect of gold or silver rosettes just back of the eyes. It is a very undress occasion on which even this suffices; they usually wear a fourth covering of thin lace. This is a. cap, drawn close over the forehead, and hanging in a full cape behind. The whole gold affair is covered, save the rosettes, but it still glints gayly through the slight tissue. The origin of this singular costume we had no means of learning. It is common in various provinces of the Netherlands, and is worn with pride by those who travel or reside in other than their native districts, — to such an extent that it attracts no attention in any part of the kingdom. In the streets of Amsterdam it is constantly seen. The first one that we saw did attract our attention, and we followed it curiously from under the moonlit old gateway of Emhden, — with furtive inspection as it passed blazing shop windows. We gave it our sympathy as a case of severe trephining, remembering an uncle, a fleck of whose skull had given place to a silver plate. We went to buy one of these gold plaques as a curiosity, and found to .mi' surprise that they are made of pure metal, and cost a large sum. The cheapesi -old one we found cost one hundred and ten gulden (fifty- HOLLOW-LAND. 19 five dollars is currency). The silver ones axe cheaper, but still very costly, for the daily wear of the kitchen. We found one al last of gilded brass, which cost but a trifle, but were told thai no peasant-woman or servant-girl could wear it and preserve her self-respect like all novelties, these head-dresses soon grew familiar, and, after devouring a few townfuls of them, we had no further appetite 3ave foi the ornaments al Hie temples, of which nearly every village has its own form; — some very curious There is also some variety in the head- plates, but they are of die same general character. These shining metal heads, glittering through neat lace, are attractive Pot more than their novelty, and the gear is really becoming to the fair complexions and clear eyes of the damsels of the northern peninsula The fashions of Paris have penetrated even to Groningen, modifying the dress of all above the working-class, but they seem powerless before this national distinction If the French bonnet is worn, as it Bometimes is. it must adjust itself to this gilded ball of a head, without its accustomed cushion of false hair. In many localities the native (•"-tunic included a hat of some remark- able cut, but usually where the metal plates are worn they are covered, if at all, only by the thin cap, through which they are plainly seen. The variety of de- tail is constant in the different regions In the island of Ameland, in the North Sea, the plate is continuous over the head, the side ornaments look like curved shut- ter- thrown open to show the temples, the cap is fastened on by -old- headed pins, and a little cluster of false curls is worn at .Mill side. The principal pari of Groningen is built on terra forma, hut the out- skirts are lower, and here the streets are divided by canal-, which are busy with traffic. At the edges of the town there are many wind-mills, and the houses are more thoroughly Dutch than in the main DUE and residence Btreeta BXAD-DUSa "t on i-l \M> <•}' \MH \M> 20 A FARMER'S VACATION Our route lay westward, to Leeuwarden, the capital of the province of Friesland. The character of the country traversed differed very little from that between Groningen and the German border. On every hand were the same evidences of activity on land and water, and of commer- cial and agricultural prosperity. It was harvest-time, and thick-standing gavels bespoke the richness of the ditch-bound fields. The same great farm-houses and barns, and the same sails among the meadows, were everywhere seen. Here, as in the other province, the cattle were superb ; i ml numerous. Leeu warden, which has a beautiful and well-kept park, we found much more peculiar than Groningen, and the evidences of its great age were more conspicuous. Yet, with all its age, it is emphatically a town of bo-day; its old, ruined church-tower, which has lost its church, and which stood in the fierce times of the Spanish wars, and its quaint old streets, suggest all that could be desired of historic and picturesque interest, but the canals in its streets are busy with modern commerce, the shop win- dows are effective in their appeal to present wants, and an air of com- fortable prosperity is everywhere prevalent. This is the cleanest large town we have anywhere seen. We wan- HOLLOW-LAND. 21 dered in the back Blums, among people of the poon ind saw do spot thai was not cleaner than Union Square pi Fifth Avenue, in New Fork. Xi' three thousand gulden* we could have bought a marvel of a carved table of ebony and ivory of rarest workmanship, which had belonged to Prince Maurice; and for five hundred, an antique teapot of repwa&i silver, such as no modern hammering seems able even to suggest When w< returned to the street we looked back with amazement, to think that so modest a Bhop could be the entrance to Buch a store of riches. Unfortunately, we had not known the interest of the country and the towns of Groningen and Friesland when we formed the plan of travel that hurried ns op toward Amster- dam, and we had to cut short our visit and take the train for Harlin- gen nil the Zuyder Zee. This is a dullish seaport, defended by enor- mous granite-faced dikes against the invasion of the sea, which en- tirely destroyed the town in 1134, and overwhelmed it again in 1566. Here We took the SliKlll steamer l'<>r Amsterdam. The wind was high, and the Bea wide an 1 rough. We b »re down the low line of coast until we came abreast of Hindeloopen, whence a heavy open lugger put out to meet us with a fresh supply of passengers, who were handed up on the open guard beneath which the lugger was tossing The one woman of party wore the strange costume of her town OSTI M> OF IIIMlKl.oii. * The golden, which will be used throoghoot these paper* on Holland, is tbool eqnal to fifty cents United Btatea currency. 24 A FARMER'S VACATION. The wind was so fresh that few vessels were out, and these few were under close-reefed sail. The trip occupied six hours, and had the usual discomfort of rough weather and small tonnage. After leaving the Frisian coast our course was toward a beacon rising out of the water, which, as we neared it, grew into a church-steeple. Gradually wind-mills and the roofs of houses were developed, and the old city of Enkhuizen stood out on the film of land that seemed but a continuation of the sea. The rest of our course was within sight of wind-mills, and generally of the land that supported them. Villages and churches were frequent, but the view was hardly inspiring, — gray sky and gray water were barely separated by the gray coast, and this had much the effect of a tight-rope, on which the houses and mills and trees were balancing themselves. The low shore had little effect on the northwest wind ; but the sea was much more quiet, and vessels became frequent. Some of these were square-rigged sea-going craft, but more were canal-boats, with their sails hauled down to the smallest capacity, and toiling along with an unaccus- tomed list, — women and children under close hatches in the cabin, and the men, clad in oil-skins and sou'westers, bracing themselves to their work on deck. As we approached it, Amsterdam manifested itself by a thicker clus- tering of the universal wind-mills, and by the looming up of huge domes and church towers and steeples, and by a forest of topmasts reaching above the general level of the roofs. It is one of the peculiarities of Holland that we go down into it from the sea, and the further in we go the deeper down we get. The metrop- olis lies on a river or estuary called (for short) the IJ.* Into this we entered through a ponderous granite-built lock, — one of an assorted se- ries, of various sizes, adjusted to vessels of larger or smaller dimensions. After we had been shut into our compartment the valves were opened, and we followed the declining water until it reached the level of the IJ, when the gates were swung back and we steamed on to the city. * Pronounced Eye. BOLLOW-LAND. 25 And here we were in Amsterdam, -the mother of the "Nieuw Am- sterdam'' of Peter Stuyvesanl and Wouter Van Twiller. The guide-books (to which the reader is respectfully referred are fond of calling this town "the Venice of the North," which misleads the imagination. Like Venice, it is built on piles, — Erasmus speaks of its people as living like birds perched on the tops of trues, — and some of its obscurer oar- row alleys are only canals. Beyond this, the resemblances are only dif- ferences. The canals penetrate many of the principal streets, it is true, but these are wide thoroughfares, with broad, well-paved roadways and sidewalks, and often with four rows of trees, the water-way being between the centre rows. Carriages and heavy drays are moving nois- ily in every direction, and the canals are but little used for interna] traffic, ('anal-boats, lighters, and in some parts even square-rigged Bhips, are floated opposite to the warehouses which are to receive or to deliver their cargoes; but the city has a roar and hum that would at once destroy the dreamy charm of Venice. A gondola would be as misfitting here as would a Bath-chair in Broadway. There is much in Amsterdam that is magnificent, and in which \\ were greatly interested, but my present purpose lies mainly connected with those of its features which seldom engage the attention of travellers. Rising at davbreak, I strolled out to see the street life of the early morning. Market-men and market-women from the country, near and far, dressed in their widely varying local costumes, were plying their traffic in the streets and on the canals; and housemaids were scrubbing Steps and sidewalks, and sweeping to the middle of the carriage-way, or hurrying home with prayer-book or market-basket The town was alive with a population which a few hours later would make way for those who are known only to the broader day. Canal-boats were arriving and departing ; moving out from their berths through a crowd of oilier craft, with that mysterious kind of silent help that a moving canal-boat always gets from the crews of its neighbors at rest, — its sides prodded with boat-hooks from here and from tb. :■ it slowly floats out from the crowd and starts on its way " sans mot 26 A FARMER'S VACATION. dire " ; turf-boats were floating into the Dam Eak, furling their sails and lowering their masts ; cargoes of cabbages were being tossed, one by one, from men in boats to men on shore ; here the clatter of knives and forks was heard through low back windows and cabin-hatch, and here the vrouw was washing up the breakfast things in a slat-floored kitchen sink hanging from the taffrail ; strange-looking people were doing strange-looking things throughout all the strange-looking fleet, and all with the air of its being in no wise unusual or peculiar. On shore, a street vender was attracting custom with a watchman's rattle ; men were hoisting baskets of turf to the cellar, at the top of a high house gable ; women and children were going from a basement with the sign " water en vuur te koop," with neatly painted iron buckets, each hav- ing a kettle of boiling water at the top, and a lump of burning turf at the bottom, — going home to make the morning tea ; at every quar- ter-hour the carillon jingled from all the steeples. The gin-shops were already well patronized, for it seems a universal habit, in this moist northern climate, to take " een sneeuwballetje " * of gin and sugar as a frequent prophylactic. At this early hour, and about the canals, the gilded heads and odd bonnets of the peasant-women are more frequent than elsewhere, or later in the day. Near the Haarlem Railway station I turned down by the broad canal that encircles the city, where there was a long line of huge wind-mills. The first was a saw-mill, carrying two gangs of fourteen saws each, and capable of sawing, with a good wind, two eighteen-inch logs at a time. I next visited a flour-mill, of which the owner showed me all the details. The substructure was a large tower of brick, three stories high. On the ground-floor were stables, wagon-house, and storage-room for hay ; over this, the granary and flour and meal store ; and next, the bolting- rooms, where the ground wheat is divided into seven different qualities <>{' Hour and feed, which run through separate spouts to the store-room below. On the next floor were three runs of five-foot stones. In a full wind they may all be run at once. The stones have a regulator, which * A little snowball. BOLLOW-LAND. 27 sets them nearer together when running too East, makiog mon to the wind. The general arrangement of the - une as with us. There i.s a friction hoisting-gear in connectiou with the main shaft, WIND-MILLS vv \>imh:i>\m whereby, on the pressure of a lever, a wheel od the windlass is brought against one od tin' running-shaft, and the movement is communicated By this means all grain to be ground is hoisted from the v. through traps in the aeveral floors, to the story above the si Bere the cleaning-machines are operated, and the differenl manipulations of grinding, bolting, and bagging accompany its descent, by spouts, from floor to floor. The wind-mill proper is quite above this structure, shel- tering the upper floor, od which the cleaning-machines stand. It itself, an enormous affair, and the immense tree-trunk of a main-shaft thai was groaning with its strong Blow movements far above us turned all the heavy machinery of the mill with its mighty force, and sent a 28 A FARMER'S VACATION. tremor through every window-sash. It was hard to realize that all this obvious power was gathered from the unseen air by the frail-looking frames that held the opened sails. In this mill, as in all the larger ones, a wide gallery surrounds the top of the brick tower for working the windlass, by which the hood and wind-wheel (main-shaft and all) are turned to face the breeze. The windlass is at the converging point of a framework that descends from the projecting timbers of the hood, and it carries a stout rope, the ends of which are hooked at different points of the gallery, as may be needed in facing toward different points of the compass. Distance is very unjust to these higher wind-mills. It is only when one is fairly under their thatched covering, or close to their giant arms, that their size is at all appreciated. In the one I am describing, the gallery was more than forty feet from the ground, and the sweep of the sails described a circle of nearly one hundred feet diameter above this. The whole of the sloping structure, above the brick-work, as well as the roof of the hood, was, according to the almost universal custom, covered with heavy straw thatch. This is always kept in neat repair, and never falls to the mossy and picturesque condition of decay which seems the allotted end of cottage thatches, but is kept sound and firm from generation to generation. The interior arrangements of the mill are exceedingly ingenious and practical, and showed a much higher degree of mechanical art than we are wont to connect with the idea of a Dutch wind-mill. I descended from my examination with slight disposition to explain to the friendly proprietor the modern contrivances of the newly built establishment in America, where I had once officiated as chief miller. I descended with another feeling also strong within me, — a realization of the enormous and easily managed power that we allow to blow where it listeth, and of which we make no useful account in our mechanical operations. The canal-boats one sees in the street canals of Amsterdam, and all over Holland, are mainly of the same character, — shorter than ours, and all provided with mast and sail. They are not painted, but oiled, and HOLLOW LAND. have a warm In-own wood-color that is very agreeable. The masl is hinged at the deck, and is raised or Lowered at pleasure, by means of a windlass. That pari below the deck is heavily Loaded with iron, as a counterpoise i o the Long end. When the top is Lying hack over the stern the counterpoise ap- pears above the dock at the how. When standing erect, the counterpoise is oe the upper edge of the keel, and the step is held firmly in its socket by the bow-guy which is hauled taut by the windlass. The gaff at the top of tin' sail — there is often no boom below it — is not straight, hut curved, and the pennant, instead of hanging free from the mast, is, tor a part of its length, stretched on a stiff, vane-like frame, which turns on a rod, after the manner of a weathercock. It is very rare to see one of these boats drawn by horses in the Nether- lands. The propulsion is generally by the wind; when this fails, or is too much ahead, the family turn out, shoulder the guy-rope, and trudge slowly along the tow-path Often father, mother, and children are seen pulling their craft for miles along their sluggish way. one remaining at the helm to keep the course. Where the tow-path fails, as it often does, ami in the street canals of the town. the man on one side of the deck and the woman on the other, planting their Inn- boat-hooks against the bottom, hear a shoulder against the other end (padded lor the purpose), and walk slowly from stem to stern hike many other processes in this steady-going land, this seems painfully slow: hut they keep it up with such quiet persistency, that, if you forget your boat for a little, you always find, on looking for it again, that it has gone much farther than you had expected The movement, either by pulling or by poling, is not much slower than in France, where the boats are drawn by three or four creeping hoi <;\KK AM) PF.XNANT UK I'l II M i ARAL-BOAT. 30 A FARMER'S VACATION. Generally, except in the innermost canals of the towns, the boats have the right of way without lowering their masts, and land-traffic must bide its time at the drawbridges (Ophaal brugrjcn) which are everywhere seen on the smaller canals. These are attached to a heavy framework, of wood or iron, above the road, which is so balanced as to be easily tilted by a single man hauling on the rope at the rear end. aCT3 One's first ride over the rail, from Amsterdam to Haarlem, furnishes sensations that no other country in Europe can give. The line, abso- lutely straight for miles, lies across a level plain. The masts and domes and steeples and gables and wind-mills of Amsterdam are falling behind us to the left ; to the right, across the LJ, the low shore bristles as far as the sight can reach with wind-mills; here and there village steeples hold up their LLu\Y-LAXI). America or elsewhere; it is usual, everywhere, foT women, whose time is chiefly passed in house-work, to Leave their best rooms mainly unused ; Imt we generally tumid the front windows of well-to-do people in towns and villages open, well jiolisln-. 1, and well filled with flowers. Within, the population seems, to the casual observer, to pass most of its time in making ami drinking tea. Walking, a- one does, close to tin- windows, there is generally Been, on a spread Bide-table, an ornamented pail with burning peat, with a well-polished hot-water kettle over it — ready for instant use. I walked not less than two miles uj> the east side of tin- river, i i in one of the frequent 'row-boat ferries, having lor fellow-passengi woman, a dog, and an alarmed infant in a perambulator, and returned through the western half of the town. In the whole trip 1 saw hut two horses ami one donkey. The streets are all sidewalk, and as neat as possible Locomotion is almost exclusively on foot or in boats, and all heavy carriage is by water. The immediate neighborhood of the town is so much taken up with wind-mills and business, that my long walk failed to reach anything in tin- way of farming that is worthy of note, but it was rich in impressions of the most interesting novelty, — for Zaandam is more widely different from all else that we saw, even in Holland, than one would believe possible, in view of its nearness to the cap- ital. Then, too, there is something very en- gaging in a town that can so serenely preserve its original character amid the whirl of nineteenth - century change, — a town where a fair cigar can l>e bought for a cent, and when 1 your own women are BUD-MUM or /M\M1I AND KtoM- smiled at as " queer by one with the top- KMKa gear shown herewith. And the worst of it is that you feel queer, and begin to grow half ashamed of the different absurdity Of the manner in which your companions have followed a more 3 34 A FAKMER'S VACATION. familiar custom, and to wonder how they would look — in French bon- net and pannier — standing at the door of Peter the Great's cabin in yoke neck and Zaandam with water-pails. As we ended our afternoon's sight-seeing, and steamed away toward the city, Zaandam soon dropped out of sight behind the high dike that protects it from the waters of the IJ, and the four hundred and odd wind- mills renewed their position on the tight-rope of a low line of shore, swinging their sails like balance-poles against the red evening sky. On Sunday I went to visit a A PAIL-BEAKEtt AT THE CABIN OF 1EIEK HIE GREAT,— . n . ^, i i i i , "n zaandam. mend m Gelderland, at Koozen- daal, near Arnhem. Much of the way from Amsterdam — after leaving the low country — is through an extremely barren, sandy region, purple with heather bloom as far as the eye can reach. Some of this land has been brought, by a slow process of rotation, to a tolerably productive condition, but the most of it is dis- mally poor. Arnhem, where we left the rail, is a very handsomely built, open town, on a high bank of the Rhine, with ample space, street parks, and fine trees. It is not unlike Leamington (England) in general aspect, but is finer. It, and the country about it, is a great resort for the burghers of Amsterdam, who " come ashore " here, so to speak, to escape the water-logged air of the hollow country, and to give their chil- dren a summer vacation on dry land. We stopped to lunch at the Club, which is a very ordinary house in the outskirts, but with a superb gar- den (filled with tables and chairs) overlooking many miles of the winding Rhine, with its odd-looking craft, and the fertile plain of the Betuwe BOLLOW-LAND. stretching its rich forma as for as the eye can reach This is a favorite Sunday afternoon resort for the better class of the people, — pious people too. The Chateau of Roozendaal — the ancient summer palace of the old Dukes of Gelderland and Egmont, who long maintained a war against Charles V. — is a well-kept country-house surrounded by a beautiful park, and a fine w led estate, where are many avenues of enormous beeches, which it is worth the trip from Amsterdam to This poor dry region lias better withstood the patient attack of Dutch enterprise than has the wet country of the Netherlands, and even its wind-mills, picturesque though they are, are but small and poor after the giants of the polder- land: but even here the soil has been made to do more than would be supposed possible from the character of it- native vegetation. llowrv.r, it is a poor fan nine; country at best, anil must depend Pot its prosperity very much on its attractiveness for residence. It is especially a fovorite re- sort for returned East India merchants, whose extravagance of expendi- ture, it is said, would do credit to an American watering-place. The occupied part of this region, with its superb old beeches and pleasant hills and valleys, is all the more charming from its contrast with the adjoining Hat country and the polders and canals of the better known provinces of Holland. DRV REGION. We made an agricultural trip in North Holland, which will be again referred to in the account of Dutch Farmin-, hut some reference to which i- necessary to a general understanding of the country and it- peculi- arities. 36 A FARMER'S VACATION. Immediately opposite Amsterdam, on the other side of the LI, is the entrance to the North Holland Canal, — the Willemsluis, the largest locks in Europe. They are built on piles driven through the mud into the firm sand. The canal itself is one of the most remarkable works of this remarkable people, and is the ship channel from Amsterdam to the sea, running on one level, ten feet below the ordinary level of the sea, and much more below its highest tides, to Helder, fifty miles away on the channel between North Holland and Texel. It is more than twenty feet deep, and one hundred and twenty feet wide at the surface. " Steam on the Canals " is a long-settled problem here ; the banks slope gradually, and are protected at the very edge by willow wattles. In front of these, in the water, grows a narrow belt of luxuriant rushes. As the following wave of a steamer sweeps the shore, these rushes bend before it and make a solid thatch over which the wave rolls without abrasion, and as it passes they resume their upright position ready for the next attack, — which soon conies, for the busy canal is alive with passenger boats, tugs, square-rigged vessels, canal-boats, and all manner of craft. The treacherous sands of the Zuyder Zee made the natural approach to Amsterdam too tedious and uncertain, and this artificial passage was needed to satisfy the restless energy of the people. Now, after half a century's experience of the benefits of this canal, a larger and shorter one is being built through the IJ, and across the sand-dunes, — reaching the North Sea at a point about fifty miles south of Helder, and only about sixteen miles from the city. The line of this canal, and its branches, with its enormous dikes, is shown in the accompanying map. The fore- bay or harbor on the coast, reaching nearly a mile into the sea, its pon- derous breakwaters enclosing 135 acres of water 25 feet deep at low tide, will be the most stupendous work of its kind in the world, and so much of the IJ as the canal does not occupy is to be drained for cultivation. An idea of the magnitude of this work may be formed by comparing it with the building of a ship-canal, with its surface at the level of low water from Perth Amboy to the ocean at Long Branch, building there a large harbor strong enough to withstand the storms of the Atlantic, and then draining Prince's Bay for cultivation. Except for the closing of the BOLLOW-LAND. east end only near the points where the levels change that one has any real sense of the situation From the railroads one looks down upOD canals, which, in their turn, look down upon the land, and this again down on Lower canals, hut there is generally no sueh startling contrast as the eloquence of the guide-books implies. The keels of ships hardly float above the chimneys of the houses, nor does the storied tin-, croaking among the bulrushes, gaze down upon the swallows on the house-tops. Midway of our route we climbed up the steep dike, crossed the encir- cling canal, and rolled on toward Alkmaar, over the smooth klincker road. Klinckers are "stones rejected of the builder," — bricks burned too hard, and often too much warped for use in houses. They are set on edge and firmly imbedded iii sand, and make a capital roadway for the light traffic which alone goes over them. The road-bed is always thoroughly drained by the side canals, and grass usually fills the inter- stices of the pavement with its roots. Capital as these klincker roads are for Holland, they are practicable only because all heavy traffic is by water-carriage. Alkmaar we found not sufficiently different from Leeu- warden to need particular description, nor will space admit of further details of town life, — interesting though all Dutch towns are. We paid due attention to the very general cultivation of flowers, and found it worthy of all encomium, — especially the superb mosaic plant- ing at the Zoological Gardens at Amsterdam, which far exceeded in the tasteful massing and contrast of colors, and in the scale on which it is carried out, all that we saw in London and Paris, and all our previous conceptions of the possibilities of flower gardening. From that most charming of modern towns, S'( Iravenhage The Hague . we went by trekschuit, or passenger boat, along the canal to Scheven- ingen, drawn by one horse, moving at a slow trot; the distance is about two miles, and the canal lies mainly through a tine primeval wood. Scheveningen is a very primitive fishing village, behind the dunes of the North Sea coast, and across these is the splendid bathing beach, which 42 A FARMER'S VACATION. makes it an attractive resort for the fashion of a large part of Germany, and for summer travellers from all the world. At the top of the sand- banks is a long row of hotels and restaurants. Passing these, we come at once upon the most modern of scenes, — modern, yet of its own sort. Along the edge of the beach were " bathing-machines " by the dozen; a little farther back were ranks of covered chairs, made of basket-work, each with a footstool. These are engaged by parties of friends, who gather them into groups, — and there they sit, shaded from the sun and sheltered from the wind, and knit and sew and chat by the hour. Children are digging in the sand ; beaux are plying their arts of fascination under the cover of chair-hoods ; bath-women are standing expectant beside their baskets of bathing-dresses, leaning on sign-boards A DITCH BATHING-MACHINE. THE BEACH SCHEVENINI bearing their names, as "Antje" or "Marie"; sight-seers are staring; booth-men are calling for custom ; and the whole scene is gay and cheer- ful and summery. Eed-sailed fishing-boats are moving about near the shore, and (as we saw it) the sea is blue and still against the deep blue sky. HOLLOW-LAM). 4:; We returned by the hone railway that leads through one of the side slides of the beautiful Scheveningeu road, past a continuous suco of attractive countiy-houses, and close to the klincker road, on which equipages tit for Hyde Park dispute the way with fish- ermen'a carts drawn bj dogs, ami with basket-ladeu men and women carrying their shining harvest to the market in town. The trekschuit is an insti- tution peculiar to Holland, and the tourist should not tail of its novel experiences. It is a low, narrow canal-boat such as is shown near the Leeiiwarden B iter-Markt plying for pas- senger traffic, drawn by a horse whose rider is expert at his work. The tow-line is very Long, made of the best hem]., and not larger than an ordinary clothes-line. As the horse trots it vibrates in long waves, and is nev The skill with which this line is managed in shooting bridges and in a other boats is interesting to watch, dust before sunset we took the trekschuit at The Hague, bound tor Delft, — an hour's ride. The air was perfectly still, and the water like glass, The leaves glowing in the Bunset tight, and the rosy evening sky, were reflected in the quiet canal. The long twilight la-ted throughout the journey, and made it forever memorable. We passed small villages, little beer-gardens, and many country places of some pretension, where families were drinking tea in the hooded Bummer-houses, which an KUOM SI IIKVKNINC.F.N To rilK II \CI K drawn taut enough to be strained. 44 A FARMER'S VACATION. in all Dutch gardens. A more peaceful, restful, summer-evening scene it would be impossible to conceive, — nor one more entirely unlike all other experiences of European travel. The trip to Delft was, of course, a pilgrimage to the staircase where the Prince of Orange was assassinated. We had fallen on the end of a Kermis, with which the town was still reeking, and at the little cafe* in the arbor of which we took our tea we had for neighbors an elderly and skinny house-servant, who was having the last of her young hired lover, — this indus- try of attending, for a consideration, a damsel whose natural attractions have waned being still profitable to seedy youth at Kermis-time. With dexterous slyness she passed him a gulden, with which to order the next relay of Hol- lands, and after Jan had served them and taken out the amount due, she ex- acted the furtive return of the change, — repeating this fiction with each fre- quent new supply. Her gold head-dress and her brazen face seemed a heavy charge to the poor stripling, who had evidently been on duty from early morning, and we longed to see him paid off and released; but evidently the "ten-hour system" had no re- gard from his ill-favored mistress, and he was still smirking and count- ing back her stuyvers after each payment, when we left for the late train to The Hague. This fragmentary and ill-connected sketch is not presented as a satis- factory account of what is to be seen in Holland, — only as a frame- work in which to set the chapters that are to follow, — on the Drainage and Agriculture that I had come to see. The character and customs of s< IIKVKMM.KN FISH- HOLLOW-LAND. 45 a people throw much light on the character of their industries, and are inevitably considered in connection with them. It has been thought proper, therefore, to give some of the impressions which were gathered while these were being more especially studied, and which formed a run- ning accompaniment to their more Berious -trains. UN 1I1K I \NU. ROM III t: IIM'.IK Til I'M II CHAPTER II. DROOGMAKERIJ. WE spell it differently here, but the art of drainage is itself so much more an art in Holland, that one is tempted to dignify and dis- tinguish it by its more ponderous Dutch synonyme. How the silt of the Ehine, and the blending of its currents with the tides of the North Sea formed the sand-bar, that stretched with occasional interruptions along the front of its wide-mouthed bay ; how the waves and the winds raised this sand-bar above the level of the sea and tossed it into high dunes ; how the slimy deposits of the river settled in the stilled waters behind, and by slow accretions rose to the reach of the sun's warmth ; how the reeds and lily-pads and bulrushes then covered the face of the flood with the promise of a fertile land that was to grow from their gradual accumulation and from the ever-coming wash of the Ehineland and the higher Alps, — all this is clouded in the gloom of prehistoric speculation. "When Ceesar came to Batavia vast forests grew at the level of the water, quaking morasses lay on every side, and the oozy soil was only here and there thrown high enough to give a foothold to the scant and hardy population. Travellers of that time relate that the whole land could be traversed on fallen timber without touching the ground, and rivers were blocked with rafts of uprooted oaks. The climate had an almost Norwegian fierceness. Even four centuries later the country was described as an " endless and pitiless forest." Out of this waste of water and almost floating soil — driven now here and now there by the unbridled floods of the Ehine, or melted into silt again and swept away by fierce inroads of the sea — a noble people has created the fertile and productive home of a compact and most pros- DR00GMAKER1J. 47 perous commonwealth ; has defended it in Long and ferocious contest with the mightiest power of Europe, and stands to-day the proudest example that our race lias to show of conquest by patient and unflinching toil and devotion, over the combined opposition of nature and of man. The changes made by inundations have been almost incredibly great Fig. 1 shows the northwestern portion of the Netherlands before the \> . . - • ■". 9 fc.**^ I v O ' + i»7 \>^-W£^_>-\A V/ ^ $W** $ % fiu Island \^r ■ . , .J MMcniMlk I'm. l. haf of tiik i -it. hi MH k ronou ■ nNMTION (if IBB PBOVIRI K 01 Hilt -I \\;. Hoods of the twelfth century, as contrasted with their present condition A large part of that arm of the German Ocean which tonus what is called the Zuyder Zee was formerly inhabited and cultivated land. Suco irruptions of the sea have melted away this vast tract, until from Har- lingen to Texel all is now navigable water. In the final inundation which effected this opening 80,000 lives were lost In 1l!77 an irruption of the sea, sweeping 44 villages from the lace of the earth, carried the borders of the Dollart beyond Winschoten Gradual reclamations have reduced it to its present size. Frequent inundations are recorded from the earliest history of the 48 A FARMER'S VACATION. Netherlands. In 1570, 100,000 lives were lost, 30,000 of them in Fries- land alone, this province and Groningen having always been the greatest sufferers. Since then the inundations here have been less frequent and somewhat less disastrous, Seiior Eobles de Billy, the Spanish commander in Friesland, having inaugurated a new and more suitable system of dik- ing, and thus rendered such service that his deeds have been commem- orated by a statue, — the " Steenen Man " (the stone man), which stands on the immense dike at Harlingen. Internal inundations, arising from the action of storms on the inland lakes, and still more from the floods of the Rhine, have been only less disastrous than the breaking' in iinj)ER .C& of the sea itself. The Rhine, bringing vast deposits of soil in its flood, is always lifting its bed, and constant additions to its dikes are thus made neces- sary. Then, too, while its northern waters are frozen, the more southern sources of its current are already unlocked, sending down freshets, which are dammed back by the ice and even thrown out of the banks, flowing over fertile farms, and constituting a never-ending source of danger. The condition of the best part of North Holland in 1575 is shown in the accompanying map (Fig. 2). Leaving out the barren sand-dunes along the coast, there was less land than water; and such land as there was had to be defended by constant care, not only against the incursions i"; AS if \ V^\ 1 ^^lHUPmDiliL Saardon. MAP OF NORTH HOLLAND IN 1575. DEOOGMAKKRTJ. I » lit' the higher-lying sea, but equally against the waters of the interior lakes, which often Btormed the protecting banks of the reclaimed country with Buch force as to break through and do vast harm. Tin- land was divided into polders, which were kept dry by pumping. There was little soil so high that artificial drainage was not accessary, and the whole territory was saved from being overwhelmed by the sea only by the dunes and by artificial embankments. On this insecure soil the Dutch made their successful stand against the Spaniards, often cutting tin- dikes and flooding miles of fertile coun- try as the only available defence of their liberties and their lives From the rich ports, scattered over the interrupted land, they controlled the commerce of the world. Education was universal, as it was nowhere else iu Europe; nearly the whole population could read and write. Flan- ders and Italy were the richest and the most industrious and flourishing of the Western nations. To what extent the character of the people, and the condition of the land in which they have lived, have reacted upon each other, it would be curious to examine. Certainly the success of such enormous under- takings hears evidence of great strength of character, natural or devel- oped. Taiue describes the Dutch as a people who can sit for hours ,n tete-d-t&e with their thoughts and their pipes; a people who feel a suffi- cient stimulus in successes to be reached only years hereafter. Their life has always been practical, earnest, and driven by the hard ne their anomalous position. Of them it might have been said from the first: "Obstacles change themselves into auxiliaries" There is no field of human enterprise in which their success has not been at one time or another notable. At the bottom of it all, appar- ently at the bottom of the character on which their success has been founded, we find their traditional jealousy of every acre of water which covers good land. Neglecting the poorer lands, they have dived into the fertile deposits lying under water and peat, and Bought there a wealth that no other soil can equal. Seeking this, as it alone could be Bought, by hard, slow, and costly work, they have become patient, long-enduring, sturdy, hardy, and resolute. If a lake is to l>e drained they sit quietly 4 50 A FARMER'S VACATION. down and count the cost, the time, and the interest that time will add to the cost, and then devise the means for the most effectual accomplish- ment of their aim ; this done, the undertaking proceeds with the regu- larity and the persistence of the work of ants. If obstacles cannot be made auxiliaries they are overcome. The clamors of dissatisfied people are idle, — not as the wind, for the wind is not idle in Holland, — but they pass unheeded, and steadily, day by day, the toiling goes on until the end is gained, and a new territory has been added to the earth's domain. In the pursuit of their aims it would almost seem that no cost is too great. The whole country bristles with the evidences of the most gigan- tic expenditure. The coast of Friesland is held against the attacks of the sea by works which include sixty miles of piles three rows deep. Near Haarlem a dike of Norwegian granite, forty feet high, and stretch- ing two hundred feet into the water, continues for a length of five miles. Since 1575, three hundred years have passed, and now nearly all the vast wastes of water among which the films of land formerly threaded have been pumped off from the face of the earth. The map of the North Holland of to-day is shown in Fig. 3. After the IJ has been canalized and its broad area laid dry, there will remain in all the province only the water needed for navigation. In a certain sense the whole world knows about the draining of the Netherlands, but their knowledge is of that sort which gives an impression rather fan- ciful than real. Holland is a broad land rather than a deep DROOGMAKEMJ. :,1 one, and while the fcravellei is often below the Level of the sea he doea not often realize the position from any obvious contrast The Bea is out of sight, and the canals are themselves below it- level often by i lucks, bo that in its general aspects the country as seen from the railway seems only u wide plain, with its canals raised on low embankments and its house-tops hidden more than such embankments should bide them. We see the polders mainly from the outside, and so tail of getting a. due impression of their depth. The marvel that we expect to realize is the freeing of all this low- Lying land from its old-time floods, — but the water is gone and we need to be told that these fertile farms and Incoming flower-beds were once at the bottom of deep lakes. Those who h^v e taken their information from popular descriptions are quite sine to have wrong ideas, mid I con- fess that my own first view of the flat country of Holland was a disap- pointment Away from the canal-netted towns there was much less of the am- phibious element than had been anticipated. With one who makes only a rapid inn through the country by rail this feeling of disappointment will be likely to remain ; but he who gives more attention to the special problems of 1 hitch drainage must soon find himself astonished that so much could have been done by so small a people, and that the reality should he so much more interesting than the suggested fancy. Nearly the whole of North and South Holland is a level plain, stivtch- ing from Belderto Zeeland, and Lying behind dunes or sand-hills on the sea-coast. It is a level plain in the sense of bavin- no elevations, but it is lull of depressions, where the surging of tin- old-time waters washed away the half-8oluble soil and floated it out to sea. Much of the land remaining is of a sort that may be in like manner easily destroyed. This plain formerly stretched away to the eastward and northeastward. through Friesland and Groningetf, but the formation of the Zuyder Zee has made a wide separation between the two districts. The unit of all Hutch drainage is what is called the "polder," a term which applies to any single area enclosed in its own dike and drained 52 A FARMER'S VACATION. by the same pumps. Some of these are but slightly below the level of the surrounding country, and need but a slight embankment ; such are often of tolerably firm soil, and require only the removal of the water to make them fertile. Others were originally ponds or lakes, or deposits of wet muck, which have been enclosed by more substantial embankments, and from which the removal of the water was, and continues to be, a more serious operation. Polders are frequently formed after the removal of the peat and its sale for fuel. Its place is occupied with water, and then begins the fresh operation of improving the embankment, removing the water, and often even adding a large quantity of foreign matter to make fertile soil. Sometimes the peat is found under a stratum of arable soil several feet thick. This is carefully laid aside to form the basis of cultivation after the peat is removed and the drainage completed. The boats which take turf to the cities bring back street sweepings, builders' rubbish, and waste of all kinds, which in all towns in Holland, large and small, are said to be carefully collected and sold for filling depressions from which turf has been raised. The polders vary in size from two or three acres to over forty thou- sand acres. They are sometimes only a few inches below the established level of the outlying water, sometimes seventeen or eighteen feet below this. Those first drained were shallow marshes, which could be secured by slight dikes and drained by a single small mill. Later, when the country had made more progress, the system was applied to deep marshes and lakes, requiring large and strong dikes, and a number of large mills for their pumping. The interior of each polder is cut with canals and ditches, which serve to lead the water toward the mills, and in summer for the distribution of the water admitted from without. In the district of the " Rijnland " there are nearly ninety thousand acres of land, which, but for the combined skill and perseverance and capital of the people, would be buried, much of it under seventeen feet of water. The polder drainage alone, aside from the Haarlem Lake, employed two hundred and sixty wind-mills. The next step in the organization is what is called the Hydraulic DROOGMAKERU. 53 A( 1 in in ist iat if m. This is a body of skilled men, some of them engineers, who have charge of the hydraulic interests of certain districts. The Administration of the Rhineland, Pdt instance, has complete jurisdiction in all matters concerning the dikes and drains of that part of North Eolland lying between Amsterdam and the sea on the east and west, and between the [J and the environs of the Hague and Gfcrada on the north and south. Their territory includes Leyden and Haarlem and the Haarlem Lake. These administrations have entire control of the means of outlet for the drainage waters, and of the mechanical appliances by which their removal is facilitated They have also a supervisory control over the drainage government of the different polders in their districts. The district is divided into two classes of territory, the Polders and the Basin The polders axe governed by officers appointed by local proprie- tors; the basin, entirely by the Administration. The latter consists of all canals of communication and other channels for the removal of tin- water pumped from the polders, and also of any undrained bodies of water that may exist in the district. One of the most important duties of the Hydraulic Administration is to establish the maximum level of the water in the basin, and when from any eause the water has reached this level, to see that no more water is pumped from the polders until it shall have Bubsided below it. Control is also taken by this body, of all (pac- tions arising between different polders as to the injurious effect of the pumping of one upon the interests of the other. The care of the exte- rior defences — defences againsl the influx of water from the sea or from interior sources — forms an important part of their office, and, indeed, the safety of the country depends, more than on anything else, on the vigilance with which in time of danger the detailed dike-guards are made to attend to their duty. When southwest -ales have long prevailed, forcing the waters of the Atlantic around the North of Scotland, and are then succeeded by north- west -des which blow these waters into the German Ocean beyond the capacity of the English Channel to pass them, they are piled against the COast Of Holland with terrific force; the high tide is prevented from receding, and the next tide, and sometimes even the next, is piled upon 54 A FAEMEE'S VACATION. it by the winds until only the utmost exertion suffices to prevent its surmounting the dikes. In such times, an army of men hastily build a new dike on the top of the old one, contending with the waters inch by inch, and so preventing that first damaging flow which is like "the beginning of strife." The hydraulic administrations are of such universally recognized impor- tance that they have always been respected during political troubles and revolutions, and in spite of the administrative or judiciary subdivisions of the country. The polder-masters, or the local authorities for the regulation of the drainage of the individual polders, have charge of the maintenance of the dikes and mills, and of the opportune removal of the waters. The Hydraulic Administration is charged with the maintenance of a just equilibrium between the interests of the polders and those of their own works of drainage, and with the control of intercommunication, etc. The point at which the level of water in the basin shall be fixed, and the strictness with which it is maintained, are the cause of frequent difficulty between the two organizations. The authorities of the polders are naturally anxious to make their draining as rapid as possible, and frequently con- tinue the working of the mills after the fixed level of the waters without has been reached, hoping to escape detection, or risking the penalty that may result, — anything rather than that their own polders shall remain submerged. The owners of polders with strong and high dikes often care little that, in draining them, they injure neighboring polders with smaller or feebler dikes, and it requires the strong authority of the Administra- tion to which they belong to prevent serious injury from this source. No view of Dutch drainage would be complete which did not take into consideration the vast production of peat for fuel. In spite of the fact that Newcastle coal can frequently be delivered at Amsterdam or Eotterdam for less than its price in Dublin, and that German coal can also be had at very low cost, yet by far the largest part of the fuel used in the Netherlands, not only for domestic purposes, but for steaming, brick-burning, and all manner of manufactures, is the peat taken from DROOGMA KK RTJ. their own bogs. The annua] consumption amounts to millions of tons, and is constantly increasing. So strong is the influence of the profit the peat-trade, that even in this country, where Land is so high in agri- cultural value, and where so much of the energy of the people is devoted to the reclamation of submerged lands, there is a constant destruction of fertile fields in the interest of those who seek the fuel Lying beneath the soil. This Latter is rapidly removed, strip by Btrip, and then, the sub- stratum of rich peat being taken out, the trench from which it came is allowed to till with water, — thus to remain until the new draining at the lower level shall have restored it to cultivation. Some of these turf- lakes have attained great size; the polder called Zuidplas, near Rotter- dam, about Unlit) acres in extent, was an artificially formed turf-lake The turf-lakes Lying east of Haarlem Lake, ami parts of which have Long been drained, were of even greater extent. Now, no such removal of turf is permitted until provision has been made for payment into the public treasury of enough to cover the taxes due from the land while it shall remain covered with water, and the cost of the final drainage. Each polder is supplied with a gate for the admission of the exterior water. These lands, although so Low, and though created by artificial drainage, sutler quickly from drought, owing to the lightness of their soil, and it is important to their fertility that the water in the interior ditches and canals be not, in dry weather, reduced below a certain level; fortunately the means are always at hand for the needed supply. "Wind-nulls have been used in Holland for the drainage of land from immemorial time. The little mill, with a vane or tail to turn it toward the wind, which is much used in Friesland, costs about 300 gulden. The Large mills used in deep draining cost even a hundred times this sum. These are, indeed, large, and a row of them at the side of a canal is really imposing. Fig. -1 shows a row of such giants near Rotterdam The foundation, to the height of the doors, is of stone or brick; on this rests the super- structure, which, including the revolving hood, Is beautifully thatched with straw. The turning of the sails toward the wind was descril 56 A FARMER'S VACATION. the preceding chapter. The interior mechanism is shown in Fig. 5, which is a section of a smaller mill. The paddle-wheel is actuated by a simple communication with the wind-wheel; it drives the water up an incline to a higher level. With no important modifications, this is the type of all draining-mills, except a comparatively small number, where the Archimedean screw is used. Each mill of the larger size is capable of raising water to a height of about four feet. With a fair wind, it will lift to this height from 5,000 to 10,000 gallons per minute. Each wind-mill is under the charge of a man whose family makes its home within it. The most quaint and charming room into which I went in Holland was the principal room in the foundation story of the first wind-mill shown in Fig. 4. The ar- rangement of this story is shown in Fig. 6; the ceiling, supported by heavy oak timbers, was darkly oiled; the floor was covered with smooth red tiles. Between the windows was a hearth of blue-and- white Dutch tiles, these also covering the back of the fireplace for the full width of the hearth, up beyond a point where it was screened by the curtain han - the more rapid discharge of these outlets into the 1.1. and to prevent the interruption of the flow on the occasion of unusual rises of the water in that arm of the sea -1 Another of like character at the southern border of the territory of the Rijnland (at Gouda) t<» improve the drainage of the polders of this region, — this not necessarily as an aid to the drainage of the lake itself, hut as an inducement for concessions on the part of the Administration of the Rijnland, to whom such works would he of great advantag 5. The establishment of three pumping-stations at the borders of the lake, each supplied with lifting-pumps worked by enormous Bteam-engines specially invented and constructed for the work. One of these pumping- 64 A FARMER'S VACATION. stations, " The Cruquius," was fixed at the junction of the Spaarne with the encircling canal, and the other two at the ends of the longitudinal axis of the lake ("The Lijnden" opposite the Lutke nieer, and "The Leeghwater" at Kaag). The estimated cost of the enterprise was 8,355,000 gul- den ($3,342,000 gold, or about $75 per acre for the land to be reclaimed). The scheme was finally adopted by the States-General by an immense majority in 1839. The commission charged with the work comprised thirteen distinguished engineers, landed proprietors, and state counsellors, under the presi- dency of Gevers d'Endegeest, to whose elaborate monograph I am indebted for many of the statistics given in this chapter. The dike was entirely to isolate the lake, without locks for the admission of boats to the canals of the future pol- der. It was to be, on the firmer ground bordering the lake, a simple embankment of earth ; where it crossed creeks and canals it must be protected by loaded caissons sunk in the water. These works under water covered a length of nearly two miles, and presented in many cases serious en- gineering difficulties. The general character of the dike and canal will be un- derstood from the accompanying profile, Fig. 8. For a width of 95 feet the canal has a depth of over 10 feet. The dike rises to a height of 7h feet -f AP. The banks of the canal have a slope of 2 to 1, and are bordered by a level strip about 6 feet wide, which is slightly covered by water. Between the canal and the dike of the lake on one side, and the dikes of the adjoining polders on the other, there is a level roadway. The body of the dike is generally composed of the peaty earth thrown up in the excavation of the canal. It is cov- I 2 DROOGMAKERIJ. 65 ered with turf, and has generally sunk but little, the heavy weight of the mass in construction having al once compacted it firmly. In exceptional cases it has been necessary to restore its height from time to time, — generally with the silt taken out in cleaning tin- canal. The narrow tongue of land separating the lake from the peat-lakes lying to the southeast of it was not land in the true sense of the word, only a narrow floating bed composed of a variety of aquatic plants whose roots were closely interlaced, and which rose and fell with the Level of the basin. This was gradually Loaded with the earth taken from the canal and sunk, little by little, to the hard bottom 12 or L5 feet below. Upon this, as it solidified, the body of the dike was finally built. The result was entirely satisfactory, and the cost was not excessiva Occasionally it was necessary to build walls of fascines sunken cais- sons), and occasionally heavy deposits of sand were brought at great cost from the dunes on the opposite side of the lake. This construction is shown in Fig. 9. jctty or rASCiNts. FlO. 9. DUI WITH JKTTIKS. In October, L843, the lake was entirely closed, with the exception of certain openings left for navigation, and the final closing of which awaited the completion of the machinery and the consent of the Administration of the Rhineland It actually took place only in May, is is. The dike and canal cost 1,938,328 gulden. Their length is : , .7."L , miles. The average cost for canal and dike together was 9.91 gulden per run- ning foot. The superficial area of the canal is 65436 acres, and the area of the dike and its slopes is 1,013.52 acres. During the early Btages of the work, before the dike had settled and heroine covered wilh vegetation, it was subject to considerable washing by the water of the canal, and had frequently to be protected by basket- work of straw and rushes. 66 A FARMER'S VACATION. After its completion, in 1848, it needed no repair save occasional slight additions to its height at certain points where it had settled or had lost material by accidental fires. A curious phenomenon, however, occurred in connection with the outer dike of the canal on the east side of the lake, where it crossed an area of floating soil which bordered wide ponds near the village of Aalsmeer. An area of many acres, detached by the canal from the old works of defence against the lake, found itself one fine day driven by the tem- pest from the bank of the canal to the other side of the pond. The proprietor implored the aid of the Commission. His land had floated to the opposite shore, widely separated from his other fields, and resting on water that was not his own. By the combined effort of the proprietor and of the Commission these fugitive fields were towed back to the bor- ders of the canal and pinned in place by piles and poles which pre- vented them from undertaking another voyage. The question which required the most careful consideration, and the decision of which involved the greatest responsibility, was that of the exclusive use of steam-power for pumping. The amount of water to be lifted was over seven hundred and eighty million tons. To this must be added the rain-fall and the water of infiltration, which was estimated to amount to forty million tons per annum during the drainage of the lake, and to sixty million tons after the drainage. There had, however, to be taken into account the necessity for the rapid removal of the greatest additions the waters of the polder might receive under the most unfa- vorable circumstances. Provision was consequently to be made for the removal of forty million tons per month. The lowest water level of the canals and ditches after the draining would be sixteen feet — A P. This would constitute a task for the full capacity of one hundred wind- mills of the largest size. A serious objection to the use of these was found in the fact that a pumping wind-mill works effectively only one thousand five hundred hours in the year ; the rest of the time (during the wet season) the wind is too strong, or too light. In using wind-mills with the Archimedean screw, with which the lake DEOOGMAKERIJ. 67 could be emptied in two lifts, of about seven feet each, it would have bees necessary to have fifty-seven nulls on each lift The upper lift would have required fifteen months for its removal The second lift could be moved only so fast a.s the mills of the upper could lift the water for the whole height of seven feet This would have required for the removal of all the water of the lower lift thirty-three months. Draining by wind would therefore have required four years' time, steam would be able to remove the whole in fourteen months, allowii actual working of two hundred and fifty days per annum. Each wind- mill would cost 26,000 gulden, and would each cost 750 gulden per annum for maintenance, making a total, including interest, of 3,700,000 gulden. It was calculated that the removal of forty million tons per month would be accomplished, with the use of pumps, by steam-engines having a combined force of 1,084 horse-power. In adopting steam a- the motive- power, the Commission undertook an experiment larger than had ever before been attempted. There was no model to follow at home or abroad. The experience of the mines of Cornwall had demonstrated that the larger the steam cylinder, — at least up to a diameter of eighty inches, — the less is the fuel required for the production of a certain force ; that direct-acting engines with lifting-pumps give the most advantageous results; that such engines of eighty-inch cylinders can raise six hundred and fifty tons of water three feet high, with the consumption of twenty- two pounds of coal, being less than two and a quarter pounds of coal per horse-power per hour. Making allowance tor friction and all draw- backs, there was allowed less than three pounds of coal per hoTse-poweT per hour. The cost of draining by steam would be only L,200,000 gulden. After the removal of the water, the maintenance of the one hundred and four- teen wind-mills would cost 74,100 gulden per annum. The steam-pumps allowing fifty-three days' work per annum ) would cost 54,000 gulden These calculations induced the Commission definitely to employ -team as their motive-power, and, in default of all example, they decided to create an apparatus which nowhere else existed 68 A FARMER'S VACATION. As Hollanders had been called to England, to France, and to Germany for the construction of hydraulic works, they had no hesitation, born of national pride, in employing English engineers to prepare plans for their pumping-engines. The duty was intrusted to Messrs. Arthur Dean and Joseph Gibbs, who contracted to furnish complete plans for a steam-engine with a double cylinder, the diameter of the inner one being eighty-four inches. Each engine shoidd have a force of three hundred and fifty horse-power, with ten strokes per minute, the length of stroke being ten feet, and capable of raising from seventy to seventy-five million pounds one foot with the consumption of ninety-four pounds of coal of the best quality. They engaged further to superintend the construction and placing of the machine. Their compensation was to depend mainly on the success of their plans. They were to receive 3,000 gulden, whether the Leeghwater succeeded FlG. 10. ELEVATION OF THE PUMPING-F.NGINE " LEEGIIWATEK." DROOGMAKERU. mnru innrmrnn 69 FlO. 11. CBOS8-SECTIOH 0» BIfGIIfl i\n PUMPS, " U1 NOT \ TV Ft ' or not. To succeed, the machine should be of at least three hundred and fifty horse-power, and should lift from seventy to seventy-five mil- lion pounds to the height of one foot, with the consumption of ninety- four pounds of the first quality of Welsh coal, the circumstances being the same as would obtain when the water had to be lifted from the whole depth of the drained polder. This result being obtained, they were to receive, in addition, 9,000 gulden. For all greater result they were to receive 200 gulden for each million pounds in excess. The same plans being adopted for the Lijndeu and Cruquius, they were t<> receive 9,000 gulden for each of these machines Fig. 1<> represents an elevation and Fig. 11 a cross-section of the engine " Leegh water" as actually constructed The inner cylinder " 1> <■ M Aside from the addition of this valuable territory, with its costly works, to the taxable capital of the kingdom, the following cash returns were realized : — Received for rents, pasture-rights, sale of material, etc 55,609 The sale of land, including the value of the small amount retained 8," red Groin purchasers as pumping-tax 184,187 1 for fuel, lubricants, and work at the different pumping- stations, on turning them over to the polder and the Rijnland 72,415 Total 8,344 Leaving the question of interest out of the account and much of this was A FAKMEK'S VACATION. due to delays for which the Commission was not responsible), the net cost of the improvement was 1,032,520 gulden, or $413,008 gold, — less than ten dollars per acre for the land added to the taxable estate of the kingdom. The historian of the work closes his account of the material gain to the state as follows : " But this is not all ; we have driven forever from the bosom of our country a most dangerous enemy ; we have at the same time augmented the means for defending our capital in time of war. We have conquered a province in a combat without tears and without blood, where science and genius took the place of generals, and where polderjongens were the worthy soldiers. Persevering to surmount the obstacles of nature, and those created by man, the country has accomplished, to its great honor and glory, one of the grandest enter- prises of the age." The Commission served long and faithfully without compensation. Its members accepted as a sufficient recompense these five words, inserted in 1852 in the Official Journal, " Le Lac est a sec." In my own visit to the polder, after examining Mr. Amersfoort's farm just within the dike, I walked along the tow-path of the canal to the pumping-engine at Lijnden, which is in charge of an English engineer, and which was even more stupendous than I had imagined. It works now mainly during winter with seven pumps, making seven strokes per minute, and lifting 56 tons of water at each stroke ; the lift is 15 feet, 3 feet below the general level of the land in the polder. There are con- sumed about 29 tons of German coal per day. This engine, as well as the Cruquius and Leeghwater, works about three months during the year, day and night. I went some distance into the lake, which yet has, as compared with the older polders like the Beemster, a somewhat new look, though, with a population of from 11,000 to 12,000 mainly devoted to agriculture, and with farms of small size, there is much more activity, more cultivation, and very much greater evidence of good farming than are to be found in new districts in our own country. There is, after visiting the older DK()<)(i.MAKKI;l.J. drainages, nothing of special interest, so far as I was able to learn, except the Immense initial fact of the reclaiming of this vast polder from the domain of the sea. Eere, incidentally, one can besl study the customs of the whole kingdom, for the inhabitants have come from ■ province, and each has built and docs his tanning according to the prac- tices of his former home In this vasl plain, bo lately the bottom of a deep navigable lake, Btraight roads are bordered with trees; substantia] and often elegant farm- houses are seen on every hand; over 30,000 letters are distributed annually ; throughout the whole commune there are police, cemeteries fire-engines, all the appliances of Dutch civilization, as well organized as in any of the older districts; periodical cattle-markets are regularly held ; the diligence makes its stated trips; a steamboat plies on the encircling canal ; grain-mills are at work, and all the necessaries of life arc ob- tained within the polder. In the villages are artisans, manufacturers, and professional men of all sorts, — in a word, thrift, industry, and prosper- ity have taken complete possession of the polder. Nearly opposite the Lijnden, on the other side of the canal, is the Aker polder of 738 acres, which is entirely drained and kept in satis- factory condition by a small wind-mill, which has been running for 250 years, driving a paddle-wheel that lifts the water about 4 feet Each of the four sails of this mill is only about 22 i'eet long. A little further on toward Halfway is the Lutke meer, containing 452 acres, lying 1 I \ feet below the level of the canaL This is a new recla- mation, and was pumped out in six months in 1864 by a centrifugal pump having a diameter of 18 inches, and delivering through a 12-inch iron pipe. This pump consumes 85 pounds of coal per hour, and the engine is of 12 horse-power. The polder is in good condition, but re- quires the constant working of the pump for seven months of the year. The pumping-wheels at Halfway 1 was not able to examine, as, owing to the low stage of the Mater in the basin, their operation was not required. At Haarlem I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of Mr. 88 A FARMER'S VACATION. van der Poll, the Dijkgraaf of the Haarlem Lake polder, who is the cus- todian of the documents and maps relating to the improvement, and is in charge of all matters connected with the removal of water and the protection of the works. From him I obtained much valuable engineer- ing information. The average annual rain-fall in the Haarlem Lake for ten years, ending in 1872, was 31.267 inches. The average for the first four months of the year 7.472 " The average for the second four months of the year .... 10.503 " The average for the third four months of the year 13.292 " The average work of the pumps was 5,584| hours. The average for the first four months of the year 2,254^ " The average for the second four months of the year .... 398J " The average for the third four months of the year 2,932 " The average annual consumption of coal was 2,690 tons. If wind-power is used, it is necessary that one tenth of the area of the polder should be in canals and ditches (basin). If steam is used, the basin need be but one twentieth of the area. For a lift of only 3 feet, it is immaterial whether the paddle-wheel or the Archimedean screw be used ; either delivers ordinarily, with the large mills used, from 55 to 65 tons per minute. The large wind-mills, such as are used near Eotterdam and in the Beemster, deliver as follows : — 11 tons when the force of the wind is from 10 to 20 lbs. per square yard. 25 " " " " " « 20 to 40 42 " " " " « « 40 to 60 The annual - cost of draining the Beemster by the present system is 25,440 gulden. To drain it by steam would cost 56,575 gulden. The area of the Beemster is 17,647 acres. The extra cost, therefore, to drain it by steam would be 31,135 gulden, or If gulden per acre. The change is seriously contemplated, because under the present system, for an aver- age of seven weeks during the winter, hundreds of acres are submerged, DROOGMAKEBH. while the other parts are only from 4 to 12 inches above the water- level They should be never less than from 16 to 24 inches above. Mr. van der Poll gave me the details of the canalization of the [J, described in the first chapter [Hollow-Land). He states that the chief motive, that of perfecting a direct communication between Amsterdam and the sea, would hardly have been sufficient to induce the prosecution of the work, hud it nut been strongly seconded by the craving for the rich reclaimed land, which it is believed will lead to sales that will Largely recompense its cost. The ambition of the Dutch people to regain what the sea has taken from them will evidently know no limit until the solid defence against its inclusions shall enclose only cultivated land and the canals neo for navigation. The drainage of the Haarlem Lake is by much the largest operation of its kind ever undertaken by man, yet it becomes almost unimportant as compared with the project now on foot for the drainage of the Zny- der Zee. This improvement is to include the whole of the southern part of this body of water. It is proposed to build a dike from Knkhuizen to the Island of Urk, and thence to Kampen on the east coast, just south of the mouths of several rivers which belong to the outlets of the Rhine This dike will be raised to a height of 16 feet + A 1'. — its width at high-water mark 131 feet. The dike will be covered with granite on its outer slope to a point well below the surface of the water, — laid at a very slight inclination, so as to break the force of the waves. The top of the dike is to have a width of nearly 20 feet, and the inner slope for a width of 29| feet will rest upon a heavy stone ami sand foundation. Adjoining these, a level space 33 feet wide will be devoted to a rail- road. Within these comes a canal 4'.'l' feet wide and 16 1 feet dee].. This canal will be in communication with the Grand Canal of Amster- dam. It will be separated by another dike with a long inner Blope reaching to the bottom of the Zuvder Zee and bordered by a shallow canal 130 feet wide. The top of the dike will be 27 feet above the summer level of the inner waters. The whole area will be inters by navigable canals. 90 A FARMER'S VACATION. The project was devised in 1866 by Mr. Bijerinck, Hydraulic Engineer of the Kingdom. It contemplates the draining of 480,000 acres by means of steam-pumps having a combined force of 9,400 horse-power. It is estimated that the draining will occupy four and a half years, and that the expense, including the construction of dikes, canals, interest, etc., will be 184,000,000 gulden, — each acre costing 1,050 gulden. The average depth of the Zuyder Zee is nearly 11 feet — A P. Lest the reduction of the area of the Zuyder Zee should increase the rise of the tides during northwesterly storms and lead to the overflowing of the adjacent low country, the passage between the islands of Texel and Ylieland is to be diked, forming a barrier across the opening to the Zuyder Zee, which will very much decrease the influx of water. The Commission was unanimous in recommending the enterprise, on the score of health and of the general interests of the country, all previous drainages having proved advantageous. The whole scheme is now only waiting the approval of the government. The earthwork required for the drainage of the Haarlem Lake was accom- plished by men of a class called " polderjongens," who are to be found throughout the country wherever drainage is being carried on, operating in gangs, as sub-contractors, under the chief undertaker of the work. They are men habituated from their childhood to the work, and to the life of the swamps and morasses, and hardened against sickness and fatigue ; they are uniformly strong, robust, and active men, because the weak cannot stand the severe toil, and the indolent are driven from the gangs. They work in bands of from eight to twelve men, each band under its own chief. The band lives in a hut made of straw and rushes, — light in summer and heavily covered in winter, — which is built in a few hours, and is taken down and rebuilt as the work progresses. A woman takes care of the house and maintains order ; she is often the temporary wife of one of the men, the marriage being respected by all. These men are provided with strong boots with heavy spiked soles, to give footing on the slippery planks over which they drive their wheel- DROOGMAKKRTJ. 91 harrows. They are dressed from head to foot in red flanneL They live upon an abundant diet of pork, potatoes, and good bread They some- times drink beer, but more often tea or coffee,- -seldom water, They are rarely members of temperance societies, and they end their hard week's work with a long carouse. At uoon on Monday they return to duty, and for five 'lays and a half work as long as there is light, often spend- ing the evenings in dancing to the music of the violin. [f their work is threatened with inundation even the night doea not interrupt them, and if the summer is too short to finish their task it is continued in winter. The main canal between the Leeghwater and the Lijnden was not completed until the last night of the year, when the opposite parties came together with mutual hurrahs; and these men of iron, covered with sweat and mud, in the open air, on a freezing night, in the midst of this immense plain of morass, prolonged their songs and their liba- tions into the opening of the mw year. Viewed from the moral stand-point these polderjongens are not admi- rable, but one can but praise and respect the vigor, the efforts, and the courage of men who have made such enormous works possible. Early precautions were taken to provide for the treatment of those who might tall sick during the work of improvement, and pamphlets were written by scientific physicians prescribing rules to be followed. Much impor- tance was attached to the planting of trees as a guard against malaria, but this was met by the proverb: ""When the tree has -town the planter is dead." There was no time for precaution beyond the provision of ample hospital facilities. These, fortunately, were in little demand. During the curly stages of the work the acridity of the water in the ditches was BO great that a single drop contracted the lip-. After a short time the water became drinkable for animaK even in the lowest parts of the polder, where now one sees only broad grass-fields pastured by the finest cattle. Care had been taken in the Haarlem Lake to make ample provision for filtered water, but the workmen rarely slaked their thirst except with cold tea and coffee; when water was used, it had always been previously boiled. Beer was not wanting, and they all had means with which to procure it. There were but tew eases of fever, and few dis< 92 A FARMEE'S VACATION". ing from excessive dissipation. At the worst season, among one hundred and eighty men working in the lowest part of the lake, under the most unwholesome circumstances, but two were ill when the medical officer made his inspection. Some years after the drainage, in 1858 - 59, after very warm summers, fevers were very general throughout Holland, but the new polder, and the adjoining country, were not worse off than the older drained districts. There was suffering everywhere, especially where the water, reduced below its ordinary level, left the marshy banks of ditches and canals exposed. The result was pestilential miasma, such as always exists under similar circumstances, not only in Holland, but in other marshy countries. The unhealthful conditions about the Haarlem Lake were considered only temporary, and were considered no sufficient argu- ment against the execution of such work. The fear of malaria has never influenced the people against undertaking new operations of drainage. Under certain circumstances drainage enterprises have proved to be for the time disadvantageous, but most generally no ill effects have been observed. Were this not the case, what would be the condition of the provinces of North and South Holland, where nine tenths of the soil has been reclaimed from the sea ? After the drainage-work had been completed, the lake was formed into a new commune, which began its life with a population of several hun- dred persons, and twenty-five electors. Two villages were established in plan ; one, being near the centre of the polder, and in its lowest part, had to be raised with sand to a sufficient height for safe building. These villages were laid out, and their building was begun under the direction of the Commission. Streets and parks were provided, and two churches, one Protestant and one Catholic, were established for each community. Trees were planted at the sides of the streets and canals; but these were destroyed for want of a sufficient police. The northern village, especially, grew rapidly, and there soon appeared a doctor and apothecary, a mechanical bakery, a blacksmith, all manner of mechanics, and subsequently a fine school. The commune is now thriving and growing, and constitutes the best field in all Holland in which to study the various aspects of Dutch Farming. CHAPTER III. DUTCH FARMING. UNDER what influence man first halted and took root on the sub- merged lands of Holland it would be difficult to determine. Cer- tainly the agricultural attractiveness of the country could not have held him. The soil was one on which it was possible neither to walk as on the land, nor to navigate as on the sea. There were no materials for building; no iron, or other metals; no stone. The country seemed to the ancients like the vague end of the habitable world. Tin-re were only a few families, living on fish, and on the eggs of aquatic fowl, and taking refuge at high tide on artificial mounds, or in their cabins built upon piles. Allusion has been made in previous chapters to various destructive Hoods, which made the chances of this country seem almost desperate, but the following account from Motley is so graphic, and shows bo clearly the dangers to which the population was constantly exposed long after the general occupation of the country, that it may well 1"' repeated here. He refers to the inundation of November, 1570: — "Not the memorable deluge of the thirteenth century, out of which the Zuyder Zee was born; not that in which the waters of the Dollart had closed forever over the villages and churches of Groningen ; not one of those perpetually recurring floods by which the inhabitants of the Nether- Lands, year after year, were recalled to an anxious remembrance of the watery chaos out of which their fatherland had been created, and into which it was in daily danger of resolving itself again, had excited so much terror and caused so much destruction. A continued and violent gale from the northwesl had long been sweeping the Atlantic waters into 94 A FARMER'S VACATION. the North Sea, and had now piled them up on the fragile coasts of the provinces. The dikes, tasked beyond their strength, burst in every direc- tion. The cities of Flanders, to a considerable distance inland, were sud- denly invaded by the waters of the ocean. The whole narrow peninsula of North Holland was in imminent danger of being swept away forever. Between Amsterdam and Meyden the great Diemer dike was broken through in twelve places. The Hand-bos, a bulwark formed of oaken piles, fastened with metal clamps, moored with iron anchors, and secured by gravel and granite, was snapped to pieces like packthread. The ' Sleeper,' a dike thus called because it was usually left in repose by the elements, except in great emergencies, alone held firm, and prevented the consummation of the catastrophe. Still, the ocean poured in upon the land with terrible fury. Dorp, Eotterdam, and many other cities were, for a time, almost submerged. Along the coast fishing vessels, and even ships of larger size, were floated up into the country, where they entangled themselves in groves and orchards, or beat to pieces the roofs and walls of houses. The destruction of life and property was enormous throughout the maritime provinces, but in Friesland the desolation was complete. There nearly all the dikes and sluices were dashed to fragments ; the country, far and wide, converted into an angry sea. The steeples and towers of inland cities became islands of the ocean. Thousands of human beings were swept out of existence in a few hours. Whole districts of territory, with all their villages, farms, and churches, were rent from their places, borne along by the force of the waves, sometimes to be lodged in another part of the country, sometimes to be entirely ingulfed. Multitudes of men, women, children, of horses, oxen, sheep, and every domestic animal, were struggling in the waves in every direction. Every boat, and every article which could serve as a boat, was eagerly seized upon. Every house was inundated ; even the ■ graveyards gave up their dead. The living infant in his cradle, and the long-buried corpse in his coffin, floated side by side. The ancient flood seemed about to be renewed. Everywhere — upon the tops of trees, upon the steeples of churches — human beings were clustered, praying to God for mercy, and to their fellow-men for assistance. As the storm at ditch iai;.mix<;. last was subsiding, boats began to ply in every direction, saving those who were still struggling in the water, picking fugitives from roofs and tree-tops, and collecting the bodies of those already drowned. Colonel Robles, Seigneur de Hilly, formerly much hated for his Spanish and Por- tuguese blood, made himself very active in this humane work. By his exertions, and those of the troops belonging to Groningen, many lives were rescued, and gratitude replaced the ancient animosity. It was esti- mated that at least 20,000 persons were destroyed in the province of Friesland alone. Throughout the Netherlands, 1.00,000 persons perished. The damage done to property, the number of animals ingulfed in the sea, were almost incalculable." The coat-of-arms of one of the Dutch provinces shows a Lion rising out of the waves, with the motto, " Luctor et Emergo." This device, indeed, ought have been taken for the nation itself. It was suggested in the preceding chapter that the flat country of the Netherlands grew from the accumulation of the sands of the sea mingled with the earthy deposits of the Rhine. A Dutch professor travelling in Switzerland found in the de'bris of the Bernese Oberland the same mica with which he was familiar in the silt of the Ijssel. The frosts and rains and the wear and tear of the whole watershed of the Rhine still enrich its Hoods with the silt nut of which this vast polderland has grown, and the diminishing pastures of the higher Alps send their substance year by year to strengthen the foundations of Dutch agricultural wealth. In the provinces of Friesland and Groningen, and all along t]„. North ii the alluvial soil, there are seen, at frequent intervals, little mounds, from L2 to 20 feel in height, on which the ancient villages wire built These mounds are called "terpen," and their election has unquestionably been the work of man. When they are dug down, their upper parts are found to consist of layers of manure and rubbish, and they contain utensils which reach hack to the bronze age, and perhaps even to the stone age Carthaginian antiquities found within them indi- cate that at BOme remote time the hardy navigators of that nation must have landed on this distant shore. 96 A FARMER'S VACATION. These terpen were undoubtedly places of refuge for the people and their flocks during times of flood, if not the sites of permanent villages. The original structure was of clay taken from the neighborhood,- — the depressions left having been soon filled with the silt of the floods, which were as yet kept back by no embankments. They consist of a calcareous clay, mixed with layers of manure, and have been impregnated with mammal matters for their whole depth by long ages of decay and filtra- tion. Recently, their earth has been used with the best effect as a fer- tilizer. The material has now come in great request, and sells for 40 cents a cubic yard, about 35 cubic yards being a dressing for one acre. The use of the terpen material has caused almost a revolution in some branches of Dutch agriculture. The grass-growing farms farther to the south take this earth, and give in exchange fresh manure, to be used on the cultivated fields, — an exchange that would be practicable only in a country where water transportation reaches to the side of every field. Since the days of the terpen-builders things have bravely altered, as is sufficiently shown by the description of the country travelled through, in the preceding account of the general aspect and condition of Holland. During a rapid tour, my opportunities for observing were of course very limited, but they were sufficient to confirm the impressions received from descriptions given by other and more careful travellers, and to satisfy me that I had nowhere else seen a community in which industry and pros- perity, skill and success, went so constantly hand in hand. On every side there exists the most abundant evidence of comfort and civilization, — indeed, of an almost universal prosperity and a widespread wealth. Laveleye speaks of the farm-buildings, especially in the northern prov- inces, as being of an unequalled size, and surrounded with evidences of wealth and taste, " Between the road and the dwelling-house there is a pleasure-garden planted with exotic trees, and whose lawns are inter- spersed with groups of flowers. At one side vegetable garden and fruit orchard furnish a good variety for the table. The house is imposing, with the great extent of its faqade, and the large number of windows in the two stories. Within, the embroidered curtains, the furniture of American walnut, the piano, the books of the library, — ^hese all indi- DUTCH FARMING. 97 cate large wealth ami habits of life that imply a superior condition. Behind the dwelling of the former, but attached to it, rises a building, high aa a church and Long as a covered ship-yard. Here are found the cow-stable, the horse-stable, and the barn, all under one roof. On enter- ing, one first sees an enormous space, sufficient to shelter the harvest of 200 or 300 acres, and a large collection of improved implements; next, sometimes 60 or 70 cows in a Bingle row; and, again, from L0 to 20 superb black horses. "The formers of Groningen have preserved the simple manners of their ancestors, Although often possessing several 'tons'* of gold, they put their own hands to the plough, and take the immediate direction of all the work of their fields. They are much richer than their brethren of Zeeland and Friesland. Their sons are frequently educated at univer- sities, a matter of no small cost, for in this rich country habits are fas- tidious, and it is estimated that each son while at college costs 2,000 gulden per annum. "These farmers are the leading men of their country ; there is no elevated above them. From their ranks arc chosen nearly all the mem- bers of the different elective bodies, and even those who go to represent the province in the States-General. The care of their farms does not prevent them from taking an active part in political life and in the duties of public administration. They follow not only the progress of the art of agriculture, but also the movement of modern thought They maintain near the city of Groningen an excellent agricultural school with fifty pupils, and perhaps aowhere else is education so universal in coun- try districts. In fact, Groningen passes fur the most advanced province of tin- Netherlands. It is a sort of republic, inhabited by rich and enlightened peasants completely emancipated from the spirit of routine. One sees nowhere here the turrets of the feudal castle overlooking the trees of great parks, and one would search in vain for the arisl condition of which Brittany is so proud. The fine houses of the farmers are the only castles, and they all resemble one another. Properly is quite evenly distributed, and almost all that the land produces remains * 100,000 gulden. 98 A JTAllMEK'S VACATION. Threshing MashinC' 'Jl"y Culler Wagon House — Thrashing Shed, &c. PLAN OF BARN, ETC., ON A SMALL FARM IN GR0N1NGEN. — LENGTH 150 FEET; WIDTH, 72 FEET. in the hands of those who cultivate it. Wealth and work are everywhere associated, idleness and opulence nowhere." The mode of life is simple and inexpensive, and, since of late years butter and cheese have almost doubled in price, prosperity is greatly increased; but extravagant expenditure lies in the direction of treasure- storing, rather than in that of costly living. Many farmers, not content to have table service of silver, are said to use this metal even for heavy kitchen utensils. There are those even who are only satisfied with table service of gold. Aside from this, the accumulations of Dutch farmers are a very large source of the investment fund with which Holland is so well supplied for all manner of foreign stock-buying, and much of which has latterly taken on such a permanent character in connection with some of our own enterprises. One is surprised everywhere in the smaller towns with the number of the jewellers' shops, rich with sump- tuous silver-ware, and, very often, coral necklaces of the finest quality, and worth hundreds of dollars. DUTCH I. \ KM INC. Although Holland took its first impetus from commerce, this has sadly fallen away, ami now agriculture has on all sides filled and overflowed the gap. Many towns, formerly thriving with commerce, have been de- stroyed by the silting up of their rivers and bays; but the reclaiming of the overflowed lands and ancient harbors has given them another and tinner hold upon prosperity, — a prosperity, too, which is much mon nal in its influence, reaching all classes of the community to a degree unknown during the old commercial days. Agriculture in this country grew up originally only as an incident to the life of its mercantile people. The application of tariffs and the coni- petition of England combine to lessen very much the importance of Dutch commerce, while the agriculture has steadily increased Little by little, without attracting the attention of the rest of the world, and almost without the knowledge of Holland itself, the Netherlands have gone silently and quietly forward, until they have become one of the iii"-i advanced agricultural nations of Europe, exporting more of the products of the soil than any other; while the prudent, domestic habits of their forefathers, still prevailing among the whole rural population, cause their wealth to accumulate to a much greater degree than with any other agricultural people. In 1860 there were sold in Allan aar, 9,600,547 pounds of cheese; in Horn, 6,341,883.8; in I'urmerend, 3,807,051.4; in Medemblik, 1.71 1.74:: : in Enkhuizen, 1,627,533.6. It one will look at the map of that part of North Holland lying north of the IJ, comparing it in size with other district- of Europe, the force of this statement will be appreciated. The whole province of North Hol- land produces about 26, 1,000 pounds of cheese per annum, and nearly the whole of this is made north of the LT. other provinces are far from being behind this one in wealth of pro- duction. 1 have do statistics of the «ol/a product of Groningen, but it must be enormous. Zealand is the richest in agricultural products of all the Netherland provinces. Of its 428,000 acres only 24,000 are unproductive; 196,000 are in cultivation, and 162,000 in grass. 45,000 acres produce an aver- 100 A FARMER'S VACATION. age of 23 bushels of wheat per acre ; the annual product of the province is 17,000,000 gulden. The average annual production of each acre of the cultivated land is about one hundred dollars of our money. The whole country seems, so far as I could judge, to be given to spe- cial local industries, more or less depending on one another. One of the most curious instances of this is to be found in the bee-keeping of some of the provinces. In order to take advantage of the flowering of the colza, which takes place in the earliest spring, but far away from the heather and buckwheat fields which supply them later, the hives are carried on boats or on long wagons arranged for the purpose. They may frequently be seen on the roads and canals of the Northern provinces, travelling to one or the other of their sources of supply. Their product is very variable, depending much upon the weather. In 1859, the prov- ince of Drenthe exported over a million pounds of honey; in 1860, it produced for export only about 10,000 pounds. Old customs and old employments have maintained their hold with great persistency, and nowhere is there more of the thoroughly quaint and of the apparently awkward to be seen. The grain-harvest was in full operation dur- ing our visit, and I thought it a pity that there could not be a general introduction of our "grain-cradle." I described it to a farmer and urged it upon his attention as a great im- provement ; he was of a contrary opinion, and insisted that the hook and the sickle must be better. There is no use in arguing such a question with a prejudiced mind, but these tools appeared to me to be particularly awk- ward and inconvenient. The hook is held in the left hand and is used to push the grain along, toward the left, as it is cut by repeated blows of the long-handled sickle. IOOK AND SICKLE FOR REAPING. DUTCH FABMING. >l When enough for a gavel is cut, it Lb Lifted aside by the sickle and hook together, and laid in its placa The swath is eut toward the stand- ing grain, not away from it, as with us. As lias been before stated, an immense interest in Friesland and Gron- ingen is based on the cultivation of colza, — a cultivation which must date back to the earliest arrival of the Germans, for the chaff of colza is found buried twelve feet deep in the terpen. One of the curious customs of the country is connected with the threshing of this grain. It shells so readily that when once a stack is opened the threshing must be completed within the same day, requiring much more lone than the farmer himself has at his disposal. The work- is therefore done by travelling gangs, each under its own tesck-graaf or •'Count of the Threshers." A huge sail-cloth is spread upon the ground, and the work is still inaugurated with some remnants of the ancient formalities that distinguished it. But, even in Holland, steam threshing machinery is driving out old customs, and it is no longer dc rigewr t as it once was, that the tesck-graaf should immolate a ram with a knife decorated with flowers, his band devouring the flesh to the cry of Hum ! Hum ! that the girls who were to pass the sheaves to the threshers should first wash their tares in spring-water strewn with flowers; nor that, after the subsequent banquet, where the tanner and the tesck-graaf presided, and where strong drinking prevailed, — at the ball which closed the day's exercises, — the waltzers should turn, not round and round as is the mod- ern custom, but over and over each other as they rolled upon the ground. Another custom which cannot fail to strike a stranger i- the universal water transportation for all manner of traffic, large and small. In the Beemster, all farm transportation is by water. It is by means of boats that manure is taken out and hay brought in, and that the milk is brought each morning from the pastures, where the COWS paSfl the entire summer. Roads are generally used only tor personal communication with the market-towns. Not satisfied, as the rest of the world is, with comfortable housing and ample feeding for their cows, the farmers of Holland, as though eager to :,,- A FARMER'S VACATION. recognize the all-important aid they derive from them, frequently cover them with linen blankets, tied in place, to guard them from the attacks of insects, and to shelter from the frequent raw sea winds. It is usual, too, to set up in the pasture-fields convenient scratching-poles against which the cattle rub their sides and necks with evident advantage. In several instances we saw the jaw-bone of a whale used for this purpose. Domestic customs vary from the standard to which we are used as widely as do those of the farm itself, and the minutest detail that one is permitted to observe of the mode of life of the people is full of a strange interest. At each farm-house and cottage in the drained district there is fixed at the side of the canal a curious kneeling-box, with a platform project- ing out over the water, where the family washing is mainly done. A BEEMSTER LAUNDRY. The proverbial Dutch tendency for scrubbing prevails as much in farm- houses as in others, and adds to the attractiveness, as well as to the value, of the products of their dairies. Here, as elsewhere, the duty of repeated cleansing claims a large part of the time. In other countries, in the houses of workmen and small farmers, we usually see only the coarsest furniture, and untidy and worn utensils. In the Netherlands, even in the humblest cottages, all the wood-work is perfectly painted, DUTCH l-'Ak.MIXC. 103 rubbed, polished, and dusted ; utensils of copper and tin shine like gold and silver. There are few households which do not preserve some an- tique fragment of the time of the republic, 200 years ago, and porcelain from ( Ihina <>!' the Mime period Temple says: " Prom what they are aide to spare, after the oeo expenses of the house, they use one part to augment their capital and revenue, and the other to embellish and furnish their houses, and, in tins way, not only accumulate the fortune of their families, hut contribute also to the beauty and ornamentation of the country." The cow-stable is often in summer the show-room of the house; the one in which the most pride is taken. The little windows in the outer walls are covered with curtains of white muslin. The ceiling, and the partition separating the stable from the hay-barn, are of pine, -listening with cleanness. The floors of the stalls are covered with white sand. swept in fantastic figures. On tables and dressers are sometimes dis- played pieces of silver-ware and old Japanese and Chinese porcelain, which have been carefully handed down from father to son for gi tions. Many of these objects are of .meat value, and would vastly delight an amateur. There are pots of flowers and well-polished implements, and everything about the great hall (for it seems more like this than like a cow-stable) indicates a combination of pride and of Loving tenderness that bespeak an attachment to the home which one bred in a move beautiful country, and under a more genial climate, dees aot readily com- prehend, when applied to the flat lands of Holland. Dutch tanner-, have not been slow t<> realize the fact that good roads are important accessories to good farming, but it must have been a diffi- cult problem which presented itself to the early inhabitants of a marshy country where neither stones nor -ravel ..mid be had. Fortunately, the prevalent clayey deposits make excellent bricks, so hard that they ring like metal when struck together, — whence their nam.- of • klinck- The roadway is raised well above the level of the water in the adjoining ditches, graded to a proper form ami paved with these little 104 A FARMER'S VACATION. klinckers (smaller than our bricks) set on edge. Grass grows to the edge of the roadway, and even in the spaces between the bricks. Its roots, doubtless, help to bind the whole together, and it grows luxuriantly from its frequent drenching with road-wash. There is no mud, and no dust. For light traffic, these roads could not be improved, and all heavy traffic goes by water. In the low country, where wind-mills are largely used for all purposes, grain-mills are not specially dissimilar from the others, but on the higher lands, where, in country neighborhoods, the rude grinding of rye and barley is the principal work to be done, one sees only small mills, of which the whole structure turns on a pivot like the mere hood of the larger ones. One of these, into which I went, and which is the type of its class, is shown in an illustration of the first chapter of this series. In the Northern provinces hay is kept almost entirely in large barns, built in connection with the cow-stable and cheese-room. More to the South, however, what we well know as the " Dutch hay-cover " prevails quite generally. This is familiar to most of us as a square roof sup- ported by four poles within which the hay is piled, the roof, supported by pins through the corner posts on which it rests, being lowered from time to time as hay is taken out or as it settles. These hay-covers in Holland are usually very much larger than with us, and frequently have a stable or wagon-house for a foundation. The roof, which is sometimes 20 or 30 feet above the ground, is well thatched, projecting far enough over at the sides to shelter the hay from driving rain. It is, apparently, not lowered, nor is the hay taken off the top, as with us. The first tak- ing seems to be by a square cut at the side, near the eaves, carried far enough down to make a low doorway through which the hay in the interior is thrown out, the outer walls standing until the last of the sea- son. The method is simple, inexpensive, and very convenient, and hay certainly could not be kept in better order than that in some two-year- old stacks which we examined. No description of the Netherlands is complete which takes note only of the drained country which travellers chiefly see, and to which my own DUTCB FARMING L05 observations were mainly confined Out people generally are regard the whole kingdom as a reclaimed morass. On the contrary, more than half it- area La high and sandy. Commencing at the south, in North Brabant and Hamburg, die sandy region reaches with little inter- ruption throughout the provinces of Gelderland, Over-Ijssel, and Drenthe, and passes on through Germany to the Baltic S I iw but little of this region, but whatever it has to offer of agricul- tural interest, however important it may be, must necessarily be of a dif- ferent order from that which we find in the submerged countries. From the accounts that are available of its Local agricultural practices, it must be very largely poor and unpromising land. To show how vastly different the sandy district is from the rich country of Groningen, I give Lavi account of the people of Rouveen and Staphorst in Over-Ijssel: — "These are people of austere morals, strict and pious Calvinists, for- mal, adhering rigidly to all the ancient institutions in matters of faith as in matters of farming; and, for the rest, the hardest workers in the kingdom, adding to the cultivation of their farms several little industries which procure them a comfortable wealth. They weave baskets; with the wood of the elders, which form their hedges, they make shoe-pegs; they even knit their own stockings, and they have such a horror of idle- hat when the rulers of the village meet in council, they all bring their knitting with them. Kiosts, on each side, there is a depression, or gutter, DUTCH FAEMING. 113 also of brick. These are the drinking-gutters, which slope ver) slightly from one end to the other. Water is pumped in at the upper cud, and is let off at pleasure at the opposite one. The cows stand on a i earthen floor, supported by a brick wall at its rear end. It is this cattle- floor which is in summer covered with movable tiles; the manure-trough is pjiite deep, and contains the solid droppings until they are removed in a barrow. The urine Hows off to the underground receptacle which collects all the liquid refuse of the establishment, and which has a pump for tilling the tank-cart by which the meadows are sprinkled. In the loft over the stable the cheeses are seasoned and prepared for market. Back of this part of the building are the cheese-factory, horse- stables, wagon-house, tool-sheds, etc. Leaving these, and returning through the cow-stable, we passed through a glass door into a sitting-room with some handsome articles of old furniture, and ample evidence of neatness ami comfort. At one side of this we entered a little office or library. where we were shown handsome scientific books and various old objects of interest, and were requested to inscribe our names in the visitors' hunk, which had been well tilled by travellers from all parts of the world. In the larger room, opposite the glass door spoken of, is a tire- place, and over this a large mirror. Here, Mr. Sluia showed us how he sits iu winter toasting his shins before the tire, and looking up from his paper now and then to enjoy the reflected view of his two rows of fine cattle, which seem almost members of the family. We saw nothing fur- ther of the house, and I am therefore unable to refute or to verify the stories that are told of the absurd cleanliness which is said to be insep- arable from Dutch housekeeping. So far as we did see, everything was neat and alter its kind tasteful, and in good wholesome, humble order. The farmer and his son were not distinguishable in appearance, educa- tion (save in languages), or general intelligence, from the better el New England farmers. oil' from one corner of the cow-stable is a dingy, cleanly, Bweet-smell- ing room where the cheeses are manufactured by a burly bare-armed Dutchman, — clean in his person, and very active and business-like in his movements. The making of round cheeses, which we know as Edam 8 114 A FARMER'S VACATION. or Dutch cheese, is the great industry of all North Holland, and espe- cially of the Beemster polder. Wouter Sluis's farm is probably as good a place as the world offers for studying a process which is sufficiently important, and sufficiently distinct from all other cheese-making, to be worthy of detailed description ; it is the agricultural feature of Holland, which, after its drainage, is, perhaps, the most notable. In the centre of the room stands a large tub on a three-legged stand. This is large enough to hold the whole product of each milking, which, immediately upon being brought in, is carefully double-strained into the tub. Its temperature varies, according to season, between 86° and 99°. When it is as low as 86°, the tub should be stood near the fire, and the doors and windows closed to prevent further cooling. When, on the other hand, the thermometer plunged into the milk marks from 95° to 99°, which happens only during the warmest summer weather, it is cooled by adding from two to four per cent of pure cold water; the best temperature seems to be for summer 89° to 93°, and for winter from 93° to 96°. The conditions of straining and temperature being correct, there is added a certain quantity of rennet colored with a certain proportion of annatto ; then, after stirring for a moment, the tub is covered. The amount of rennet to be used depends on the season, on the richness of the milk, and on the temperature ; its determination is very much a matter of experience, and requires a skilled judgment. When all goes well, the milk is curdled in from eight to fifteen minutes. If a longer time is required, a reduction of temperature interferes with the success of the work. Much importance is attached to the amount of cream to be left in the milk. Too large a quantity makes the cheese too soft, so that it settles from its round form and fails to keep well. To avoid this during the latter part of the season, the milk is allowed to stand until one third, and, later, one half its cream has risen ; this is removed, and the work proceeds as before described. The curd having formed, it is cut in all directions with a curd-knife (a DUTCH FARMLNd. 115 sort of gridiron), shown in Figs. 1 and 2. The strokes are first at right angles, then diagonally, and then circular, as shown in Fig. 3. This t-J I \ .N Xtll ' cutting is done as soon as the coagulation is complete and the mass homogeneous. Between cadi series of cuts — parallel, diagonal, etc. two or three minutes are allowed to elapse. The cutting has to be managed with much prudence, for, it' too rapidly done, it causes most of the butter to pass into the whey. Ordinarily, the cutting oc- cupies from four to seven minutes. If the external air is too cold — say below 60° — the tub is covered alter the cutting and allowed to stand two or three minutes. The curd is now reduced to a multitude of little crumbs, which settle to the bottom of the tub. These arc now worked into a ball by means of a wooden bowl, which is worked slowly, paral- lel to the sides, for tWO Or three min- utes, [f this is skilfully done the crumbs of curd, which have a ten- dency tO adhere under the iniluenc, of the elevated temperature, form a compact mass, that is easily separated from the whey. This latter is first drained off from the top by the use Kn;. t. DISHING 'H I 116 A FARMER'S VACATION. DRAINING TIIK CURD. of a bowl, as shown in Fig. 4. When no more can be removed in this way, the tub is tipped on its edges, as shown in Fig. 5, and the curd is compacted by the hand into one mass, and is slightly pressed by the wooden bowl, in which is placed a weight of from thirty to forty pounds, as shown in Fig. 6. After five or ten minutes the whey pressed out in this manner is removed. This operation is repeated four times successively, from fifteen to seventeen minutes being employed in all. The curd has now be- come hard, elastic, com- pact, and cracks slightly between the teeth, — in the condition, in fact, to which, in nearly all countries, curd for cheese- making is brought. The subsequent treatment determines whether we make Chester, Gloster, Edam, or other esteemed varieties. The operations now to be described are peculiar to North Holland. The mould used consists of two parts, and is shown in Fig. 7. A couple of handfuls of curd are rubbed and kneaded with the hands until they are reduced to a soft unctuous paste, which is pressed into the bottom of the mould; then more is compacted in the same manner and packed on this, and so on until the mould is sufficiently filled. During the pack- ing the mass is removed several times from the mould, turned, and Fig. 6. pouring off the last of the whey. DUTCH FAEMING. 117 again pressed wit h the handa Thia work should be very rapidly done to avoid cooling, which is always prejudicial to good manufacture. When sufficiently pressed, the cheese is plunged for one or two minutes into a bath of whey, raised to a temperature of 130° in winter and L25° in summer. It is again well pressed in the mould, and then is very carefully wrapped in a linen cloth, thin enough to allow the moisture to escape, and folded neatly about the ball .Mr. Sluis's trade-mark was made by a peculiar folding of this cloth, which made a star-like figure dsbsx-xodld. at the top of the cheese. The cap of the mould is now put on, and these arc placed in the press. There are many varieties of cheese-presses in use, but all are simple, and will be sufficiently under- stood by reference to Fig. 8. The pressing is continued in the autumn Fig. 8. thk emm-mss. from one to two hours; in the spring, from six to seven hours; and winter and Bummer, about twelve hours. When taken from the press, the cheeses are removed from the moulds, unwrapped, and placed in salting-cups, as shown in Fig. 9. They are then classed according to date, and placed in boxes disposed about the walls. Fig. 1". On the first day of their being placed in their moulds, a pinch of nusAuura-oor. § 118 A FARMER'S VACATION. Fig. 10. riiKKsF.s siiki.vf.u rir ijhying. salt is placed at their top, and they are left until the next morning. They are then taken out and rolled in a wooden bowl of damp salt, and are then reversed in their moulds. This treatment is continued until the experience of the manufacturer shows that the salt has reached quite into the interior of the cheese, this having, in the mean time, lost its elasticity and become extremely hard. The salting lasts, on an average, from nine to ten days. On being taken out of the salting-boxes, the cheeses are immersed for some hours in brine; they are then washed, dried, and finally placed on the shelves of the store- room, where, as in the salting-box, they are classed according to their ages, Fig. 11. Tli is finishes the man- ufacture, strictly so fig. ii. saltinq-cup tray. called. The store- DUTCH FARMING. L19 rooms must 1"' dry, wholesome, well lighted, and kept always in the cleanest possible condition ; the temperature should never rise higher than 72°, noi fall lower than 45°. [f it is necessary to open the win- dows in warm weather, special care must be taken not to allow an east- erly wind to strike upon the shelves. Damp winds, fogs, and an nnven- tilated atmosphere arc all pernicious. If these precautions are not taken, the store-room is invaded by a golden-yellow mould which is extremely destrud ive. The cheeses placed upon the shelves of the store-room are turned daily for four weeks: alter that every second day. When they are from three to four weeks old, they are placed for an hour in pure tepid water 60 to 70°); are washed with a brush, and dried in the open air when the weather permits. As soon as they arc thoroughly dried they are placed upon the shelves. Two weeks later they ale again bathed, washed, and dried, and arc well greased with linseed oil. They are then placed npon the shelves to remain until sent to market. In Holland cheeses are generally marketed at the age of from six weeks to two months, and their suhsequent treatment is at the risk of the merchant. If prepared for the foreign trade, they must he lightly scraped with a sharp knife that removes all the inequalities of their sur- face left by the mould, by folds of the cloth, or any other cause. As they come from the hands of the scraper, they arc a- smooth and pol- ished as an egg. If they are intended for the. English or Spanish market, an orange color is given to them by robbing them with a few drops of Linseed oil containing annatto. For France and some other countries, they are made red by robbing them with butter colored with : A Well-made cheese ; helolv seraphic; SOOU COVerS it-elf with a light, dry, mossy efflorescence of a greenish blua This indication is much sou-lit after hy the hutch merchant- It was very marked in some fine specimens which we brought home from Mr. Sluis's farm, and with which we frequently renew our recollection of the instructive aftern there. It was already twilight, and the swan- in the ditches were nestling themselves awav for the night as we drove from the farm and rattled 120 A FARMER'S VACATION. over the klincker road toward Purrnerend. As we rose over the dike, a thin fog seemed to fill the Beemster to its brim ; — seen in the dim light, it was easy to imagine the old waters returned, and all the life, activity, and prosperity, with which we had but now been impressed, to be a creature of the imagination. It was really easier to contemplate this vast hole in the ground as a filled lake than to realize the mar- vellous change that Dutch energy and ingenuity had wrought in it. The plough used on Mr. Sluis's farm is similar to the one shown in the accompanying illustration. . V.N IMPROVED DITCH PLOUGH. The implements employed by the best Dutch farmers are almost in- variably English or American, but among those peculiar to the country there is a very good brush- harrow, which is better for the work for which it is intended than anything of the sort in use in this country. My examination and study of Dutch farming were all too short, and too much mixed with other sight-seeing (too vacation-like), to be of very great practical utility. They have produced, however, a strong convic- KW OF DUTCH BRUSH-HARROW. DUTCH FARMING. 121 tion that much more than a Bimple vacation tour would lie well rewarded, and that there is no country to which an American farmer could give time and careful study with more real advantage to his practical opera- tions at home than to this very Hollow- Land, where wealth is gathered as in no other agricultural region, and where, more than anywhere else, it remains in the hands of its producers, giving them a roller measure of comfort, and even of luxury, than we at home are wont to associate witli the idea of a farmer's life. TOP VIEW OF DUTCH URISH-H ARROW. CHAPTER IV. THE BIGHT OF LA MANCHE. W E had rested for some weeks (if one can rest in Paris) in a snug little old-fashioned hotel, where the ancient Parisian traditions of cheapness and honesty, comfort TT LalUije-duPuits THE BICiHT OF LA MAX CHE > SfMalofdelalanie) COCTAXCJ! and cleanliness, have escaped the demoralization of the war; a hotel too modest and obscure in its little back street to have been swept by the besom of American and Enssian extrava- gance. We had rested and had considered onr route. Between us and the Channel Islands, whither we were to go, lay such a wealth of invitation, that it became less a question of what we should see than what we could forego seeing. Mont St. Michel, the marvel- lous, carried the day, and we took the early train down the valley of the Seine for Eouen. Once away from Paris, — whose influence ends abruptly at Ver- sailles, — we plunged directly into the heart of agricultural France. Man- ufacturing France is fast encroaching upon it, and the route takes us Till: UKillT OK LA MAM'lli:. 123 past many growing towns filled with the signs of busy industry, where tall factory-chimneys contrast rudely with odd-looking old church-t but the whole country-side is as old-fashioned and as foreign as though the only factories known were the village shops, where they make ploughs that look like wagons, and wagons that look like arks. The country people wear a dress that we rarely see, except near the emigrant landing- station at Castle Garden in New York; many women are working in the fields, and splendid gray Percheron horses, clad in broad collars Z$iM»P^g&l PLOUGHING IN Oil Y.vu.F.Y 01 rill MINI mounted with blue sheepskins, are slowly and stoutly turning a soil that has grown its yearly round of grass and grain to feed unnumbered gen- erations of just such men and women and horses as now ply their peace- ful art upon it. undisturbed by the harsh cry ol progress, and almost unmindful of the ravages of the war which handled them so rudely, and of which they ;nv now sweating to pay the cost No doubt "improved agriculture" has manv a foothold in this fertile valley, but these Instances axe not conspicuous, and the impression on the rapid traveller by rail i- simply that of a quiet and unspoiled farm- in- country, adhering to the traditions of the olden time, and tilled with a strange picturesquenesa It was on a day of bright sun and Hying 124 A FARMER'S VACATION". cloud-shadows that we saw it, and as its well-kept fields lay guarded among the wooded hill-tops, and separated by the slow and sinuous Seine, with its freight of odd-shaped boats, it breathed to us the very essence of the novelty of a quaint old age. Rouen, big and busy, sadly disappoints the arriving eye of the trav- eller. Ten chimney-stacks to one church-tower (fine though they be), and broad, handsomely built, Paris-like streets leading to the hotel on the quay, in front of which are the steamers and barges, and cotton- bales and drays of commerce, shock, with their nineteenth-century air, a mind prepared only for narrowness and crookedness and beetling top stories, and the richness of the most florid of all Gothic architecture, and the memory of the martyred Jeanne d'Arc. But picturesque Rouen is not all destroyed, it is only hidden. Many of the tumble-down old streets have been straightened and rebuilt ; the light of day has been let in upon their pestilential recesses, and the regret of the hunter after the picturesque must be modified by his knowledge that his loss of tempo- rary pleasure is offset by the permanent gain of the people in healthful and wholesome living. Still, many of the old streets remain, and enough of the storied beauty of the town is yet to be seen to make Rouen one of the sights of the Old World. Near the river, passing through an antique and an- gular street, past the curious "Fontaine de Lisieux," — built against the corner of an old house, in representation of the sculp- tor's crude idea of Mount Parnassus, and which has been flowing for 350 years, — we enter the " Place de . la Basse Vieille Tour," a staircase and tribune attached to the Cloth-Market. From here one has a fine view of the towers and south front of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, on which is being built a hideous modern cast-iron steeple, in strange contrast with the beau- IEILLE TOUR, ROUEN. THE BIGHT OF LA MAM UK. L25 t i ful time-worn sculpture for which this church la remarkable, — sculp- ture thai approaches, as nearly as stone-work can, the delicacy of lace. This church is of enormous size, — of which figures convey do ade- quate idea, — and its interior is worthy of the superb Gothic arches through which we enter it to gain a view of its harmonious proportions, und its decorations of sculpture, gilding, and colored glass. A highly unreverentia] sacristan, in cocked hat and gay uniform, marches us around the walls, drawling off his nasal yarn about the heroes and saints whose monuments it is his office to show, thumping his unwieldy mace on the stone floor as he walks, and intimating, in the broadest way, that all this interference with our quiet enjoyment of the holy place is to be " remembered " as we leave. In spite of this nuisance, the Cathedral appeals strongly to all Cis- atlantic Englishmen, — and most of us are English in the early (raining of OUT nursery rhymes and school histories, — for at the side of the sanctuary railing lies upon a tomb the recumbent statue of Richard 1. of England, his lion heart, shut in a casket of silver, being incased in the stone. Here, too, lie the remains of his brother Henry. Throughout all this province one constantly realizes, as in the presence of these tombs, that the wave of our associations, wdiich runs through English history, breaks at last on the hillsides of fair old Normandy, and the feeling comes that we are in the land of our own kith and kin. In this church, however, as elsewhere in Catholic cum tries, there comes another element with which our Puritan-born nature is never in har- mony : against one of the walls is the gorgeous monument of thi dinals of Amboise, uncle and nephew, whose remains lie beneath, and whose fusty old broad-brimmed hats hang among the dust and spiders 1 webs high against the ceiling above. The monument — marble above and alabaster below — is rich to the last degree with symbolic sculp- ture. Behind the kneeling prelates Si. George transfixes the down-trod- den dragon, and under the shelf on which they pose stand six exquisite statues of Faith, Charity, Prudence, Force, Justice, and Temperance, beau- tifully cut little cowled monks Idling niches in the columns between them. 126 A FARMER'S VACATION. If the Cathedral is fine, the interior of St. Ouen is almost finer, and the reflected view of its long, unimpeded, Gothic-arched aisle, with beau- tiful restored glass windows, as seen in the brimming holy-water stoup, is like a dream of an enchanted cathedral. St. Maclou, with its beauti- ful organ staircase, is equally remarkable in a way of its own. Another old church in the city (now used as a livery-stable) has a wealth of chiselled stone lace- work; and the Tour St. Andre, which has lost its church, re- calls the Tour St. Jacques in Paris. And, besides these, there are churches and churches, until one wonders at the profusion of ecclesiastical richness. Nor is it by its ecclesiastical rich- ness only that Eouen enforces admiration ; the old Hotel du Bourgtheroulcle, built in the fif- teenth century and used as a banking-house in the nineteenth, and overlooking the Place de la Pucelle, where Jeanne d'Arc was burned, is almost the most beautiful of mediaeval buildings. The Tour de la Grosse Horloge, from which the curfew has rung for nearly five hundred years, with an arch over the adjoining street and a fountain of the thirteenth century, has no rival in Europe. The donjon tower — in which Jeanne d'Arc, in her military apparel and loaded with irons, was interrogated by the prelates, who condemned her to be burned alive — still stands, in suggestive proximity to the railway station. As an example of the old wooden-fronted houses characteristic of the TOUR DE LA CROSSE IIoKLOGE, ROUEN. the ijk;ht of la maxciik. 127 i.NNK I) ABC, BOCE5. domestic architecture of the city, the Maison St. Amand is worthy of notice; and in contrast with it stands the Palais de Justice, which is, within and without, almost the perfection - - of reform its cuisine and its service, or it might soon go for a shoe- factory. our further journey was short, and we reached Villedieu-les-Po in tin' evening. "Hotel de la Poste," said the guide-books, and to the Hdtel de la Poste we went. At Lasl Paris and its influence were behind as, and we wne in the heart of old, old, unspoiled Normandy. A cheer- ful landlady came clattering in her sabots to welcome us into the old stone-floored kitchen, ceiled with blackened oak and heavy beams, from which hung strings of garlic, hams, and other imperishable stores. Al the farther end, in a generous old fireplace, the "pot au feu" hung from the crane over a handful of blazing wood. On the walls were shining coppers; in one corner was the curtained bed of host and hostess, and in another, a similar retreat for the two blooming handmaidens; a tall clock ticked against the wall, and old mahogany dressers and chests of driw.rs, dean, and with polished brass, shone in the light of the tire. At the side of the fireplace was a clock-work jack (moved by a ponder- ous stone weight at the opposite side of the room) to turn the roasting- Bpit, and in the window-seat was built a many-holed Btove of tiles for cooking witli charcoal when the company becomes too numerous tor the capacity of the hearth. Everything was old and clean, bright, warm, and thoroughly homelike; and the people were cheery and kind. It pity to go to bed — but it was also amusing. Two little narrow beds, with dean, crash-like linen sheet- ; a tabic, with one diminutive bowl and pitcher, and two chairs, were the furni- ture of the small double room, which was pervaded with a fragrant odor of fresh hay. Opening the door of what Seemed a closet in the wall, we came directly upon the hay-loft of the stable part of the house. 132 A FARMER'S VACATION. Our sleep was frequently interrupted by the bells of the incoming and outgoing diligence horses, and the clatter and gabble that forms so large a part of a Frenchman's idea of driving. In the early morning I went out to look at the town. It was entirely foreign, of course, but it was also entirely tristc, and we found all the villages on our route to have this character. Gray stone houses, with slate roofs, an entire absence of front gardens, and of all color and brightness, and a very dead-and-alive air over the stolid faces of the people, impressed us at every turn of this part of the journey with a feeling we least of all expected to have in France. But what the villages lack the country makes up for, and as the rickety old diligence (diligent as a tinker's ass-cart) crawled slowly out of " la riante Vallee de la Sienne," — bells jingling, whip cracking, driver whistling, yelling, stamping his feet, doing all that one man could do to frighten two horses, — and as sunshine and shower chased each other over hedge and apple-orchard, field and wooded hill-top, we sat in dreamy delight in the snug old caleche-topped banquette, almost questioning whether we were really we, and whether there really was any America ; whether all the world was not a land of sabots, white cotton nightcaps, green hedges, greener ivy, floor-like roads, and noisy, lazy diligences. We climbed to the tops of long, high hills, and rolled to the bottoms of far-away fertile valleys, and everywhere the life and the still-life of the country were redolent of a familiar novelty ; all was strange, but so harmonious, and so exactly as it should be, that it seemed only strange we had not known it before. It was plain to see how a Norman peas- ant finds, in the dull content of his native land, a home-like, happy stolidity that no emigration could improve, and why he holds as he does to the old home of his fathers. Midway of the route our horses, having grown callous to the boister- ous demonstrations of their driver, were freed of the knotted clothes-lines and scant leather of which Norman harness is made up ; and another pair, whose nerves had had a night's recuperation, were tied in. The old driver, hoarse with ten kilo of yelling, was replaced by one whose voice was fresh from his morning's bouillon and thin cider ; and we rolled noisily on our way again. THE BIGHT OF LA ICANCHE. 133 Toward noon we came out on the high bluff overlooking the richly cultivated Valley of the See, across which, at the seaward end of another like it, stood the high-perched town of Avranehes. To the right, and far away, in the very focus of a gleam of sunshine, Mont St Michel, rising from the golden sands, and backed by a fringe of rolling surf, broke upon us for a moment in its full glory, and then faded into the shadow of the gathering clouds, losing itself entirely as we dropped into the low- land, and rumbled on past the little farms and overloaded cider-orchards which lined the well-kept way. The country of La Manche is a land of moss-grown thatch ; every house, every cottage, every hut, snug under its thick mat of straw, is bronzed and gilded, and made green with every variety of moss that rotting straw, a genial sun, and frequent fog can grow, — all blending so well with field and hillside, that the buildings almost seem to have taken root, and to have drawn from the soil itself such harmony with its other growth, as to make their human origin seem doubtful, and to justify the motive for the conspicuous assertion cut deeply into their door-lintels. "Built in 1G72, by order of Andre' Le Brun, and Jeanne Yittre, his wife," was the longest we saw. As the zigzag road turned for a second pull up the steep hillside, we saw coming toward us, through the light rain, a little procession, headed by a priest in black robes, bearing a cross, and others chanting a requiem ; acolytes, in scarlet gowns, one swinging a censer, walked at the sides of the road, and in the centre was carried the bier of a young girl, — maidens in white bearing the pall, and one following with a cushion on which lay a wreath of flowers. After these came the few mourning relative- and friends. Sadly and slowly they wound round the turn of the road, and the dull refrain floated softly to our ears after they had gone from our sight. At the top of the hill we turned clattering into Avranehes, and into the dirty stable-yard of the Hotel de France, — at a little side office in which presides probably the most mendacious and tricky of all dil agents. By dint of shrewd negotiation we ingeniously arranged with him the most expensive and uncomfortable way possible to get ourselves to Pontorson, and our heavy baggage to Dol ; but even this was not accom- 134 A FARMER'S VACATION. plished without an amount of mutual invective that rankles in our memories to this day. The agents of these lines must have begun life as diligence-drivers. In no other school could they have been so trained to senseless, noisy gabble. Having an hour to wait, we went out to see the town. Avranches is not much to see, but it is a superb place to see from. Perched high on the point of a commanding hill, it overlooks a beautiful foreground of Norman fields and farms, and has Mont St. Michel and the Tombe- laine in full view. Behind these stretch the waters of La Manche, and to the left is the far-away blue coast of Brittany. It is consid- ered one of the healthiest and pleasantest towns of France, and has many economical English residents. Aside from its view, it has only one small lion, — the stone on which Henry II. knelt to receive from the Pope's legate absolution for the murder of Thomas a Becket. Two hours, through a charming country and a pouring rain, brought us to Pontorson, and we were dropped at the Hotel de la Poste, where the rascal at Avranches had told us we should find a " correspondence " for Mont St. Michel. Whatever may be the natural disposition of " Veuve Le Roy et Fils," they had found seven hundred pilgrims, who had gone that morning to the island, in addition to the regular travel, too much for their nerves. They scouted the Avranches man's suggestion of "cor- respondence." They would, perhaps, let us go for one night if we would take return tickets for the early morning voiture. We wanted to stay until the afternoon. At this both mire et fils grew pale with rage, clutched at the air, and swore round oaths. Would we go now and return in the morning, yes or no ? Did we own the horses and vehicles, that we should say how we should go ? Would we go, or would we stay ? " It is nothing to us ; come, now, yes or no — and done with it ! " Fearing an apoplexy, we suggested delay, and that we would see what could be done at the " Hotel de l'Ouest " over the way. Fils followed us into the street with loud imprecations — now, or not at all. If we dared set foot in the " Ouest," we might walk to Mont St. Michel and back again, — voila ! The " Ouest " could do nothing for us, — not a horse was left in the THE BIGHT OF I. A MAM UK. 135 stables; everything had gone with "lea Pelerins." In despair we Bought the apothecary of the village ; was there no way to get to the island, and was there a g I hotel if we must stay here' * >, yes; cfa (lame Le Roy you will find good vehicles and an excellent hotel Evi- dently humble-pie was our only Bafe diet, and hack we trudged, to find other travellers, come hy a later diligence in violent row with the crazed Le leys. Madame divided her attention between this contest and the management of her crowded table, where men with their hats on, and women in wet water-proofs, — English, French, Italians, and Spaniards, — were bolting her unwholesome food, and washing it down with bout, watery cider. Fils ironically advised us if we were hungry to go to the " Ouest " for lunch (I wish we had), and he filled the intervals of his Struggle with the travelling public with special revilings of ourselvi we sat at the unsavory meal. Lunch over, we gently asked for tickets to go now and return in the morning, and we would take our chance of coming later. Another .storm of passion : there would be qo chance ! Sacre ! ! So we took our places, and soothed la mere's angeT by the pay- ment of the fare into her skinny old hand, — and were at peace. It was with grim satisfaction that we Looked on as others were assailed with the same voluble French abuse, and finally dropped into the line of duly billeted penitents, until a wagon-load had accumulated. At last we were , off, — over twenty persons in a long black-curtained wagon, with seats at the sides. Two of us had places with the driver; and what a driver he was ! Those we had thus far seen became models of quiet by comparison. He was a jolly dog of a long, lank, seafaring Frenchman, all nerve and noise. His devices to startle his three thin were the work of genius. Veiling, hooting, whistling, whipping, whip-cracking, screaming, these are the ordinary weapons of provincial French Jehus, and he used them in their entirety; but he added evi- dences of much thought as to the possibilities of driving. u 1'elagie " was his raw-honed. BOrrel leader, and this was her fifth trip since morn- ing over those seven miles of heavy sand. When the team grew callous to his demonstrations, he would lull them into a deceitful tranquillity by humming a low tune, then suddenly break out at the top of his hoarse 136 A FAEMEE'S VACATION. voice with, " Houp, P^-la-zheee ! ! Crack, Crack, Thump, Pound, Kick, Hi ! Hi ! Pe-la-zheeee ! " and off they would go for a fresh burst. When things were very bad I " spelled " him at the whip, and left him free to reinforce his calls by some fresh device with the reins. It was a favorite trick to stamp with both feet on the foot-board, as though the whole wagon were coming down about their ears. ' Now and then I drove, while he ran from one side to the other of the team seeking fresh spots for his lash. If we met another vehicle, he would call out in his broad Norman patois for its driver to lie in wait for Pelagie, and give her the sensation of a fresh thong. One smote so wisely and so well that Pela- gie gave an unwonted plunge, and bang went a trace. "Qa ne fait rien, — je ne m'embarque jamais sans biscuit," said the hearty man, as he whipped a new trace-rope out of his box, and soon made ready for a fresh start. For every one we met he had a hoarse, but cheery saluta- tion, and, at every auberge, he drew up for a friendly gossip, and a friendly glass, — which, as it rained hard, he called a " caoutchouc." Such rain, such sands, such plunging of wheels into the mire, such revelation by fellow-travellers that they may be less gentle in their breeding than in their look, such tediousness and such discomfort, no one can know who does not follow seven hundred pilgrims, in a driving rain, from Pontorson to Mont St. Michel. The road was heavy and deeply rutted by dozens of huge carts loaded with the fruitful sea-washed silt of the Couesnon (called tangue), which is hauled for miles into the coun- try for manure. At last we neared the low dunes of the coast, beyond which the road drops down to the wide fiat beach, and through the mist there loomed the silhouette of one of the coast guard of the Douane, slowly pacing up and down, wondering whether a smuggler will ever, ever come into the canal which conducts the Couesnon to the deep water beyond the bay. At the shore there was a conference with the bare-legged guide who pre- cedes every vehicle over the mile and a half of treacherous sands, which shift at every tide and are often unsafe to pass, and which, in places, make a heavy road for heavy wagons like ours, — drawn by such tired and much-berated and lon^-sufferino- brutes. THE BIGHT OF LA MANCHE. 137 Gradually, as we neared it, the marvellous fortress and abbey came slowly out of the misty distance, and towered above the plain, Larger and far more majestic and beautiful than the distant view from A \ ranches had led us to expect MONT ST. MIC1IRI., FROM Standing isolated in the sands at low water, and rising out of tl when the high tides are in, its granite mass flanked with the hous an ancient fishing-village and with a massive wall, and surmounted with the ponderous masonry and the graceful pinnacles of the "Abbaye-Cha- teau," Mont St. Michel holds its belfry over tour hundred feet above the beach. The west front is even more hold and impressive than the cast, the rock being so steep that no fortification at the base was needed. It is entirely unique, and not to be compared with any oilier sight the world has to show. One constantly won, iris thai there should be in this remote bend of La Manche an island bo filled with historic and archi- tectural interest, about which so little is generally known, — in Bpite of Victor Hugo's description : — •■ Behind him. an enormous triangle, with a cathedra] for tiara and a fortress for a breastplate, with its two great towers to the east, one round. 138 A FARMER'S VACATION. the other square, helping to support the weight of the church and vil- lage, rose Mont St. Michel, which is to the ocean what the Pyramid of Cheops is to the desert." At the end of our drive, the sun set and the rain stopped, as we came under the massive south wall, entered the first of the triple gates, and alighted in the narrow and dingy vestibule of the town. A little beyond we walked through the second gate, which is flanked by " les Michelettes," the great Flemish-made, hooped iron guns (fifteen and nineteen inch cali- bre), still loaded with the stones Lord Scales's men charged them with before Columbus was born, — and when, of all Normandy, only Mont St. Michel continued to fly the French flag. Most of the victims of the widow Le Eoy's volatile son were dropped at the Lion d'Or, — but we feared a " correspondence " with the concern at Pontorson, and went on, through the third gate, to the Hotel St. Michel, where we entered a long, narrow kitchen, — a broad fireplace at the left, the glass door of the narrow dining-room at the right, and the staircase at the far end, which was cut into the rock. It seemed especially odd to find a really comfortable modernly fur- nished room in such a queer old town and such a queer old house. For the moment, we only wanted to secure some provision for the night, and we went immediately out to make what use we might of the waning twilight. The town, clinging to the steep hillside, and surnamed " pendula villa," consists of a single narrow street winding up the rapid rise from the outer gate at the southwest shore to the entrance of the monastery on the northeast slope, — most of it too steep for vehicles, and the latter part broken by frequent steps. 'Narrow alley-stairways between the houses lead to other houses perched on the crags above ; and steps up or down, to the right, lead to the ramparts, with their fine, projecting, terrace-like towers. Seen at this hour, the frowning walls of the convent seemed a chiselled cliff against the sky. We returned by the walk on the outer wall to a stairway near the hotel. From a house whose top story over- looked our path, there came a well-trained, mumbling wail : " Par-pitie- et - pour-1'amour- de-Dieu-bon-etranger-donnez-quelque-sous-a-une-pauvre- THE BIGHT OF LA MANCHE. 139 malbeureuse-ah-ah,-merci-i|ue-lu-Saiute-Vierge-vous-ljcnisse." A neat pla- card begged for charity for a poor woman whose recollection of the use of hei limbs dated back some thirty years. She lay on a clean and comfortable bed in front of the open door, enjoying a beautiful view of the Normandy hills. She held us heT tin cup with the air of one whom long custom had given absolute command over the charity of her passing public No doubt she has all that a per- son of luxurious ta>tes in her station of life could ask, and we could only trust that there remained to her a paralyzed daughter to inherit the good-will of the establishment, which must be the most profitable on the island. As we came again into the little street, it was tilled with the busy sights and sounds of early lamplight. The seven hundred had gone, and there was much clearing away of the debris of their entertainment ; the two hotelfuls had come, and there was much preparation lor theirs. There was activity on every side, and the clatter of the universal sabot played a running refrain to it all. Our kitchen was taxed to its utmost, and our pretty little landlady looked weary ami content She had already fe,l eighty-five voyagenrs since morning, the "table d'hote" was now going on, and our own later repast was being prepared at the fire. From our window we saw a nimble lass in a niche of the rock opposite, washing dishes by the light of a hanging lamp. It suggested a shrine with its virgin awakened to useful work, and shedding melon-rinds and fish-Scraps into the narrow street, where scavenging ducks quacked and gobbled. Long after we went to bed we heard the servants and the stable-men at table underneath US, and our coffee was ready at six in the morning. When do these people sleep? "0, in winter; all Mont St. Michel can sleep then. Vbyageurs (and pilgrims) come only in the summer-time." The history of Mont St. Michel reaches back to the eighth century, when, in obedience to the indications of the Archangel Michael, St Auhert, Bishop of Avranches, founded here a Benedictine monastery. It grew in importance and richness during the succeeding four hundred 140 A FARMER'S VACATION. years, accumulating valuable manuscripts, and its monks becoming noted chroniclers and students of medicine. In 1154 Kobert de Thorigny (sur- named Kobert du Mont) became its abbot, and for more than thirty years he devoted himself to its aggrandizement. He increased the num- ber of monks to sixty. With an equal genius for learning and for archi- tecture, he earned for his island the name of " the city of books," and he built much of the finest part of the monastery. Honors were showered upon him from all sides, and so agreeable was he personally, that when the Archbishop of Eouen called on him with the Bishops of Bayeux, Coutances, and Avranches, they passed four days with him, " sans pouvoir le quitter tant sa conversation estoit sainte et agreable." Kings were his visitors, and he was the godfather of a child of Henry II. and Queen Eleanor. During the next century Guy de Thouars sacked and burned the town, and put the whole population to the sword. He could not gain en- trance to the fortress, but the flames reached it, and they did great damage. In the reconstruction the Abbot Baoul de Villedieu built the beautiful cloisters called "The Palace of the Angels," which, perched three hundred feet above the sands, remain to this day among the most exquisite in Europe, — " une fantasie moresque, ^close au milieu des granits seVeres." There are over two hundred columns, — those against the wall more simple in form, and those of the double row surrounding the court, light, graceful, and with a rich frieze carved after designs in the illuminated missals of the convent. The buildings have been many times on fire, usually the work of the lightning which they so well invite, in 1427 Lord Scales attacked the fortifications with twenty thousand English. It was defended by one hundred and twenty noblemen, and the enemy were repulsed with the loss of two thousand men, and the two enormous cannon, " les Michel - ettes," which now stand at the entrance of the village. About the time of the discovery of America the beautiful church-tower was destroyed by a stroke of lightning, which caused the ninth conflagration in the monas- tery. At this time, too, the great cistern was built which is shown as one of the marvels of the place. TIIK BIGHT OF I. A A1ANCHE 141 The Abbaye-Chateau continued tinder the government of the Church until the outbreak of the French Revolution The Last of the fori abbots was De Montmorency, appointed in L788. The Revolution suppressed the monastery, and changed the nan the island to "Mont Libre." It was then made a prison for the non- juring priests of Normandy and Brittany, who were afterward liberated by the Vendeeans when they went t'> lay Biege to Granville. From this time, until very recently, it remained a state prison; but it is now re- turned to its ecclesiastical uses, and is a favorite object of pilgrim We rose at the first peep of day, for the convent is open to the public at six in the morning-; took our coffee, and (a useless precaution a guide, who led us by the only route to the " Deux Tours du Donjon," under which is the entrance to the fori and where he could only hand us over to the regular practitioners of the establishment. We bought our tickets, at a franc a head, and bought a few holy gimcracks from the se- ductive monk who presided at the well-filled stand. Then we started out on a round of such sight-seeing as hud nowhere else been offered us. Even in an Italian town, Mont St. Michel would be a huge lion, — here, in an obscure corner of France, and approached only by side routes, it is more marvellous than words can express; and its entrance, popularly called "Le Groufi^e," is a wor- thy introduction to its wonders. Prom the vestibule the old guard-room of the fortress we passed t' a hall to "La Mei\ eille," - so named by Yauban. the grandest combi- nation of size, solidity, and art, in the whole structure. Its first I.E GOITFRK. MONT ST. MIIHH. 142 A FARMER'S VACATION. cut out of the solid rock, is a fine crypt, over two hundred feet long, called " Les Montgommeries," — from Constable Montgomery, the great Huguenot chief. He besieged the place, and finally succeeded, with the aid of a captured soldier of the garrison, whom he trusted too well, in having ninety-eight of his men hauled up the inclined plane, one by one, to be put to the sword when they reached the crypt. By this time he began to suspect something, and sent up his page, who discovered the treason all too late. Next above this is the refectory, and the " Salle des Chevaliers," de- voted to the Knights of St. Michel, which is not only the finest part of the Abbaye, but is said to be the largest and the finest Gothic chamber in the world. Three rows of pillars divide it into four aisles. The cap- itals are carved with different designs, and the whole effect is one of consummate strength and elegance. Two huge fireplaces, of more recent date, seem large enough for comfortable cottages. The adjoining refectory is hardly less admirable, in spite of its serious mutilations by the prisoners, and of its thick coats of whitewash. Over the refectory is the dormitory, formerly beautiful, but now the most mutilated part of the work. Next, over the Salle des Chevaliers, are the exquisite cloisters. One of the angles of " La Merveille " carries a superb pointed staircase tower, — " La Tour des Corbins," — which is seen near the right of the buildings in the east view of Mont St. Michel. One of the oldest parts of the works is the Crypt de l'Aquilon, built in the twelfth century by Robert du Mont. It is remarkable for its Roman ogives, vaults without mouldings, and volutecl capitals, and it car- ries us back to the period when Christian architecture first began to develop. If the Salle des Chevaliers is the richest fruit of the labors of the old occupants of Mont St. Michel, the Basilica, especially in its exterior, is their fairest flower. Its former appropriate spire was destroyed by light- ning, and the present bell-tower is entirely out of harmony ; but in spite of this, the visitor will readily agree with Le Hericher, who says : " It has neither the unity of the Cathedral of Coutances, nor the statuary richness of that of Chartres, nor the grandeur of that of Cologne, nor the THE BIGHT OF LA MANCHE. L43 fine carving of that of St. Ouen at Rouen It has, so to speak, no por- tal, no towers, and now no spires; it has only small lateral naves. Nevertheless, with its centre placed on the point of a mountain, and its two extremities on superposed constructions, insanat subetructiones, its Hanks, resting against other edifices, like a ship in her stocks, a pyra- mid of architecture on a pyramid of mountain, held aloft in mid-air, isolated above a desert of sand, or a plain of water, it impresses us more than any other with a sentiment of poetry and religion. 'The pictu- resque aspect of this edifice,' says Cotman, 'would render it worthy of a long pilgrimage, if religion, history, poetry, painting, hud not all united to uive celebrity to Mont St. Michel.'" The exterior of the apsis is in fine granite, carved with extreme purity, and is exquisitely delicate. The stairway from this to the roof is called " L'Escalier de Dentelle," and really lace-like it is. The inside of this church is fine, but not especially interesting. As we passed through it. mass was being said, and there was a little throng of fishing-men and women, and an occasional " pelerin," at their devotions. If this were a guide-book, it would be pardonable to tell of our fur- ther ramble through the Vestibule of the Vaults, with its " Cachot du Diablo," the Crypt of the Chapter-house, the dark underground prome- nade of the monks, the Crypt of the Great Pillars (with nineteen pillars, seventeen feet in circumference and twenty-five feet high;, which sup- ports the apsis of the church, and is surrounded by five sombre chapels, which were lighted only by the perpetual lamps before their shrines, and one of which is the Chapel of " Notre Dame sous Terre," — who is, appro- priately, a Mack virgin; the dungeons; the passage to the charnel-house; the funeral stairs ; the great wheel-like (dog-churn-like tread-mill, where sinful monks at once expiated their venial crimes, and hoisted the pro- visi,m-car up the incline; the Chapel of Notre Dame of the Thirty Can- dles,— -and all the other wonders of this really wonderful place; but out trip was shortened by the exactions of FOs he Roy, and our tale must be shortened by the exactions of space. In this slight sketch I have only hoped to hint to the readers small part of the lasting interest that our hurried visit awakened. 144 A FARMER'S VACATION. We trudged down the steep path, paid our modest bill, and regained our seats with the long mariner, whose " Houp-la ! Crack, Crack, Sacre ! Pe-la-zheeee ! ! " got us over the sands just ahead of the incoming tide, and took us back to Veuve Le Roy and her hard cider and harder breakfast. At half past ten, after a dispute with another agent of the overtaxed and ill-appointed diligence line, we set out in a cramped "voiture par- ticuliere" for Dol and the rail. Our sympathies are not with those who mourn the departing days of diligence travel, — a little of it is pleas- ant, but more than a little is too much. The country was a shade less interesting — possibly because a shade less novel — than that between Villedieu and Avranches ; but it was filled with the same quaint air, the same black-roofed and gray-fronted villages, and the same thatched coun- try cabins, gay with their many-colored vegetation. "VVe were now in Brittany, — in the land settled in 523 by the savage tribes driven from Great Britain at the time of the Saxon conquest, and in which are still seen monuments of their early occupation. The people of the whole region of Normandy and Brittany have been slow to give up the customs and traditions of their ancestors ; but the march of the railway and the factory is fast driving them to the wall. The traveller gets more comfort and more honest treatment at the hands of the railway officials than is to be hoped for from their rascally prede- cessors of the diligence lines ; but, — and here again our sympathies are with those who mourn the change, — though one travels farther and faster, one gets less of the local coloring of provincial life, and absorbs less of its true spirit. It is only on fete days that the peculiar costumes of Normandy and Brittany are seen in their glory. Ordinarily we had to content ourselves with the short petticoats, sabots, and work-a-day caps of the country- women ; but on one grand occasion, in Brtitany, we saw a trace of the white muslin ■ magnificence which used to prevail. At such times, the women come out in an effulgence of starched head-gear, each village hav- ing its own peculiar style, which is worn with patriotic pride. THE BIGKI OF LA MANCHE, 145 lu:AL>-ni;i>M > oi imki.k m>i:m.\n ihiv.ns. It is, after all, the marvellous rather than the picturesque that one misses in daily travel in this laud. Nothing could be more coquettish than the tasselled "white cotton nightcap" of the country-girls of N'urniandy, eelehrateil hy Miss Thackeray. Among the mine cu- rious of the common dresses one still sees are those of Cancale, ( lessant, and < Ihateaulin Do! is a very old town King NTominoe was crowned here in ind it has over four thou- sand inhabitants, — ei voild taut. Tt is dreary to the lasl degree. Its cathedral - which reads very well in the guide-books is heavy and mournful, seen after Rouen, though it has an exquisite tomb of L507; its streets are curious, it is true, hut the gray Stone and 10 146 A FARMER'S VACATION. PKASANT-GIItl. OF OESSANT. the black slate hang like a pall over the fancy of the traveller who has known the charm of fluted red tiling. Dol can never be otherwise than sad ; and under a leaden sky, as we saw it, with the cold rain dripping from its eaves, it was infinitely dismal. Like the Channel Islands, Brit- tany has many Druidical or Celtic remains. In a cornfield near Dol stands a Menhir * thirty feet above the ground, and said to be half as long below it, on the top of which the early teachers of Christianity shrewdly planted AKABESQIE OVKtt TOMB, — CATHEDRAL AT DOL. a crucifix. * From the Breton moen, stone, and Mr. long. THE BIGHT OF LA MANCHE. 147 We were glad when our last snarl with the agent of the Avranchea diligence (about an overcharge on Ki I been fought out and we took oui seats in the train for St. .Malo, where we arrived toward the middle of the afternoon, in a break- ing sky, which let now and then a ray of sunshine into our tired and fretted souls, Here we found the Long-forgotteD comfort of a really good and modest French hotel, whose name, "Franklin," attracted our patriotic impulses, and whose white-capped peasant waiting-women brought the rural air into the som- bre walls of gray St Malo. St. Malo is triste, too, but only as a background to the most bustling activity, for it is a busy seaport, and its beetling walls are bright with French uniforms, and, in the sea- son, with pleasure-seekers from Paris, drawn here by well-appointed Bains hkhbib nub dol. ile Mer. The road from the station overlooks the bathing-beach, well fitted with summery appliances, and Leads to the Grande Porte, with Lts -real, ponderous round towers, — one of the five gates of the heavily walled town. It is an old town, very old, and a pari of its wall dates hack to the thirteenth century, while it has well-preserved houses of the sixteenth, and a cathedra] of the twelfth, — built on the foundations of one destroyed by Charlemagne in 811. In spite of this, it is qoI an old-looking town There must be some influence in the air of this coast thai is congenial to the pn - tion of masonry; there is an absence of the climbing vegetation and moss which in other places have so much to do with the marking oi time on the laces of old buildings Vauban's work at St .Malo might 148 A FARMER'S VACATION. LA GRANDE POKTE, ST. MALO. apparently have been done under the last Empire. The " Tour de Soli- dor " at St. Servan, which adjoins St. Malo on the land side, — a tur- reted high castle of three round towers, built five hundred years ago, — bears in its texture ab- solutely no impress of age. The walls of St. Malo enclose a pop- ulation . which has some of the char- acteristics of insu- lar people. They do not call them- selves French, nor Bretons, but " Malouins." They are descendants of a race who in time of war have played the role of vulture with much success. Their nest was well defended by art, and still better by nature. The Duke of Marlborough attacked it in vain ; the English and Dutch fleets bombarded it day after day without doing much harm. When the occasion offered, the Malouins fitted out their own vessels, and either preyed upon the commerce of the enemy or did a stroke of business in his ports, — whichever promised to pay the best. In a single war they captured over fifteen hundred ships, some of them loaded with treasure. In this way St. Malo became the most opulent city of the kingdom. In time of peace this thrifty people cultivated the taste which, has. placed them among the foremost cod-fishers of the world, and has caused them to break their bonds, and, during the century, to cover the pleasant hills of St. Servan with a population larger than their own, and equally engaged in the industry of the Newfoundland Banks. The town has an interest for Americans as being the birthplace of Jacques Cartier, who discovered Canada. Here, too, Chateaubriand was- born, — in a room of the present quaint and uncomfortable Hotel de. THE BIGHT <>F LA MAM II i:. 149 Prance, and on the little island of Grand Bey across the beach he lies buried. !St. Malo, as seen from the tomb on Grand Bey, has a fine and impos- ing look when the waves reach the feet of the black rocks on which it -tands (like a flattened Mont St. Michel;; when the tide is out, — and - out very far, — it looks like a stranded town among high-lying rocks. A new watering-place town. Dinard, lies across the harbor, and thither we went on the afternoon of our arrival to visit friends from Newport who were passing the summer there : here also we found that a Phila- delphia family has a tine summer residence on the eastern cliff Early the next morning we went down the ^terminable stairs that 150 A FARMER'S VACATION. led from the edge of the quay to the deck of a little steamer lying in the gulf of mud below. The tide was coming in, and by the time we passed the Tour de Solidor the mud and the sands were all covered, and the strong current helped us on our way up the beautiful Ranee, — a river lined with more varied loveliness of hillside woods, fruit-laden orchards, old mills, old chaumieres, old chateaux, and fertile fields, — all overhung with the charming air of Breton quaintness and oldness, — than we had thus far found. It was a charming sail, first up the broad bay of the embouchure, and then (through a lock) into the narrow canal- ized river, and, finally, at the end of two ' hours, into the deep gorge, at the crest of which stands the old ducal city of Dinan, with its superb modern viaduct a hundred and fifty feet above the river. T fe. DINAN, KIWM TIIK RANfE. There is a new zigzag road up the hill by which the ascent is easy, but he who comes to see old Dinan should shun this and climb the steep and narrow cleft between the overhanging sixteenth-century houses of the " Rue de Jerzual," and through the Porte de Jerzual, which for so many hundred years defended this main entrance to the town. It is a little-used street now, and the old tumble-down buildings have escaped the desecrating baud of restoration, which is playing such havoc with the mediaeval side of European towns. •The frowning edges of the hill on which Dinan stands are still rich THE BIGHT OF LA MAMIIK. 151 with the ponderous remains of its old defensive wall, which is a wonder of ancient masonry, built " when men worked in stone for three day " ; and most of it is in the picturesque and ivy-grown condi- tion of the " Porte St Mala" Starting from the B6tel de Bre- tagne we enter the beautiful walk nn the ramparts which nearly sur- round the town), with charming views of the lower-lying country on one hand, and of the massive round towers and walls on the other. The interior of the town is dingy and dull, though with much curious old architecture ; but its enceinte is unsurpassed for beauty and interest of its sort. About a mile up the Ranee is the little village of Lehon^ which is reached by a path from the Porte St. Louis, the last hundred yards of which is down a steep narrow cleft in the rock, where steps have been hewn out of the solid granite. The village is overlooked by a high coni- cal hill topped with the ivy-clad ruins of the Chateau de Beaumanoir. This, as well as the Triory of Lehon, founded in 850, has long been given over to decay and a wilderness of vegetation. In the Museum of Dinan there are a number of tumulary slabs taken from tin' Beaumanoir chapel attached to the Priory ; among them one of • lean de Beaumanoir, who was murdered by his steward. The day after our arrival was Sunday, and we hied t" -tout Josephine Santier, " Loueur dalles." and got a COUple of odd little three-wheeled donkey-carts for a BWeet-will wander into the country. And a jolly trip we made We -.Mined the high-road, and the by-roads led us a merry stroll over almost impassable woodland paths. Now ami then we could ride, hut much of the time it took the combined efforts of the party to rolllK ST. MALI", DINAN. 152 A FARMER'S VACATION. Td.MIl ()K JEAN l)F. HEAUM A.N OIE. keep the vehicles right side up on the rough paths. When we were on good roads our small boy devoted his entire time and strength to cudgel- ling " Vi°ilante," who drew the foremost trap, into the semblance of a slow trot. Josephine had told us : " II n'existe pas de bete plus jaloux q'un ane," and, true to her asinine nature, where Vigilante led Penelope followed closely ; but by changing their order we found that they are no more jealous to follow than they are not to lead, and before we got home Mr. Pickwick, with his " great horrid horse," had been in no worse plight than were we with our more concentrated forms of stubbornness. At one point of our journey we came across the ill-kept fields and through a superb disused avenue, upon the ruins of the Chateau de La Garaye, the home of Mrs. Norton's " Lady of La Garaye," hallowed by the deeds of charity of the Count of the name and his charming wife. Now all is overgrown and unhindered decay. "The Avails, where hung the warriors' shining casques, Are green with moss and mould ; The blind worm coils where queens have slept, nor asks For shelter from the cold." The true-hearted people, whose charity has made this spot memorable, smothered a great grief in the activity of good deeds. The Count studied medicine and surgery in Paris, and the Lady became a skilful oculist. They then returned to their old home, banished worldly amusement, and threw open their doors to all suffering humanity. THE incur of la mam hi:. 153 "Her home is made their home; her "wealth their dole; Her busy court-yard hears no more the roll Of gilded vehicles or pawing steeds, But feeble steps of those whose hitter needs Are their sole passport. Through that gate-way press All varying forms of sickness and distress, And many a poor worn foce that hath not smiled For years, and many a feeble, crippled child, Blesses the tall white portal where they stand. And the dear Lady of the liberal hand." From La Garaye wo came out upon the high-road, and started in Bearch of a country luncheon. Wo were told that a kilo farther on we should find a "jolie petite auberge," and we urged our unwilling brutes that much farther away from home, until wo came upon a low Btone lmt with moss-grown thatch, over the door of which there hung the Lush that was n led by the wine of such an establishment Evidently the same thatch covers man and Least, and the approach to the single doOI was over an untidy mass of manure, which made it necessarj to drive bo close that the ladies could step directly into the house. At one end of the 154 A FARMER'S VACATION. room was a small fire on a large hearth, and near this, built up like the berths of a ship, and half closed by sliding doors of carved oak, were two narrow bunks, well filled with comfortable bedding. A cupboard of smaller beds at the other side of the chimney suggested children. In front of these a capital old carved chest served for the storage of clothing, for a seat, and as a help to climbing into bed. Two plain tables, with benches for seats, ran lengthwise of the room, which had a floor of beaten and well-swept earth. From the ceiling hung a basket for bread and a rack for spoons, — which are the only utensils for conveying food to the mouth that the house is expected to furnish, the older institution of fingers being still respected, to the exclusion of forks. The smoke-blackened beams of the ceiling were festooned with sausages, and hung with hams, bacon, bladders of lard, garlics, onions, harness, whips, horseshoes, and all else that the family possessed of a hangable character. Grandmamma sat at the side of the fire, in a cpieer, wide-winged Bre- ton cap of starched linen, with a relay of knitting-needles stuck under the front, — awaiting their turn at the fast-growing blue stocking which occupied her nimble fingers. Her daughter, the hostess, similarly attired and occupied, sat at the other side watching a Sunday game of cards that four men were playing at the table opposite ours, and gossiping with some freshly arrived customers. Little direct attention was paid to us, but we were evidently being discussed in the undefinable patois of the country. One of our party expressing curiosity as to the contents of a covered box in front of the fire (which might have held a batch of bread set to rise), the landlady produced from it a swaddled week-old baby, which was duly cuddled and admired, then nursed, and put back in its nest. There was no disposition to force us to buy anything, and we were treated rather as morning callers. Finally, in reply to our " What can we have ? " " Cider " was suggested. " And bread and butter ? " " But certainly," and there was produced a " pot " of cider (almost two cpiarts), with glasses ; a huge half-loaf was laid on the bare table, and butter was brought on a plate. " Can we have knives ? " — then a queer look at each other, and, " What ! have n't you got your knives ? " and the four THE BIGHT OF LA MANCHE. 155 card-players, in the mosl courteous manner, took their big clasp knives from their pockets, wiped them carefully on their trousers, and oi them to us. The cider was thin and sour, but the bread and butter were good, and the place and people were tidy and cheery. We made a com- fortable luncheon, alter all. "How much is to pay V " Four sous for tli.' cider; we put up price on bread; it is the Bon Dieu who gives it" No hint could be more delicate, and the modest bit of silver we gave ••tor the baby" was taken with cheerful dignity, as they all rose to hid i day, and saw our little wagons get safely over the mire and out on the hard roadway. When we had arrived at Dinan, and given over our wearying asses, we heard rumors of "the procession," "the Bishop"; and hundreds of people, mostly peasant-women in holiday costume, were chatting gayly under the shade of the trees, and about the grand old ruin of the gate- way a1 the other side of the little square. We watched the picturesque crowd from our windows, and, finally, there came through the archway a Long procession of priests and nuns, and acolytes, and maidens in white, and school-children, with four men bearing a gorgeous canopy, which was set ou the ground when the pro- cession halted. Here the priests fell to reading their breviaries with downcasl &ye8, — now and then east up and shaded by the hand to peer toward the setting sun, in an expectation which Lasted long, and finally became anxious and — so far as in them Lay — annoyed At last there was a Blighl murmur and bustle, and a carriage drove up from which descended three priests and one portly, empurpled bishop. The latter Was beset by the attendants, clad ill gorgeous raiment, and topped with a shining mitre. He passed under tlie canopy and followed at tl. of the troop. Stepping to a comer of his cage he laid his fingers, in benison, on the forehead of an infant. At once the throng brought forth dozens of chil- dren in arms; it fairly bristled with babies who were brought, one after another, to be blessed with the sign of the .1 t.ai. lied by the hallowed finger of the bather of the Diocese It was a (manning sight, but the delay it caused did not charm the Long-waiting priests, who had 156 A FARMER'S VACATION. to halt again and again, with the risk of only a dull twilight for the an- ticipated ceremonial at the church. The last we saw of them, the last of the babies was being blessed in the slanting sunlight under the green- vined archway, and the procession passed from our view. Our return to St. Malo was in an open carriage over the well-kept road, and through the beautiful country by way of Dinard. Leaving the rest of the party to find what interest they might in St. Malo, I set out alone on an agricultural trip to Kennes, seeking the mysteries of the making of " Camambert " cheese and " PreValaye " butter. Camambert is perhaps the mildest and most delicate of the many fine cheeses of France, its strength, however, escaping the palate only to attack the nose. It is, indeed, a curiosity of strong odor ; and a package of the little disks, though wrapped in oiled silk and taken in a trunk to Jer- sey, gave to all its contents a suggestion of miis decumanus defunctus, which quite reconciled me to the refusal of M. Lehagre, its maker, to allow me to see his processes ; and to make me content with his assur- ance that, with a good market for my butter, I could not afford to use the cream needed for its manufacture. Neither was my day well selected for Prevalaye. There was no butter-making going on, and my agricultural trip would have been a fail- ure but for the " Ferme-ecole des Trois Croix," within a short drive of the city. This institution is the property of Mr. E. Bodin, who is a large manufacturer of improved agricultural implements, which are begin- ning to make their way among the better farmers of Western France. His shops are extensive, and his implements seemed in general very good, though not equal to those of England and America. The school, which is a government institution, was interesting, and, allowing for the difference of customs, may have some good suggestions for our own feeble though costly establishments of similar character. Twelve apprentices, who must be at least seventeen years old, are received each year ; the course is for two years ; the object is to train competent farmers, farm-superintendents, gardeners, and nurserymen ; the apprentices work like farm laborers for the benefit of the proprietor (who is also the Director of the School). In addition to the Director there are a gardener THE BIGHT OF LA I4ANCHE. L57 and nurseryman, an instractoi in mathematics and farm book-keeping, a teacher of practical agriculture, and a veterinarian; the pupils (or appren- tices) arc under constant supervision, and are allowed to leave the fa rm only for a certain time on Sunday; the hours are from four in the morn- ing to nine at night in summer, and from five to nine in winter. The time is almost entirely occupied by work and study; the regimen i simple, but nourishing and sufficient The candidates lor admission are nominated by the Prefect of the Department, alter an examination prescribed by law. The examination is made by a committee consisting of the Director of the farm and four members nominated by the Prefect and appointed by the Minister of Agriculture. The demand for admission must be accompanied by the certificate of birth and of vaccination, and, by an engagement to "conduct myself honorably, to obey the rules, and to work with all my power in order to profit by the favor that you will have the goodness to -rant me." At the end of the course the graduates are examined by the com- mittee. The best receive from the state three hundred francs and a certificate. Those who are not found worthy of a certificate receive, nev- ertheless, two hundred francs. In case of special excellence, the com- mittee is authorized to award silver and bronze medals in addition. Some of the results of the arrangement are, that Mr. Bodin gets the sen ires of twenty-four capital young men for the work of his farm; that twelve first-rate young farmers ami gardeners are sent out even- year with a good practical education, with a thorough training in their art, and with a little money for their start in lite; and that a knowledge of improved practical farming is disseminated throughout the department by practical working men, well trained for the successful prosecution of their business. The young man who showed me over the well-kept farm, and through the well-filled stables and who was the first Frenchman of hi- class whom I ever found to decline a tee . gave ample evidence of the s degree to which a peasant-boy may be developed by Buch influeo those of Les Trois Croix. I make no criticism of our "Agricultural College '* system as a means 158 A FARMER'S VACATION. for effecting the better education for professional life of farmer's sons who hope to escape the drudgery of their father's occupations ; but as a means of qualifying them for the skilful carrying on of the art these colleges pretend to foster, I believe that one school like that at Les Trois Croix, where a more purely practical education is given, and where poor boys are trained to hard work under the direction of sensible, practical men, would be worth them all. I saw, here and elsewhere, less than I had expected to find of the little Brittany cows. They are a capital race for butter-making; but the passion of the times seems to be for large animals, and these cows are fast being "improved" out of existence by crossing with beefy shorthorns from England. Generally speaking, the agriculture of Brittany is in a very backward condition. The peasantry of some of the departments cling to their old Armorican traditions, speak only their ancestral Celtic, and live in an exceedingly meagre way. The influence of the annual agricultural exhi- bitions, and of the six Ferme-ecoles, together with a national school of agriculture under excellent management on a farm of twelve hundred acres at Grand-Jouan, and (near Quimperle) a school of practical irriga- tion and drainage, is being felt, and the general awakening of the human mind is at last manifesting itself in the darker regions of the old penin- sula. The communes are now tolerably supplied with primary schools, and many of the younger men among the peasantry are improving their systems of work. At the same time there is no sympathy between the proprietors and their tenants, and country-life in the region has so few attractions, that absenteeism is the rule with those who can afford to live in Paris and the larger towns, — where they use their money in other enterprises and leave their estates to the grinding management of agents. On the other hand, the recruits taken into the French army from West- ern Brittany have acquired a taste for better living, and a knowledge of better pay, and they have deserted their native land whenever oppor- tunity has offered; for the hard life and the meagre living of Brittany THE BIGHT OF LA MANcm-:. 159 are not attractive to one who has known the easier and better-ted con- dition of the army. To such an extent have these influences affected the population, that wages have nunc than doubled within a few ■■■ The average family of the Breton peasant consists of man and wife, three children, and two aged persons. Of these, only the man and wife are able to earn more than their own subsistence, and two of tin- others earn nothing. Their income (in whatever rural position) is small, and it is impossible to accumulate savings. They have a hard and hopeless life, and of course they look forward with delighl to any means of . In the farm-house the whole family rise in summer at four o'clock. The women go to milk the cows and attend to the calves and pigs, and the m. -n to teed and harness their teams. At half past four they break- fast, — always on soup, often on milk-soup. From five to ten the men and teams are at work. At ten they dine, — on milk and buckwheat porridge, or buckwheat pancakes. In winter the milk often fails, and the porridge is then made with fermented oats. It is very nutritions, and much esteemed in Finisterre and Morbihan. In the other depart- ments they usually dine on buckwheat cakes. After the first of May they Bleep from dinner-time until noon, when work begins again At three they lunch, — on bread or tried cakes, with milk or butter. From seven to eight is the Bupper, the principal meal of the day. It consists of soup and bacon, except on "JOUTS mai-lvs." when the bacon is re- placed by tisli or potatoes. At tin' supper they drink cider when they have it: but they rarely have it in winter; there is often only enough tor the harvest-work As wages advance, the use of meat is increasing. This is the regimen of the farmer's family, and of his regular laborers. Those who live in their own houses, while boarding themselves, live much more poorly, using neither meat, cider (except on Sunday at the auberge), nor butter, and they are much more feeble and indolent. They were paid a tew years ago from $32 to $38 a year with board while at work; but they are idle about one third of the time, and then they must support themselves Of course the women and the children of a useful age (which is an early age in France' must also work to the utmost of their capacity. 160 A FARMER'S VACATION. Such seems to be the common farm life of this benighted and pictu- resque land. Of course there are many instances of better work and better living, and these are happily increasing from year to year, and their influence is benefiting the agriculture of the country generally; but, as a rule, poverty and hardship prevail throughout the whole province. When I returned to St. Malo the wind was blowing great guns, and in the office of the steamer company was posted the following telegram : — "Jersey, Sept. 15. "Forte tempete! Le 'Wonder' partira demain a dix heures. "Le Couteur, Capitaine." So we were storm-bound in St. Malo, and rained in and bored as one can only be in a gloomy, dripping, foreign walled town. CHAPTER V. OLD JERSEY. NOTHING in the whole experience of travel produces such genuine emotion as discovery. To come upon an interesting anil important old town, of which we had hitherto known next to nothing, and of which we are sure that most of our countrymen are equally ignorant, awakens an introverted enthusiasm that proves us akin to Colnmbufl. "Where is Treves, exactly i 1 don*1 think 1 quite know." Such a question as this, from one who is otherwise our equal, always emphasizes the Becrel faction with which we contemplate our individual merit of good fortuna every is aol the Least of the great pleasures that finally reward those who climb down from the high quay at St. Halo and embarx on 11 162 A FARMER'S VACATION. the side-wheeler "Pinta," bound for the untried waters of La Manche, which we found still so lashed by the tail of the "forte tempete," that even the barbarous passage from Dover to Calais faded from our recol- lection. After four hours of almost mortal agony, we ran past the great mole at St. Helier's, and were in still water. In due time we were in the old "Hotel de la Pomme d'Or," and were at rest, amid such wholesome old-fashioned hospitality and cordial attention as only a combination of French and English customs can give. Think of Southdown mutton and " Supreme de Yolaille," of English tea and French coffee, under the same roof! The rain, which had so much interfered with our pleasure in France, had rained itself out, and our two w T eeks in Jersey were blessed with the most superb autumn weather. We were in a land rarely visited by Americans, and so little known to our literature of travel, that at each turn of its beautiful lanes we found a fresh surprise and delight. So much as is generally known of the island relates — just as our popular notions of Siam centre around its twins — to the cattle for which it has long been famous. The cattle are still there in all their beauty, but they are only an element of a beauty that is almost universal. OLD JERSEY. 163 Our own interest in Jersey was largely an agricultural one, but we found much else that cannot Tail to engage the attention of all who for the picturesquenees of history, of society, and of nature. The Island lies sixteen miles west of the coast of Normandy, forty miles north of Brittany, and about one hundred miles south of England. It "is about as large as our own Staten Island, containing nearly forty thousand acres of land, about twenty-live thousand of which are under cultivation. The population is over fifty-six thousand, or about two and one fourth for each acre of cultivated land. More than one half of the population is in St. Relief's, which is the only town of considerable size. More even than most islands, Jersey is a little world by itself, with its own history and local peculiarities, very different from any that we find in other countries. Its agriculture is as unlike that of England or France as are the people themselves unlike their French cousins or their English compatriots. If one feature of the scenery is more peculiar to the island than any other (and almost more charming than anything of its kind elsewhere . it is the embowered lanes which intersect it in every direction, like a network of lovers' walks. They are always of about the same character, yet always varying; a narrow, capitally made road — as hard and smooth as those of Central Park — often only wide enough for a single vehicle, but with frequent bays for passing; high earthen banks at the sides for fences, which make the lane seem a trench cut into the soil; trees grow- ing from the tops of these banks, sending their snake-like roots down under the grass and clustering ferns, to the firm ground beneath, and overarching the way with their branches; and, to CTOWn all, the gn and must luxuriant ivy, Btarting at the roadside gutters, and, claiming it< share of the bank, winding itself closely around the trunks of the trees, and draping their interlocked brandies overhead, or infolding the end of a dead limb with a mass of sturdy blossom or fruit. New | are springing op to replace those which the ivy has reduced to mere Stumps or trunks of solid verdure, and so the form and combination of the row is varied at every Btep. Frequent gate-ways oj.cn glimpses into the fields. Here and there a 1%\ of stone-work replaces or supports the 164 A FARMER'S VACATION. earthen wall. There are many cool-looking, stone-arched, natural foun- tains sunk in the verdure, and sometimes the land slopes away from the road into an overgrown ravine, from which there comes the sound of running water. The winding lane at Eozel, which runs at the crest of a damp and sheltered ravine, in whose deep shade a rivulet runs, and the old manor road at Vinchelez (with an an- cient Norman gate- way), are good examples of Jersey lanes ; but there are miles and miles of these in every direc- tion, all of the same general character, and constantly changing in detail. It is through such secluded ways as these, and past comfortable farm- houses, and thatched cottages and sheds, that one drives to get an im- pression of the agri- culture and the life of Jersey. It soon becomes evident, how- ever, that no travel- ler's casual impression will do justice to this compact little coun- ^;m. LANE AT ROZEL, OLD JERSEY. try. ent It is too differ- from what we LANE AT VINCHELEZ, WITH NORMAN ARCH. find elsewhere, and needs study to be understood. Wishing to get the full impression of living in Jersey, we made but OLD JERSEY. 165 short stay at the "Pomme d'Or," for the blessed English institution of "lodgings" prevails, — an institution whose adoption in America would add much to the comfort of the nomadic part of our population. Driving about in the neighborhood of the town, we decided on a cottage on tin- shore of St. Aubin's Bay about a mile from St. Helier's), kept by a widow l.l/.MIl I'M < ISTI.K. and her daughter, who, with the help of a small handmaiden, did all the work of the establishment. We had a pleasant parlor and dining- room en suite, three chambers and sufficient closets. For this, with ser- vice, tires, gas. and all extras, the charge was three guineas per week [about seventeen dollars currency). We did our own marketing in | and had passbooks with the butcher, grocer, and baker, and Wen as much at home, and in as regular relations with our base of supply in the town, as though we had no other home in the world. Tn the house, the hours, the customs, and the diet were quite under our control, and we were fast growing into Jerseymen, which seemed a very p] thing to do. Our rooms occupied the whole sea-front of the bouse, and commanded a superb view toward the afternoon sun and the crescent moon) over the bay and past Noirmont Point. The view to the left was bounded by the town and harbor, and before us st 1 the storied pile of Elizabeth Castle, like Mont St. Michel, an island at high tide, and jible over the dry sands at low water. Our BUTJSet view, when the sands were bare, is that shown in the cut of the castle. Looking to the right, toward Noirmont Point, the view lies BCK Aubin's Bay, with the (luster of rocks on which St. Aubin's castle stands. 166 A FARMER'S VACATION. Even Jersey has not been exempt from the invasion of the railroad, and every half-hour there rattled along the shore in front of us the odd little train that runs from St. Helier's to St. Aubin's, four miles. It was drawn by a little pony of a locomotive, and consisted of two cars, like ST. BRELADE S BAY. those of England, but with a covered and well-railed balcony running along each side, and usually occupied by the passengers, who at this season generally avoided the closer compartments within. This arrange- ment gives an unusual width to the cars, but there seems to be no ob- jection to it for roads where there are no cuttings ; it is, certainly, most agreeable* in pleasant weather, and admits of the opening of windows during rain. Being much favored in the matter of weather, we passed a good part of every day in driving about the country; sometimes lingering over the majestic rocks of the north coast, which rises about three hundred feet above the sea, and is especially abrupt and grand ; but more often haunt- ing the quieter lanes and drinking our fill of a sensation not to be re- peated in our different rural surroundings at home. Jersey is pre-emi- nently a country for idling. It is large enough for varied excursions, but small enough for any point to be reached easily, and it has an ever-vary- ing and never-ending charm of coast and interior, of which one does not tire. An impression of the island, gained only from the extreme western and (>U> JERSEY. 107 northern coasts, would be an impression of a high, rocky, and almost treeless land, with little to invite the visitor, save the noble bluffs and rocks; but almost immediately on leaving the coast one drops into the characteristic rural scenes which greet him at every turn until he reaches the low-lying shores of Grouville and St. Clements. Little dells near tli.' north side of the island, their rivulets combining to form the growing brooks, unite in deeper and broadening valleys which spread into the plains at the south, — plains into which the hills project here and there, giving admirable variety to even these lower lands, and affording the most charming sites for country-houses that overlook the St. Clements coast, fringed at low tide with far-reaching, mellow-colored rocks. Among these the spring tides rise tu the height of forty feet, leaving them baiv tor miles as they recede. A good object in driving is to see the old parish churches ; going from one to the other, with the aid of a map, through the cross-lanes, which arc much more picturesque than the main highways, and which often drop down into (manning valleys, past old-time mills, and among old thatched farm-houses. The churches themselves are interesting from without, but the interiors that we saw are dull and cold and colorless. They all stand in ancient Churchyards thickly Bet with tombstones, whose inscriptions are in 168 A FARMER'S VACATION. French, and many of which are very old. These churches are all ancient, and there has never been an elaborate restoration of any of them. They seem to have been merely kept in suitable condition for use, and the necessary additions have generally been made in the style of the original structure. The most recent of these edifices is that of St. Helier's, which was consecrated in 1341. Eight of the twelve were consecrated in the twelfth century, — the oldest, St. Brelade's, in 1111. This was the earliest Christian church in the Channel Islands, and is much the most antiquated and picturesque of all. St. Saviour's Church, with a square tower and fine ivy, which stands just beyond the edge of the town, and St. Martin's, four miles out, with the more usual angular spire, are perhaps the finest examples of the type. These churches, in nearly every instance, consist of two or 'three similar stone buildings standing side by side (probably built one after another as needed by the growing population). The separating wall is opened with archways, so /-.|>/.//v;;. ST. MARTIN S CnURCH, OLD JERSEY. ST. BRELADE'S CHURCH. OLD JERSEY. 169 as to bring the congregation all within range of the minister's voice, — though the heavy pillars still eat off very many from the controlling reach of his eye. I found attendance at two of the country churches at which I stopped on Sunday-morning rides anything but inspiriting. Aside from the nov- elty of the use of the French language in the familiar Episcopal service, there was little to relieve that heavy air of blank enmri which bo dulls us in the whitewashed interiors of many of our old parish churches at home. From their quaint exteriors, their conspicuous age, the aesthetics] capaci- ties of the church ritual, the fair assumption that French congregations would put more form and art into their religious exercises than New England congregations do, and from the rustic simplicity of the people (no less than from their charming rural surroundings), one would natu- rally expect an ideal service, — simple, tender, and full of dim religious emotion. Indeed, as I recall the conditions under which these exercises are held, I can only think that my selections were unfortunate, and that in those churches which I did not visit (in spite of their glaring while walls) I might have had a better experience; and that the interest which is necessarily awakened by these gray, mossy, and ivy-grown sanctuaries need not always be checked on passing their low portals. The Channel Islands boast of being the oldest possessions of the pres- ent ruling house of Great Britain. Normandy, to which it then belonged, was given by Charles the Simple to Duke Rollo in 912, and it passed to the English crown with William the Conqueror. When Normandy was regained by France the islands remained with England, and. although . has been frequently attacked and sometimes invaded by the French, they have never had possession of more than a portion of the island, and never succeeded in conquering the loyal spirit of its people, though they committed wide devastation. So much was Norman or French invasion feared, that there were inserted in the litany the Words. 'And from the fury of the Normans, good Lord, deliver us!" When King John lost Normandy, he looked upon these islands "as the last Flank left of so great a Shipwreck," and resolved to keep them at 170 A FARMER'S VACATION. whatever cost. He was twice in Jersey in person, and became a sort of vicarious father of the country, to which he gave "many excellent Laws and Priviledges." During the reign of Edward III., the famous Du Guesclin, with an army that included the flower of French chivalry, effected a lauding, held possession of the eastern parishes, and besieged for some months Mont Orgueil Castle, to which the chief persons of the island had retired. The castle held out, and the invaders withdrew into France. — .. 'Z ">^ :,• -'t''':' A ' *«*--' 1 -\'9wi v WlLM l teif mIc 1 '" ■ ^s9 y.^:;v. ''"•^5*15 ir ^■i ^SlSsS^ ^ Wzmj^P^ MONT ORGUEIL CASTLK. Henry VI., during his contest for the throne, solicited French aid against Edward IV., and his Queen contracted with the Count de Maulevrier that, in consideration for his services, the Channel Islands should be made over to him. He seized Mont Orgueil Castle by surprise, and employed every device of kindness to induce the people of Jersey to renounce their allegiance to England and to acknowledge him. "He could never prevail on the inclinations of a people who were enraged to see themselves sold to the French, a nation which they hated ; insomuch that, in about six years' time, he could never make himself master of above half the island." During this period there were frequent skirmishes between the French and the troops of the loyal Seigneur of St. Ouen, who held the western parishes. OLD JERSEY. 171 Finally, under Edward IV., the castle was reduced by famine, and the French were driven quite out of the island. .AIi mt Orgueil, which dates hack to the time of Csesar, figures largely in the early history of Jersey, and its story is full of interest. It is now a noble mass of ruin, and the ivy which frames its abandoned loopholes piles massy green upon its crumbling parapet, and drapes its ponderous Bides with living verdure; the ivy and the salt sea-winds have claimed it for their own ; it is only a dreamy old crag of solid walls, whispering its tale of the bygone times in the idle and gladly credulous ear of the traveller. At its feet breaks the summer spray of La Manche, and from GATK-WAY TO MONT mi i \m: l 172 A FARMER'S VACATION. its crest one sees, across the smoky distance, the phantom spires of Coutances. There is a snug inn in the little village of Gorey beneath the castle. In front of this, vessels lie heeled over on their sides on the harbor mud, waiting idly for the rising tide. There are charming walks near at hand, when the single visit has been paid to the prosaic crom- lech on the hill, where the old Druids celebrated their now forgotten rites. Between the castle and St. Helier's is La Hougue Bie, a tumulary mound, overgrown with rhododendron, on which stands an ancient tower with several furnished rooms and a little chapel. This is one of the lions of Jersey (admission sixpence, and "please remember the guide, sir"). A quaint legend of treachery and retribution and wifely devotion is droned off by the small showman, and the visitor is conducted to the elevated platform, from which the charming freshness and beauty of the southeastern parishes are realized as from no other point, and where the best idea is gained of the insular character of Jersey, and of its nearness to the French coast. It is not, after all, for its lions that one should visit Jersey, but rather for the great enjoyment of its lanes and home-like little farms. Any mile of its smaller roads is worth all else that it has to offer to those who are only in pursuit of pleasure; and, indeed, one who enjoys simple country things, and an air of foreign and unmodern quaintness, need seek no farther to find these in their most engaging and unspoiled form. *(fe ST. CATHERINE :. I1A1 OLD JERSEY. 17: "-".V Naturally, one who visits this island will have much of his attention taken up by the town, and the people, and their institutions. It is ooi an attractive town, nor especially unattractive. Falle wrote, in 1693 : "The chief Town is St. Better, a neat, well-built Town, seated near the Sea, containing about a 1,000 Inhabitants, who are for the most part Merchants, Traders, and Artificers; The Gentry and People of the best Fashion living generally in the Country. Tis the ordinary Seat of Jus- tice; and here is kept a Market, in the Nature of a Fair, every Satur- day, where Gentlemen meet for Conversation as well as fur Business." It is closely built, and has a busy air, and its population includes a large element of English families, who have been attracted here by a combination of climate, cheapness, and good schools; and, in the summer time, a more conspicuous element of cheap tourists. These are known as " Five Pounders," many of them being clerks spending their holiday weeks and their five-pound notes in noisy and unlovely pastimes. Happily they fill the great open excursion-cars and spend the whole day in the country. These cars, drawn by four horses, are of such width that they must needs keep to the broad roads, and their routes are easily avoided. In all our wanderings, we very rarely fell in with them. This incursion of tourists and the large floating population have built up certain branches of trade to unexpected proportions. The port of Jersey is abso- lutely tree (save for a slight impost on spirits); and wages and the cost of living are so low. that shopping is exceptionally cheajx Some of the shops are a surprise for their si/e and completeness ' b stablishment has every conceivable article or useful and ornamental furniture, includ- ing rare ehina and glass. Another shop, De Gruehy's. is larger and IIKItM!T\r.K or ST IHUtll- 174 A FARMER'S VACATION. more complete than any that I know in America, except two or three in New York, especially in its supply and variety of useful goods; it includes a capital tailoring establishment, and ladies' dresses and men's hats seem to be important branches. We found the prices of certain goods much lower than in corresponding shops in London, and could very well understand that, to a family man in need of an outfit, the aesthetic inducement is not the only one that Jersey holds out. The native population of the town are English of the English, — in their dress and in their sentiment of nationality; but there lurk under the surface some qualities that betray the unmixed Norman blood that still fills their veins, — modified by eight hundred years of English na- tionality, but lacking the admixture of the Saxon and old Briton ele- ments. In the presence of the world at large, the Jerseyman is an Englishman ; but in the presence of the English he asserts himself (at least to himself) a Jerseyman. He is proud of his allegiance to Eng- land, but prouder still that he is of this choicest and oldest part of the English possessions. The odd thing about this island, and the one that seems most incon- gruous, is, that the language of the people, especially in the country, but also very largely in the town, is French. We often met women and children on the farms who spoke no English, and in one very attractive photograph shop in St. Helier's we were asked if we did not speak French. Many of the market-women seem to be only sufficiently ac- quainted with English for the purposes of their traffic. The regular ser- vice in all the parish churches is in French, but there is in St. Helier's Church an afternoon service in English for the benefit of the garrison. The official language of the courts is French, but English suitors may examine witnesses and address the court in their own tongue. Official notices are posted in the two languages. The reading part of the popu- lation is more largely English, if we may judge from the fact that there are six English newspapers and only three French ones; this, however, may result from the fact that the newspaper is much more fully devel- oped in England than in France. One might pass some time in the town, in the usual way of tourists, OLD JERSEY, 175 without discovering that he was not in an English community, but a trip to the country would soon inform him. The men and the younger wo- men and the larger children speak modern French as their language of law and devotion, and English (usually less readily and perfectly; as their language of trade and business intercourse; but both tongues are in a measure foreign to them, while to the younger children and the older women they seem to be sometimes but little known, except fur the rou- tine of the church service. The language of the Jersey hearthstone — the "mother-tongue" of the country people — is French, it is true, hut it is the French of the days of the old Dukes of Normandy; that which was carried by the Conqueror into England, and may he better described as the Anglo-Norman. It is essentially the same language as that of the present country population of Normandy, save that this has some en- graft iugs of modern French, as that of Jersey has of English. The modern language of Jersey (we have hardly the right t<> call this cradle of our own tongue a patois) is illustrated by the following speci- men: "J'ai bain des fais paslail a mes annnins a l'endrait d'esl'ver un monueusment a s'nhonneu, mais chest comme si j'm'capuchais la teste contre la pathe, ils ont poeux desmonaizir quicq' herpius, — eh! Mon Qui, il en laissont driethe ieux d'ehes freluques, nou n'les mettra pou k lus servir d'ouothilli quand nou les pliache 'cha dans lues derniethe grande naithe casaque et que nou il'z'envietha a s'er' poser dans l'l>ain grand Gardina 11111111'' ammin le Ministre Fillieu." In modern French tliis would he: "J'ai bien des fois park' a mes amis an BUJet ihelever un monument j\ son honneur, mais e'est comme si je me cognais la t6te contre un mur, ils ont peur de depenser quelques sous, — eh! Mon Dieu, ils en laisseronl derriere ens de ces freluques, on ne les mettra point a leur servir d'oreiller, quand nous Les placerons dans leur dernier grand habit noir, et qu'on Les enverra Be reposer dans Le bean grand jardin de notre and Le Reverend FilleuL" A knowledge of French helps hardly at all to an understanding of Jersey French when spoken. It is a rude language, and seems not out of place among the poorer people, hut it is odd to hear it familiarly used by educated persons; yet in the most aristocratic families it is the 176 A FARMER'S VACATION. language of the household. We once asked our way of an old woman who was working in her garden. Pointing to the left, she told us to go " too gowshe " {tout gauche). We addressed very few who could not speak modern French, but the knowledge of English is much less com- mon than would seem possible in an island so small that no house is more than about ten miles from a large town, where it is so generally used that it seems at first the language of the place. Jersey is an outpost of England rather than an integral part of the Em- pire. It is under the protection, rather than under the control of the Crown, which appoints (and supports at its own cost) a Lieutenant-Gov- ernor, who is a military officer of high rank, and commander of the con- siderable garrison, which is maintained without charge to the population. Acts of Parliament are not binding unless they have been specially sent by order of Council to be registered in the island. For most purposes, the local legislature (" The States of Jersey ") is an independent author- ity, but their acts are passed " subject to the sanction of Her Most Excellent Majesty in Council." If not approved, they lapse three years after their enactment, but may be renewed from time to time. The chief local officer is called the Bailiff. He with twelve Jurats (one from each parish) constitute the Royal Court, and these, with the twelve rectors, twelve constables, and the fourteen deputies, elected, one from each parish, and two additional from St. Helier's, form " The States of. Jersey." The Bailiff presides, and he has the casting vote ; but the States cannot be convened without the consent of the Governor, who has the right of veto, — rarely exercised, for this official, if he be wise, con- fines himself mainly to the affairs of the garrison, to the management of the militia, to the enjoyment of his beautifully placed country-seat on the hill back of the town, and to systematic entertainments. The bailiff, the jurats, and the rectors hold office for life ; the bailiff and the rectors are appointed by the Crown, and the jurats are elected by the rate-payers. They are not required to have legal qualifications, but certain occupations disqualify, such as butcher, baker, and inn- keeper. When sitting in the Royal Court, the bailiff and the jurats wear robes of red cloth, which are more or less suggestive of bathing- OLD JERSEY. 177 dresses. In this snug little republic, the vox populi is not so much expressed at the ballot-box aa in the close intercourse of all 1 1 which must make the will of the people clear to their rulers, — who are born Jerseymen themselves ami who, probably, value the approval of their fellow-islanders beyond all other worldly incentive to right-doing. Even-handed justice, according to the laws, seems to prevail, it' we may judge from the fact that on the occasion of our visit a former jurat was in prison, and awaiting trial before the body of which he had lately been a member. So far as 1 could understand the case, his crime was th.it of having declared a dividend when the bank of which he was a diit! tor was in an insolvent condition, though in a fair way to pull through if a good dividend should have the effect of putting up the price of its shares and attracting depositors. How would such a test of crime apply in our republic? 1 was one day talking with a Jersey gentleman about this case, and asked him how in such a community so large a failure was possible, suggesting that the affairs of the bank could hardly be kept from the knowledge, nor, in a measure, from the control of many of the best peo- ple. He replied, sadly, and without enlightening me: — " Ah ! You see, it was a Dissenting bank." Among the more peculiar laws is one affecting debtors. When a man is unable to pay his debts, he may be forced to "make cession"; that is, he gives up his entire assets to his creditors. The one whose claim is the most recent has the option of taking the property on paying the other creditors. If he refuses, his claim is annulled, and the next in order of time has the opportunity, which he must accept, or forfeit his claim; and so on, until, from the extinction of a portion of the debts, a creditor is found who will pay what remains and take the estate. By the operation of a recent law, a debtor may be released by consent of the majority of his creditors. Jersey is much Bought, especially by invalids, by reason of it> equable climate. Much of its natural beauty, too, us well as the character of its ornamental planting, is due to its soft skies and mild winters. Changes 12 178 A FARMER'S VACATION. ROCK AT BEAU PORT. of temperature are not often sudden or severe. The summer weather is rarely hot, and the winter is never cold. The fuchsia is a hardy shrub, and grows to a great size; it is much used as a hedge plant; pampas. OLD JERSEY. 179 glass is conspicuous in every lawn, and -rows to dimensions which in our climate are quite unknown ; the araucaria grows in the open air, and reaches a fine size ; maidenhair and hart's-tongue fern grow wild on the Pence banks; the oleander, the agave, the yucca, and the azalea flourish in private grounds beside the rich vegetation of New Zealand and the Norfolk Islands. In the grounds of Mr. Gibaut, in St. Laurence valley, there arc dozens of large trees of camellia japonica, which bloom through- out the winter in the most magnificent profusion, and these are every- where successful in the open air. Against south walls the orange ripens its fruit The geranium is perfectly hardy, and, indeed, very many plants which can be grown only under glass in England, and only with fire- heat here, succeed perfectly in the open air in Jersey. The grass is green all winter, and many sorts of trees hold their leaves very late. I have seen the laurestinus bursting its flower-buds early in December, and the whole air of the island, except on the exposed northern and western coasts, is that of a country where one may have a perpetual conservatory at one's door, roofed only by the kindly sky. There is no miasma, and the air is not depressing, as might be sus- pected. On the contrary, it is a perfectly satisfactory climate for walk- in-, quite as much so, and eveu more constantly so, than that of England. Consumption in its early stages is said to be checked by a residence here, and many chronic diseases yield to the effect of the wholesome air and the out-of-door life. Rheumatism, however, is said to be aggravated Ansted, in his work on the Channel Islands, says: "It may safely he assumed that all the islands are admirably adapted to restore the health, and strengthen, both mentally and bodily, the overtaxed energies of the inhabitants of great cities. They afford a pure, (dear atmosphere, contain- ing a large quantity of saline matter and iodine, and the frequent high winds insure a constant freshness, preventing the depressing effect some- times accompanying humidity." Falle, the historian of Jersey (Rector of St. Saviour's . after descanting on the advantage to the island of having its slope all in one direction, so that the rivulets gain sufficient >i/.e to turn "betwixt 30 and 40 mills that supply the whole country." says: "The second Benefit we :• 180 A FARMER'S VACATION. from this Situation is that by this Declivity of the Land from N to S, the beams of the Sun fall more directly and perpendicularly thereon than if either the Surface was level and Parallel to the Sea, or which is worse, declined from S to N, as it doth JF R ^ E Y JZi xv o jzi x . ^ u Q uerneze y. F or there, by an odd opposition to Jersey, the land is high on the S, and low on the N", which causes, if I may so speak, a double obliquity; the one from the Position of the Sun itself, especially in time of the Winter Solstice; the other from the Situation of the Land; and is probably the Reason of the great Difference observed in the Qualities of Soil and Air in both Islands." He illustrates his meaning by two woodcuts, which are here repro- duced. The quaintness of Falle's style only adds to his interest in the estimation of the student of Jer- sey. The roads lose nothing from his account of them. They were of three kinds : 1. " Le Chemin du Roy," twelve feet wide; 2. "Le Chemin de huit pieds," eight feet wide; and 3. "Le Chemin de quatre pieds," four feet wide, "serving only for Carriages or Horseback." "And yearly about Midsummer, there is a Perambulation of the Magistrates in one or more of the Parishes to inquire in what Repair these ways are kept, which is performed very Solemnly. The Constable of the Parish where the Perambulation is to be, takes with him 12 of the Principal Men of his Parish, and meets the Judge at- tended by 3 or more of the Jurats on Horseback : Before whom rideth the Viscount or Sheriff, with his Staff of Office erected, one End thereof GUERNEZEY. OLD JERSEY. J SI on the Pommel of his Saddle. In ancient times it was Cum Lanced, with a Lunar. He keeps the middle of the way, the Constable and his 12 Men walking on foot by his side; and when his Staff encountereth with a Bough or Branch hanging on the way, the Owner of the hedge is fined : But if the fault be in the bottom of the way, not the Party bordering but the Over-seers of that Tything are amerced. " We had anciently another way, and of very different Use, called Per- quage from the word Pertica because it was exactly 24 Foot broad, which is the measure of a Perch. There were but XII of them in the whole Island beginning one at every Church, and from thence leading straight to the Sea. The Use of them was to conduct those who for some Capital offence had taken Sanctuary in any of the Churches and had been forced to abjure the Island according to an ancient custom prac- tised among Us in those days. Having abjured, they Mere conducted by the Church-men along those Pcrquagcs to the Sea, which Perquages were still a Sanctuary to them; for if they strayed never so little, they lost the benefit of the Sanctuary and were liable to the' Law." Some of these Sanctuary roads are still the lines of the main roads Leading to the churches. Deploring the excessive use of "cidar," of which he estimates that there were made in good years twenty-four thousand hogsheads, all of which was consumed in the island "beyond use and necessity, even to Excess and Debauchery," he says: "Could Men be satisfied with the common Drink of Nature, Water I mean, no People in the "World are more liberally stored with that than we of this Island: 'Tis in my Opinion the great Wonder of this Island, that whereas it is as it were but a great Rock, standing in the midst of the Salt Sea, it abounds beyond what is Been in any other Country under Heaven, with fresh and excellent Springs, which gush out of the hard Rock, and bubble up everywhere, running in a thousand pretty Brooks and Streams among the Dales, till they lose themselves in thai great Receptacle of waters, the Ocean. There is hardly a house that has not such a Spring or Brook near it." Near the southwest corner of the island there is a high-lying barren- looking Btretoh of sandy country, called the Quenvais, which is in strange 182 A FARMER'S VACATION". contrast to the rest of Jersey. Of this, the devout Hector, who never neglects a chance to point a moral, says : " We must except a large Tract of once excellent Lands in the West of the Island, which within these 200 Years have been so overrun with Sands, that the Island on that side beareth the Image of a Desart. This is said to have happened by Di- vine Vengeance on the Owners of those Lands, for detaining the Goods of Strangers that had been Shipwrackt on that Coast, though enjoy ned by the highest Censure of the Church to restore them. There must be from time to time such publick Example of Divine Justice among Men, that the inhabitants of the Earth may learn Righteousness." Then, his spirit of fair play asserting itself, he goes on : "And yet I confess it may't be also the Effect of a Cause not Preternatural : I mean of those high Westerly winds that blow here almost at all Seasons of the Year, and which on this side of the Island, are daily seen to drive the Sands from the Bot- tom to the Top of the highest Cliffs." Outside of the towns the island is mostly divided into very small hold- ings. Inherited lands cannot be devised by will, but must follow the law of succession. Purchased property may be devised if there are no direct heirs to inherit it. The eldest son has, as his birthright, the house and about two acres of land (five vergees) ; he has, in addition to this, one tenth of the landed estate and rents. What remains is then divided, two thirds between the sons, and one third between the daughters. This law has effected a very minute subdivision, and even the consolidation of estates by purchase is much obstructed by a law that makes land lia- ble for the debts of the former owner, even those contracted after he has sold it. One must know, in buying property, or in taking it on long lease, not only that the person selling or leasing, and his predecessors also, are solvent at the time, but that they are likely to remain so. With all its inconveniences, this law has had the effect of tying the people to the land more completely than is usual elsewhere. The soil owns the man, rather than the man the soil. The surplus population is taken up by the professions and by commerce, and very largely by the Newfoundland cod-fisheries. Many small estates are rented, and the rents are high, often fifty dollars per acre for entire farms. oi,D JERSEY. 183 There are very few farms of over fifty acres, — Dot more than six or eight in the whole island. From fifteen to twenty acres is the usual size of the larger holdings, hut the majority of families make a comfortable support from very much less, — often from two or three acres. Nearly every one living in the country cultivates some land, no matter how little; if only a small garden-plot, he still raises vegetables for market. If he has two or three verg£es, he keeps a cow and some poultry and swine. Consequently, one's wanderings in any direction outside of the towns are among an almost purely agricultural people. ^The "gentry" invariably cultivate their own estates, and indeed one is at a loss to learn where the -entry ends and the peasantry begins. The best names in the island are home by the smaller landholders as well as L\ the ] and cousinship links the population into a very compact community. One result is a much higher grade of intelligence among the very small farmers than would he expected; noblesse oblige, — to the extent that all t'ccl themselves to belong in a higher social plane than their possessions would indicate, and that they strive to maintain their rightful dignity. The island directory, which contains the names of man}' who, from the smallne-s of their holdings, would be called peasants in other parts of Europe, is headed, " List of the names and addresses of the Resident Gentry." The ambition of this people to maintain a good position is fur- thered by their situation and natural circumstances Their soil is fertile: the sea-weed is abundant, and is a capital manure; the climate is abso- lutely a perfect one; and they have the best market in the world Co- \eiit Garden) almost at their doors, to say nothing of their own town, which of itself should he able to consume all their staple products to all this the possession of a race of cattle popular throughout the world, and of which the surplus is eagerly boughl at high prices, and we shall understand why the position of the Jersey farmer is exception- ally favorable. Provincial pride always reaches its most stalwart growth in islands, and in Jersey it attains proportions which are perhaps justified by a pe- culiarly isolated position, and by the tenacity with which old traditions and customs are A\\\ preserved This incentive seconds that of family 184 A FARMER'S VACATION. pride in stimulating the farmer, large or small, to the gathering of worldly gear, for which the soil is his only resource, and- there results a thor- oughly good agriculture, which has important lessons for us all. "High farming," in a small way, is as well exemplified here as in Belgium. In- deed, when we consider how much greater are the requirements of these farmers than are those of the Belgian peasants, and how comfortably they are supplied, we must confess that petite culture here reaches its best de- velopment. Le Cornu says : " A farm of twenty acres will, with few exceptions (where meadow-land or orchards predominate), be distributed as follows : — Hay and pasture 10 acres. Turnips 2 " Mangolds 1 " Parsnips 1 " Carrots f " Potatoes 2 " Wheat 3£ " "The stock usually kept will consist of: — Horses 2 Cows 6 Heifers 6 Pigs 3 "To manage the above, and keep the whole in proper order, will re- quire the constant attention of four persons, — two men and two women. In most cases the farmer has not recourse to assistance beyond that of his own immediate household. It is a rare occurrence for a tenant- farmer to hold a farm of this extent unless he can rely on his own family for assistance." "Ten Acres Enough" would have been a very commonplace title if the book had been published in Jersey. The high farming is not of the sort practised in England, where a large capital is employed, and where everything is done on an extensive scale, but rather that of garden cultivation, where every acre is made to do its very best, and where deep ploughing, heavy manuring, and careful ol.D JERSEY. 186 attention produce their greatest effect It is nol to be understood from this that the forma are always neat and trim, and kept polished as if for show. On thf contrary, they are very often untidy, and have an ill- kept look about the fence-corners, and tumble-down old thatch-i stone sheds; but, as everywhere in this climate, the ivy creeps over all neglected ruin, and decks even the end of an abandoned pigsty with such masses of enchanting green and blossom that one is glad that the business of the fields and stables has left the farmer no time to im- prove away this wealth of roadside beauty. In our ruder climate, decay is more or less hideous; but under these softer skies, when man aban- dons his works, Nature takes them into her tenderest clasp and blends them with grass and tree until they seem a part of her own handiwork. There are generally clusters of houses about the parish churches, and at no point is one often out of sight of habitations. Frequently several houses are grouped together, and the whole of the cultivated part of the island is more like a straggling village, than like the most thickly settled of our farming neighborhoods. The country-houses are almost invariably built of stone, and the older ones are rooted with thatch or red tiles, — often with a combination of tin' two, — thatch on the upper part of the root, and tiles near the eaves, > -\KM-HOI >K 186 A FARMER'S VACATION. as shown on the larger house in the St. Peter's Valley view. Each place is well provided with outbuildings, such as bake-house, stable, cow-house, sties, sheds, barns, cider-house, store-houses, etc., conveniently arranged, and proportioned to the size of the farm. The fields contain usually from less than one to three acres of land, and are divided by huge banks of earth, often studded with trees. As land increases in value these are in some cases being levelled, and their place supplied by hedges. Orchards abound, and well they may, for cider forms the chief beverage of the poorer classes, and its importation is forbidden by law. This accounts, too, for the prevalence of the cider-house. Some of the agricultural customs are peculiar, especially the Vraic Harvest and " La Grande Fouerie." Vraic is sea-weed, and the supply is almost unlimited. Probably more than thirty thousand loads are secured every year. The " vraic venant " — that which is washed ashore by the storms — is free to be taken at all times between sunrise and sunset. The " vraic scie " is that which is cut from the rocks, and the harvest is regulated by law or by a hallowed custom. There are two cuttings each year, the first beginning with the first new or full moon after the first day of February, and lasting five weeks ; and the second beginning in the middle of June, and terminating absolutely on the last day of August. For the first month of the summer cutting the privilege is confined to the poor, who, however, may take only what they can carry in their arms beyond the line of the spring tides. The first day of the cutting is a general holiday. Crowds collect about the rocks and cut all they can (using a kind of sickle), throwing it into heaps until the tide turns. It is then, as rapidly as possible, carried beyond the reach of the ad- vancing waters. When the day's work is done, the different groups meet at some house of refreshment and. have a dance and a frolic. Some of the vraic is applied directly to the fields and ploughed in, and some is dried for fuel, the abundant ashes remaining being sold at about fourteen cents per bushel for manure. " La Grande Fouerie," or the great digging, is a custom peculiar to the Channel Islands. It is an application in field culture of the practice of " trenching " common in gardens, — that is, of a complete inversion of ol.D JERSEY. 1ST the soil for a depth of fourteen inches or more, — but it is mainly done with ploughs. Neighbors join forces for this work, and make it a BOrt of " ploughing-bee." The plough used for the deeper part of the work is shown in the following cut It is drawn by l' be branded, but cannot take a prize. Three points — namely, Noa 28, 29, and 31 — shall be deducted from the number required for perfection in heifers, as their udder and milk- 196 A FARMER'S VACATION. veins cannot be fully developed; a heifer will, therefore, he considered perfect at thirty-one points. A similar scale is used in judging bulls. Any one in America, where real experience with Jersey cattle is hardly more than twenty-five years old, ought to be very modest about criticising a standard set up forty years ago by the best men in Jersey, who had a life-long experience and the much older traditions of their neighborhoods to guide them. At the same time, much attention has been given to this subject by the members of the American Jersey Cattle Club, and a tolerably full and careful discussion has occupied the attention of some of our best breeders for several years, and it may be in place here to refer to some of the points under consideration, and to state the reasons why a change seemed desirable. It was urged that the Jersey scale of points has the radical defect of giving the same prominence to unessential points that it does to essen- tial ones. For instance : if a cow has her nostrils high and open, that counts one in the competition with others ; if her udder is full in form, — that is, well in line with the belly, — that most valuable of all charac- teristics also counts but one. By the scale, a prize might be awarded to a cow whose teats are small, and so close as to be even grown together; whose udder is hardly apparent from behind, and is cut off in front like a goat's udder; whose hide is coarse and tight, and whose milk-veins are scarcely apparent : while one absolutely perfect in all these essential respects might be refused a premium because her muzzle is not fine and encircled by a light color; because her ears are large and coarse, her back is not straight from the withers to the top of the hip, her rump slopes, and her tail does not reach to the hocks. This objection is the most serious one, but there are other points which made it seem best to alter the scale. Many of the very best cows have large hairy ears. It is prescribed that the chest should be broad and deep : this indicates large lungs, and large lungs, beyond what is necessary for a good con- stitution, are considered to be one of the defects, for dairy purposes, of animals whose respiratory organs have been much developed by the vig- orous breathing caused by too active exercise. It is also prescribed that OLD JEKSEY. L97 the cow should be closely ribbed, having but little space between tin- List rib and the hip. As an element of symmetrical beauty this may be desirable; but probably an examination of the best milkers in an] large herd would show them to be very loosely put together in this respect, and to have very roomy Hanks. So, too, it is believed by many judges that while the hind-quarters should be long from the hock to the point of the rump, they should not be, as prescribed, well filled up, but should be extremely lean and hollow. Since the Jersey scale of points was formed, the discovery of Gnenon has come into prominence, and the escutcheon or milk-minor is quite generally believed to be an indication of the milking qualities of the cow. While this system is not universally accepted, its adherents are very strongly of the opinion that the escutcheon should have an impor- tant place in the scale of points. The writer's own observation among cattle-men in different countries has convinced him that those who attach the least importance to this indication are those who have given the least study to these details. He has never met a breeder in Jersey, in Holland, in England, or in America, who has learned to apply Guenon's instructions in full detail, who disregards it in his purchases or in his breeding. The following is the Scale of Points which has finally been adopted by the American Jersey Cattle Club : — SCALE OF POINTS FOR COWS. Points. Counts. 1. Head, small, lean, and rather long 2 2. Face, dished, broad between the eves, and narrow between the horna 1 3. Muzzle, dark, and encircled by a light color 1 •1. Eves, full and placid 1 5. Horns, small, crumpled, and amber-color 3 G. Ears, small and thin 1 7. Neck, straight, thin, rather long, with clean throat and not heavy at the shoulders 4 8. Shoulders, sloping and lean; withers, thin; breast, neither deficient nor beefy 198 A FARMER'S VACATION. 9. Back, level to the setting-on of tail, and broad across the loin . . 4 10. Barrel, hooped, broad and deep at the flank 8 11. Hips, wide apart, and fine in the bone; rump, long and broad . . 4 12. Thighs, long, thin, and wide apart, with legs standing square, and not to cross in walking 4 13. Legs, short, small below the knees, with small hoofs 3 14. Tail, fine, reaching the hocks, with good switch 3 15. Hide, thin and mellow, with fine, soft hair 4 16. Color of hide where the hair is white, on udder and inside of ears, yellow 5 17. Fore-udder, full in form, and running well forward 8 18. Hind-udder, full in form, and well up behind 8 19. Udder, free from long hair, and not fleshy 5 20. Teats, rather large, wide apart, and squarely placed 6 21. Milk-veins, prominent 5 22. Escutcheon, high and broad, and full on thighs 8 23. Disposition, quiet and good-natured 3 24. General appearance, rather bony than fleshy 6 Perfection 100 In judging heifers, omit ISTos. 17, 18, and 21. The same scale of points shall be used in judging bulls, omitting Nos. 17, 18, 19, and 21, and making moderate allowance for masculinity. Note. — It is recommended that judges at fairs do not award prizes to ani- mals falling below the following minimum standard, namely : Cows, 70 counts ; heifers, 55 counts ; bulls, 50 counts. We have already seen what are the circumstances and conditions under which the Jersey cow has been brought to her present state of excellence in her native home. An influence has been exerted by the character of the recent foreign demand which has had great effect upon the course pursued by breeders in Jersey, and, consequently, upon the character of the animals they breed. In 1872 there were no less than 1,896 breeding animals exported from the island; in 1871 the number was somewhat larger. Indeed, the sale of stock to supply the foreign demand is a very large item of the farmer's income, and naturally any- OLD JERSEY. L99 thing that is especially required by the market must be supplied by tin- producer. By some process which it is difficult to understand, there has grown up, especially in England, a demand for animals of uniform color, — that is, free from any white marking; high prices have been obtained in the English market for "solid" colors, black switches, and black tongues, lather than foT large udders, lull milk-wins, and the tine, delicate organi- zations that indicate large and rich milking. At the time of the forma- tion of the American Jersey Cattle Club this same fancy was beginning to take root among the breeders here; but it is believed that wiser coun- sels are prevailing, and that the selection of animals is now being based on more useful characteristics. The injurious effect of catering to this taste has become so apparent in Jersey that the Agricultural Society there is combating it as actively as possible, believing it to be a suicidal practice which, if persisted in, can only end in the destruction of the qualities which have given the race its chief value. Tun or three years ago it was almost impossible to find in the whole island a young bull which had not the fashionable solid color and black points. The writer, being shown a magnificent cow with liberal patches of white upon her, and almost staggering under the weight of a large and handsome udder, asked to see her calf. He was told that it was a bull, and that as it had some white marks, and was therefore tu- tor the English demand, it had been killed. The owner of this COW afterward showed, with evident pride, a light-gray bull-calf with a black- switch, tor which he expected to obtain a "long" price, but whose dam was a very inferior milker and the least promising as a dairy-cow of the whole held. It is by no means asserted that the so-called "fashionable" color is in any way incompatible with the best dairy quality; but it is urged very strongly that it will never d<. in breeding cattle J take as a standard any point that is not indicative of excellence for that purpose. Such a point, in breeding dairy-cattle, is certainly not the color of the hair and switch, and any considerable knowledge of .' cattle must convince the most enthusiastic Black-Point man that if the 200 A FARMER'S VACATION. selection is to be confined to animals having his favorite markings, there must be excluded a very large proportion of the finest dairy animals of the breed. Formerly a breeder showed with pride the rich yellow skin underlying the white hair upon his favorite cow, and it seems a pity that this valuable indication of high-colored butter should be lost. The question of beauty is a question of taste, and questions of taste are not to be discussed ; but those are not few who still think that a herd of Jersey cattle is more attractive and is better constituted to make a fine show in a pasture for being variously colored and variously accentuated with white. The argument here presented is, however, based not at all upon the question of taste, but entirely upon the more practical one of the amount of butter to be yielded by the cow. It is firmly believed that the road to the greatest possible excellence in this respect lies through a selection which shall have its range over the whole breed, and shall not be confined to such specimens as are of a particular coloring. In the first volume of the island " Herd Book " there were entries of 124 bulls and 474 cows; 41 of the bulls and 106 of the cows being "highly commended." Of these 147 animals, only 24 are said to have black switches, and only one to have a black tongue; only 45 are of solid color, or nearly so. These indications, as well as the other markings, such as white switches or white patches, are not considered as points of excellence, but obviously only as distinguishing marks. Even at that time no especial importance was attached in Jersey to the question of color, which is, without doubt, a dealer's question. It is no slight matter to teach a novice what constitutes a good cow, nor, after he is taught, is it always easy to supply his requirements. It is easy to tell him (as he has been told) that solid color is the "correct thing " ; that a black switch has an elegant look ; and that a bull with a black tongue is more likely to perpetuate the leading merits of his race than is one with a white one ; and having adopted this as his standard, he becomes capital game for the dealers, for the market at St. Helier's furnishes a good supply of semi-worthless brutes having the desired color, and purchasable at very low prices, — not, let me again insist, that all or a very large proportion of the solid-colored animals are OLD JERSEY. 201 worthless brutes; but that if a Jersey farmer happens to have one of these which is worthless, he knows that he will find a ready demand for it at the Saturday market in St. Helier's. A farmer in Jersey, being asked his opinion on this subject, said : "My experience is that the light-colored cows are apt to be the best, and I always keep two with plenty of white about them for the dairy, ami two without any white to sell calves from." This question of color lias been much harped upon during the past three or four years, and its extended treatment here has been at the risk of tiring the reader; but it seems a question of such vital importance, and, unless rightly decided, to forebode such disaster to our future breed- ing, that its consideration could not properly be avoided. Another matter of no little importance in connection with the influ- ence of the foreign demand on the breeding in the Island of Jersey is that of form, and here the American market has practically no influ- ence; the great sale is to England, and the standard there set up seems to be entirely based upon the desire to take prizes at agricultural showa England, with all its virtues and all its charms, has the gnat defect "t seeing merit too often in mere size. The great, hulking, Shorthorn steer, fattened to a disgusting degree of grossness, is England's bean ideal of the bovine race, and tin- Shorthorn standard is that which seems to till the eve of the whole agricultural community. The almost universal crit- icism of the Jerseys has been that they Mere lean, scrawny, and mis- shapen; and wind are called the successful breeders — that is, those whose J j s carry olf the decorations — endeavor to catch the eye of the judges by moulding their cattle as nearly as possible to the Shorthorn shape. Judging from the descriptions given of the prize-takers during the past few years, they must have been more like miniature Shorthorns than anything we know as butter-yielding : In the "Country Gentleman" of February 12, 1*74. there is a communi- cation from C. L Sharpless, detailing his observations in England in the summer of 1873. Prom this I make the following extracts: — "The ambition among exhibitors in En-land is to secure an animal of solid dark color, one that will lead out stylish; the minor is overlooked, 202 A FARMER'S VACATION. and the qualities of the dam not regarded; but the animal must have no white, any of which color being on a bull-calf consigns him to the butcher." "Among all the stock of Jersey bulls in England, I did not find one with any mirror whatever, and this because that feature is not required by the judges at the shows." An exception is made of the herd of Mr. MacDonald, at Liphook : " It contained 69 milking cows — 34 in one field and 35 in another — all Jerseys, and some of them very choice They appear to have been selected for yield, and are not ' solid color with black points.' " "Besides the fact that the Jersey bulls of England are solid dark color and deficient in mirror, they are all beefy, and, though they lead out well at a show and get prizes, their daughters will count but little at the pail. The same applies to many of the cows, and there seems to be an instinctive yearning after the Shorthorn type. Those in this country that have the same craving can be suited with the Swiss cows, and especially with a herd of thirty or forty near the top of the Eighi Mountain. These are handsome, large animals, stout and solid colors, mouse-colors, duns, drabs, all with black points, and with the exact fea- tures of the Jerseys, — a white fillet encircling the nose." " Besides those above enumerated, the Fowlers, of Watford and Little Bushy, have constantly on hand a lot fresh from the island, and there are scattering smaller herds ; but the conclusion I came to was that, with the exception of a few choice cows in MacDonald's herd, the stock of America would not be improved by importation from England." If anything seems certain, it is that a cow which has a tendency to lay up fat in the carcass cannot have an equal tendency to secrete fat in the udder. The only reason which can justify us in breeding Jersey cattle with care is that we believe it to be for our advantage to per- petuate and to improve upon the special characteristics for which Jerseys are noted. These are emphatically not the beef-making tendency, but the disposition to produce a good flow of highly colored rich milk for the practical work of our dairies and for the supply of our tables ; and (subordinate to this, but also important) the peculiar delicacy, beauty, and docility of the breed. If we seek these qualities, and seek to secure OLD JERSEY. 203 their improvement, we arc working in the right direction and with the right material. If, on the other hand, solid colors and black switches and well-rounded, beefy forms are our aims, we had better avoid the Jerseys altogether, and apply our efforts to the beautiful cattle of Switzerland and Northern [taly. If we undertake to produce a race of solid-colored and black-pointed animals which shall also be enormous butter-yielders, we Bet ourselves a task of the most difficult character; if we aspire also to combine with these characteristics the rounded form of the beef-making animal, the difficulty rises to an impossibility, for the best milking quality is entirely incompatible with the disposition to make beef. We cannot, perhaps, do much to check the tendency developed among breeders in England; but by adhering to the more prudent course in our own importations, we may, perhaps, do much to counteract the hurt- ful influence exerted on the island supply by the English demand. Concerning the question of color enough has already been said ; but opinions vary very much on the question of size, too much prominence being often given to the supposed advantage of mere largeness, — an advantage which becomes real when we are breeding for the butcher, but which may well be questioned in considering dairy results only. This subject is thus treated in the essay printed with the first volume of the " Register " of the American Jersey Cattle Club : — "The question of size is doubtless of great importance, but there is no positive knowledge to guide our decision concerning it; at Least, I am aware of no experiments that do more than to indicate which is the •wisest course to pursue. So far as uncertain indications are to he relied on at all, they seem to point to medium size as the most desirable Further experiments as to the advantage or disadvantage of largi are needed. Certain arguments in favor of the smaller >\/.r an- worthy of consideration. In the case of pure breeding, where call b high value, more calves will he produced with the consumption of a amount of food in the case of small cows than of large ones; that is, a larger number of cows can he kept In a Large herd of small animals it is easier to keep up, throughout the year, a uniform supply of milk and 204 A FAEMEE'S VACATION. its products, than where there are fewer animals of a larger size consum- ing the same amount of food. Oue great source of the demand for Jer- sey cattle is the necessity for a few quarts of milk regularly supplied for family use. A large Ayrshire or Dutch cow, giving four thousand quarts of milk during the year, will produce an oversupply during one season and go entirely dry at another. She will consume as much food as would support two little Jerseys giving each two thousand quarts of milk, one coming in in the spring and one in the autumn. In perhaps a majority of instances accommodation can be furnished for only one cow and food for only a small one. For such cases the smaller Jerseys are especially adapted, such as will give- ten quarts of milk at their flush, and not fall below three quarts within six weeks of the next calving; the cream increasing in proportion, and becoming richer as the quantity of milk decreases, thus maintaining a satisfactory quantity for at least ten months of the year, and yielding enough for necessary use during the eleventh." Dr. Voelcker, in his essay on milk, says : — "As a general rule, small races, or small individuals of the larger races, give the richest milk from the same kind of food. Whether it is more profitable to keep small or large sized breeds is another question, of which we shall presently speak. Where good quality is the main object, Alderneys, perhaps, will give most satisfaction, for they give a richer cream than any other breed in common use in this country. The small Kerry and the miniature Bretons also produce extremely rich milk; but, of course, in much less quantity than the larger breeds." The primary object in breeding the Jersey cow is, as in the case of all other dairy races, to secure a good cow, — that is, a good milk-giver and butter-maker ; and the first point to be regarded is to see that those characteristics which in all cows indicate large milk-giving capacities are permanently preserved, and those which denote a tendency to the pro- duction of fat in the carcass and the production of beef, — that is, the grazing quality, — be avoided. It may be taken as an axiom applicable to all cows, especially during the first three or four years of their lives, that a tendency to beefiness OLD JERSEY. 205 is objectionable where the highest yield of dairy products is desired. In all works on cattle we find general directions for the selection of milk- ing cows, which do not vary materially, and the leading principles of which should always be borne in mind. There are some minor points of an empirical character which may or may not be of value, but which some practical dairymen rarely dian One of these is that the curtain or fold of skin below the Hank should extend well down over the udder, and that the recess between it and the udder should be deep, this skin being also very soft and flexible Another is that the skin on the belly immediately in front of the adder should be loose, soft, and easily drawn into deep folds. These are. after all, only indications of that general looseness of the hide which seems to belong to the more productive milkers of all breeds. It would be out of place to enter here into a detailed discussion the value of the escutcheon, or milk-mirror, or to give directions for ap- plying the system in practice. It is enough to say, generally, that, what- ever its shape, the escutcheon should be large. In some cases it reaches quite op to and beyond the vulva, without much width below ; and in others, without rising scarcely at all above the udder, it spreads out widely, like an apron, over the thighs. Probably in some cases, in which its development, as viewed from the rear, may seem somewhat restricted, it has a sufficient extent on the belly in front of the udder to compen- sate for this defect. The ideal escutcheon towards which we should all breed should wander well out over the thighs, and reach iu a broad band quite to the setting on of the tail, its outline being uniform and well defined. Whatever may be the reader's opinion as to the value of the escutcheon, surely no one would pretend that such an escutcheon as this could be in any way detrimental, nor has the writer ever seen such a one on a cow which did not perform well at the pail It is impossible to give in writing such a description of a perfect Jer- sey cow as will enable an inexperienced person to select with judgment The knowledge required conies only with experience, and experience pro- duces its best result only in the case of one who has a natural aptitude for observing the characteristics of animals; but there is an air of kind- 206 A FARMER'S VACATION. ness, docility, generous feeding, and generous milking in the best Jersey- cows which, when once recognized, can never be overlooked or mistaken, and which the skilful breeder will soon fix in his mind as the type towards which his efforts should be aimed, and the point from which (these having succeeded) his attempt at improvement should take its departure. It is very well understood by all who have given attention to this race of cattle that, while the milk is somewhat less copious than that of other races, it is much richer in cream than that of any other with which we are familiar; that the cream has a higher color, and that its butter has the advantage of coming more quickly and of being more easily worked, and of being extremely firm and wax-like in its texture. In appearance it is everything that can be desired, and it is as amenable as any other to the influence of delicate flavors in the food, — it is, in fact, the ne plus ultra of butter. Scientifically, there is not very much known concerning it. So far as I am aware, this interesting field is thus far mainly unexplored. The much greater ease with which the butter of Jersey cows is manu- factured, — the shorter time required for churning, the less amount of working needed to produce the proper consistency, and the less care re- quired in sending to market in warm weather, — is of itself a strong argument in favor of the breed. The facts set forth above are sufficient to demonstrate the adaptation of the Jersey cow to the needs of the dairy farm. They have been equally successful in all sections of our own country, and hold their own in Maine and California, in Wisconsin and Mississippi. With consider- able facilities for knowing the estimation in which they are held in the different States, the writer would be at a loss to say that they are more popular, among those who are acquainted with their merits, in one part of the country than in another. Hitherto their use has been largely confined to those who have kept them only partly, if at all, for profit ; but during the past few years they have been rapidly finding their way among ordinary butter-making farmers. The price at which pure-bred animals have sold has prevented the for- OLD JERSEY. 207 mation of herds of thoroughbred cows to any great extent among farmers, but it is becoming so well understood thai an infusion of Jersey blood greatly improves the butter-producing quality of herds of Dative cows, that an active demand is arising for bulls, and in this manner herds of Jersey grades are being formed all over the land. Whatever may be the future demand for thoroughbred females, there can be no question that bulls from the better class of cows will soon be quite as sure of a irmly sale, and it is unquestionable that the country is in this manner to re- ceive a very important addition to its agricultural wealth. All things considered, there is no cow equal to a good Jersey "family cow," especially for use on small homesteads. She is small, do- cile, easily handled; is hardy, hearty, and easily kept; the long habit of the race has made her more patient of confinement than our other b and a short tether on a well-grassed paddock is all that is required to maintain her in perfect health. The quantity of milk yielded is, of course, much less than that <>i cowa whose milk is not so rich, yet it is sufficient for the uses of an ordinary family, and its large quantity of rich and well-flavored cream gh little cost, a highly prized luxury. For use under these circumstances the small size of the cow is of de- rided advantage. If only one animal is kept, the economy of food, when compared with that consumed by other breeds, is important; and owing to the persistence with which the production of milk is continued with an ordinarily good Jersey cow, the family will rarely be more thau from six weeks to two months without a sufficient supply milk. If a Larger quantity of milk is required, two little Jerseys, coming in one in the fall, and the other in the spring, will keep up a constant supply the whole year round, and will consume not materially more than would one hulking native, producing a uselessly large quantity of thin milk during one season, and going entirely dry foT month- at another. It would 1h> ungracious not to regard what may be called the purely "fancy" use of this breed, sime it is to this that We owe - influence in securing its early introduction; and however desirable the Jersey may become for the farm or for the household, she is not likely 208 A FARMER'S VACATION. to lose her pre-eminence as a decoration for lawn-pastures. Her deer-like beauty and aristocratic, thoroughbred air will insure the continuance of her position as the lawn cow par excellence. We were at one time in danger of some disturbance of the even course of our judicious breeding by the threatened prominence of the demand for solid-colored animals; but this is happily passing away, and it is fast becoming understood that the typical beauty of this race includes as a prominent feature its constant tendency to vary in its marking. A herd of differently colored Jersey cows, of good breeding and in good condition, may well be thought to furnish the perfection of bovine beauty with which to set off the attractions of ornamental grounds; and, indeed, the marvellous charm of the scenery of the Island of Jersey, where the vege- tation of every clime grows in luxuriance, and where the ivy clothes every neglected stump and stone and every mound of earth with its abundant foliage, is emphasized and greatly increased by the beauty and varied coloring of the animals tethered in every field and orchard. The dairies of Jersey are rather curious than instructive. They are usually small, and their product is generally much inferior to that of American dairies where the same cows are kept. One Jersey practice might, however, with advantage be adopted here, — that is, the manner of milking. They milk, not into a pail, but into a narrow-necked, jug- shaped can, the mouth of which is closed with muslin, tied on so loosely that it sags down some inches into the opening. STONE ANCHOli AND M A 1! II. l.l.O TOWKl; In the bottom of this is laid a clean sea- shell, to receive the stream of milk and prevent its wearing the cloth. The milk flows over the edge of the shell, and, as it passes through the cloth, is per- fectly strained of any impurity that OLD JERSEY. 209 may fall from the cow's adder. When the milking is done in the stable, this cloth has the additional effect of excluding foul odors. Small though the Island of Jersey is, our two weeks were all too Bhort for more than a glance at the island, with its peculiar manners and cus- toms; but "fresh fields and pastures new" invited us to Guernsey, and with real regret we gave u\> our little house, with its charming, view, transferred our daily drives to our lasting memory, set sail on a summer sea, and saw this charmed land lade into a dreamy blue cloud behind us oO CHAPTER VI. GUERNSEY. AS Jersey grew dim and blue behind us, the central group of the Channel Islands came slowly out of the smoky distance, their val- leys deepening into shadow, and their cliffs growing into sunshine ; houses gradually appearing, and woods and fields and hillside roads; and along the shore, the glinting of the far-off spray as it broke over the black bowlders that stretched far to right and left, Guernsey lifted its front more and more out of the sea, and as we steamed past its majestic cliffs, it seemed an enchanted Lilliput, basking in the sunshine high up on the everlasting rocks. Away to our right lay the hazy silhouette of Sark, "wrapped in the solitude of its own originality." t.Peters #£JJFetliou Casuer- **£*- JBreclouI.4S3 j / / vV/ J Little %> $ Sark " "'*r O L'Elal dc Se MAI' OF GUERNSEY AND SARK. At the end of two hours' sail over a glassy sea, we rounded the break- water at Castle Cornet and ran into the superb harbor of St. Peter Port, a harbor shut in from the sea by moles of massive granite. The tide was well out, and we disembarked at the lower story of the Landing GUERNSEY. 211 Stage, which was still wet with the receding waters, and wenl up the slimy stairway to the top of the pier. At the hotel we found the Long- forgotten "Boots" of the English inn, and our lunch was of bread and cheese and beer. We seemed to have finally left behind us the close- adhering traditions of France. The town of St. Peter Port (or Peterport) is built on a steep acclivity, up which its streets wind at an angle that, before the recently built fine modern road was opened, must have been the despair of the overloaded horses fated to drag supplies to the upper part of the town. So far as we were able to judge from a tew days' observation, St. Peter Port is without especial interest for the tourist, — only decent and comfortable, and with good markets and fair shops, — a useful rather than au orna- mental town. Before the building of the fine esplanade that now skirts tlic harbor and the shore, there were many picturesque old tumble-down h uses, whose loss can only sadden the traveller, as it must delight the sanitarian. The blessings of fresh air, sunshine, and healtht'ulness must compensate for the rickety charm of old "Cow Lane," which has gone forever. The Town Church, though badly placed in the lower part of the town, is well worth a visit. It is very old, but has been restored without being spoiled, and is much the finest ecclesiastical building in the Channel [elands. The area of Guernsey is about fifteen thousand acres, two thirds of which are under cultivation The population is about thirty thousand, more than one half of whom live in St. Peter Port. The tourist BOOH learns that he is far from having lost the French characteristics so prominent in Jersey, tor here it is only < our own more staid holiday manners. Amid BO much enchanting natural scenery, it is difficult to say that one feature is more attractive than the others; but when we take into accounl its difference from what we had seen elsewhere, a Guernsey "Water-Lane" certainly commands our warmest enthusiasm. The lanes of Jersey have 1 few counterparts in Guernsey, and the country mads are much the same as one finds in many other parts of Europe, — depending for their interest on fine trees, fine country-seats, wide views, and well- kept farms; but the water-lanes are, in their very charming way, pecul- iar to Guernsey. There are a number of them, all of the same general character. That which we first saw starts from the Sausmarez road, and winds around into a deep valley that debouches at the shore of Moulin Hurt Bay, where we passed through a simple farm-gate to a terrace overlooking a most placid green-hued cove, shut in among high storm- beaten rorks, on whose sides the smoky sunlight lay warm, and whose crests were enriched with the soft tints of varied lichen. Beyond, the gleaming blue sea stretched far away into the warm southern haze, and was blended with the dreamy sky. The lane itself is the bed of a little rill, cut deep in the earth and rock, and laid with a rough stone foot-path, at the side of which the water trickles and babbles in a small clear stream. The banks are higher than one's head, and are rich with a wealth of tangled terns, conspicu- ous among which the long lance-shaped leaf of the hart's-tongue hangs in massive clusters of shining emerald green. The trunks of ti some falling to decay, some young and fresh, and all clad with closely clinging ivy — stand out irregularly from the sides of the gorge, and shroud the passage in perpetual made. The evidence of man's interference is very Blight ; Nature has had almost uninterrupted sway, and BABiVwwaui ma. 216 A FARMER'S VACATION. has given her best efforts of genial air and fertile, humid soil to the perfect embellishment of this seaside foot-path, within sound of the waves, but tran- quil in its verdant recesses as though in the heart of a con- tinent. Another water-lane at the Couture, near the town, is more of a thoroughfare, and is more open to the sunlight, but it is a charming walk, none the less. On the east coast, a mile south of the town, is Fermain Bay, backed and enclosed by fine cliffs, and protected (in the olden time) by a Martello tower, of which there are many about the shores of the island. The access to this is by a road called Fermain Lane, which leads down a charming half-cultivated valley, and past small cottages and picturesque houses. H-.KMAI.N HAY AM) MALI hl.i.o TOWER, lit I.KVSLY. GUERNSEY. '17 The drives in the interior are nut uninteresting, but they are in no way comparable (for rural charm) with those of Jersey. The surface of much of the island is but slightly undulating, and the oorthern and west- ern parts are but little elevated above the sea. The farm-houses and cot- tages, ot'i. mi covered with thalrh, are picturesque, and have the charm that the luxuriant and unusual vegetation of the Channel Inlands never fails to lend. Many of these houses have the characteristic round-arched stone door- way still as firm and sound as when they were built, centuries ago. Tins round arch, so common here, is very rare in Jersey. Of the same period and style is the chapel of St. Apolline, the oldesl ecclesiastical building in Guernsey. It is of rude stone-work laid in mortar made with limpet shells, and is only twenty-sewn feet long by thirteen feet broad. ac'.k DOOm WAT, OUEEKSE1 ii \n ! o» -r u- Near the shore north Of the harbor of St. Sampson's is Yah 218 A FARMER'S VACATION. GATE-WAY TO VALE CASTLE, GUERNSEY. VALE CHURCH GUERNSEY. INTERIOR OF A GUERNSEY CROMLECH. whose restored ruins are now used as a barrack. In the same parish, on the road to L'Ancresse Common, stands the Vale Church, whose porch is curious, and quite dif- ferent from anything else in the islands. About a mile north of this church is the most important Druid altar or cromlech of Guernsey, the interior of which, a spacious cham- ber, is here illustrated; another, similar to this, called the Pierre Dehus, lies near the extreme northeastern point of the island. There are other Druidical (or Celtic) remains of importance; one very curious one is a tall monolith near Rocquaine Bay. We were so fortunate as to be admitted to the private museum of the late Mr. F. Lukis, at St. Peter Port, where there are many archaeological and other curiosities, and among them objects taken from the cromlechs of the Channel Islands. The group of ancient pottery shown herewith was taken from cromlechs in Guernsey, the four central pieces from that on L'Ancresse Common and from the Pierre Dehus. This pottery was unburnt, and is like no samples of Eoman workmanship. There were CTKKNSKY. 219 A DHIIDli'M. HBRHIB, GI'EBNSEY. also found many ancient stone weapons, of which there are excellent specimens in the Lulris Collection. In the excavations which led to the discovery of these remains, they were found in different layers, those of the older and ruder tonus lying the lowest. With the lower layer, upon the stone floor, and placed with evident care, were bones of men, women, \wiv\t roTTKi-.v rocns IN TIP- i.uivH Collection.) and children; many of these are still in excellent condition, and the skulls of the adults are set with teeth to make the suffering mortals of to-day Long for the diet from which such painless molars were grown, The visitor to Guernsey should not fail to ask permission to gee this museum, which is in the basemenl of a private house. It contains much 220 A FARMER'S VACATION. of inestimable value, not only from the islands themselves, but from other curious corners of the world ; and by no means the least interesting thing ANCIENT IMPLEMENTS FOUND IN THE (Lukis Collection.) about it is its evidence of what may be accomplished by a private gen- tleman, of no great fortune, applying himself to the pleasant work of archaeological research and collection. In St. Peter Port there is another house, much more widely known, and with a very different interest. Its broad, high, tame-looking front stands near a narrow street, and impresses one with the homesick air of a Puritan boarding-school. Within, it is a perfect bric-a-brac shop of old carved furniture, old tapestry, old India shawls, old Turkey rugs, curious old pottery, old Dutch tiles, objects of art and objects of historic or literary interest; among others, the pens with which Hugo wrote "Les Miserables " ; Dumas, " Monte Christo " ; Lamartine, " Les Confidences " ; and George Sand, " Consuelo." In the drawing-room, the candelabra are held by the identical gilded figures which ornamented the Bucentoro, the barge in which the old Doges of Venice went out to wed the Adriatic. The dining-room is decorated with blue Delft ware and Dutch tiles, the latter forming a curious chimney-piece. The house is crammed from top to bottom with curiosities of all sorts, which must make it more satisfactory to show to visitors than to live in. In the east roof is built a very eyry of a writing-room, — shut out from the world, and commanding miles of rugged rock and storied sea, — where " Les Travailleurs de la Mer " was written, in full view of its foamy toils, — for this is Hauteville House, the cherished home of Victor Hugo, who, unfortunately, was absent at the time of our visit. GUERNSEY. 221 The manners and customs <>f the people of Guernsey, like those of Jersey, have been (so far as they are obvious to the casual visitor much modified by frequent contact with English and French visitors dur- ing the past quarter of a cen- tury. "Still," Bays Ansted, "no one can go into the cottages and mix much with the people with- out observing some characteristic points. Each cottage has iu the kitchen, or principal sitting-room, a wooden frame spread with dried fern, on which the inhabitants 222 A FARMER'S VACATION. repose in the evening. This custom is, no doubt, French, and very old. It is connected with all the habits and traditions of the people, and comes into use on such occasions as the vraic harvest, and on all fes- tivals. The older people, more especially, resort to it, and, though rough, it is by no means an unsightly piece of furniture. It corre- sponds with the chimney-corner in an old English farm-house, where wood is still burned, and where pit coal is an unheard-of novelty." Our stay in Guernsey was so short that I could gather only a general impression of its agriculture ; barely sufficient for an intelligent under- standing of Mr. Le Cornu's excellent account of it in his prize essay on the agriculture of the Channel Islands, published in the "Journal of the Eoyal Agricultural Society of England," in 1860 (Vol. XX. Part I.), from which much of the following is condensed. He thinks that, although in many parts the soil is very deep and rich, it is less so than that of Jersey. The tenure of property is much the same as that of the larger island, but the subdivision is greater. The privileges of eldership are less. The eldest son can claim less than one sixth of an acre with the house. It is true that he has the right to buy, on the appraisal of the parish authorities, all the remaining land to which he can have access without crossing a public road, but the appraisal is so high that he gen- erally waives his claim. The farms are even smaller than in Jersey, and the average size is at least one fourth less. None exceed forty acres. On a farm of seventeen acres, which is a good-sized holding for Guernsey, the usual distribution of crops would be : — Acres. Acres. Hay and Grass 9h Potatoes \ Turnips f Mangolds f Parsnips 1 Wheat 2| Carrots h Oats and Barley 1 Gardens, etc I acre. On such a farm the stock may consist of four cows, six heifers, two horses, one ox, and half a dozen pigs. Oxen are much used. The great trench plough is used in preparing land for parsnips, as in GUERNSEY. 223 Jersey, and vraic (sea-weed) is largely used as manure. Much of this is taken on the shores of the island itself, and much ifl brought from Berm, whose rocks are peculiarly fertile in this direction. The fields are not more than one acre and a half in avi "They are divided by large embankments of earth, on the top of which furze is seen growing luxuriantly; this furze is used by the country people for heating the oven for baking. At the field entrance you will rarely see gates except on property belonging to the higher class. Very many field entrances are to be seen with only a bar placed across to I nc vent cattle from entering. The dwelling-houses are, in general, pat- terns of cleanliness. The exterior, in particular, presents a striking ex- ample of taste; flowers and creepers invariably adorn the walls, the wood-work appears as if it had been lately painted, and the ensemble is strikingly neat and pretty." The arrangement of fann-buildings is very much the same as in Jer- sey, the cider-press being less frequent, as there are fewer orchards. In the dairy very important changes are noted. The same narrow- mouthed milking-can is used, but the cloth and shell which in Jersey are universal, are here unknown, and the method seemed to strike some farmers to whom I mentioned it as a curious novelty. There is, too, an absence of tidiness (according to our ideas) in the processes of the milk- room, which was a curious novelty to us. The milk is poured into tall earthen-ware jars, — like the oil-jars of Ali Baba, — set in a cool place, and there it stands, untouched, until churning-day. In the principal dairy that we visited, the cream on the older milkings was much wrink- led and cracked, and the older jars were covered with blue mould. The dairymaid, who seemed quite proud of her butter, — and well she might be, — made light of this, and said it was nothing unusual, though she did not like to see it quite so far gone. The churning is done once or twice a week, in an enormous vessel of curious cooperage, — a broad-based monster of iron-bbund staves which retains its si/e for a Considerable height, and then narrows rapidly to the dimensions of an ordinary churn. Speaking from recollection, I should say that some ehurns we saw would hold sixty gallons. The dasher is quite the same as the uld-fashioned sort in use with us, and not larger. 224 A FARMER'S VACATION. The entire contents of the jars are poured into the churn, — loppered milk, cream, wrinkles, mould, and all, — there to be beaten with the dasher for hours and hours. The churning takes never less than two and a half hours, and generally nearly twice as long, — sometimes nearly the whole day. I could account for the undeniably good quality of the butter resulting from this process, only on the supposition that such long working in the buttermilk removes the taint one would expect to have attacked the cream during its long standing on sour milk, and under more or less mould. Guernsey farmers maintain that only by this pro- cess can they get all the butter from the milk; one would think that a slight loss in this respect would be preferable to the expenditure of so much labor. Whether the milk of Guernsey cows, fed on the grasses of their native pastures, would make better butter if only the cream were churned, we could not learn, being told that the process was nowhere employed. Churning the whole milk is universal in Guernsey, yet the custom has never crossed the narrow strip of sea and found a place in Jersey. Verily, the people of these islands are tenacious of their old traditions, and one may here say, of their old cows. The Guernsey cow is as different from the Jersey as is the Devon from the Ayrshire, or the Shorthorn from the Dutch, and (without the operation of legal prevention, which keeps "foreign" cattle from being- brought to either island) the races are kept distinct. No one would use a Jersey bull in Guernsey, or a Guernsey bull in Jersey ; the cows which are now and then transplanted are regarded as intruders of an inferior order, and their progeny is excluded from competition at the cattle-shows. There can, however, be little doubt that less care was formerly used in this respect, for there are to be detected, among the herds of both islands, traces of an old blending of bloods, which has apparently done no harm in either case. The races are now quite distinct, and their improvement, in both islands (which is constant and considerable), is strictly within the lines of pure breeding. Whether the distinction arises from a differ- ent origin, or from ages of breeding to a different standard, cannot be determined. GUERNSEY. 225 The Guernsey cows are considerably larger than the Jerseys, of coarser .structure, and greatly inferior in beauty of appearance; they have, how- ever, many qualities which must commend them to the favor of butter- makers. They are rich and large milkers, and the color of their skin and of the butter they produce is decidedly deeper and richer than that of the sister race. The prevailing color is a rich fawn with much white, — usually laid on in broad patches. The muzzle is buff, and the eyelids are almost yellow. The horns are usually amber-colored, and under the white hair, wherever it appears, the skin is of a bright orange, that is only exceeded by the golden yellow of the inside of the ear. The cows, when they dry oil', fatten very easily, and, being larger, make heavier beef than those of the sister island. The oxen, when taken from their work, feed remarkably well; the four prize oxen of 1872 turned out an average of 1,144 pounds of butcher's meat, — the averagi being between six and seven years. This quality is surely an important one, yet it may easily be overestimated. One of the last things a farmer should consider in deciding on a cow for butter-making, where his profit depends on her product while living, should be the amount of meat he can make from her when dead. A very Blight difference in the average daily produce during eight or ten years would make up for a very wide variation in value for the shambles. Were the Guernsey cattle comparable in appearance with those of Jer- Bey, it is not unlikely that they would have superseded them in popular favor. While the Guernseys are perhaps a shade more promising for the butter-dairy, the Jerseys are close upon their heels, and are so much more taking to the eye that any Blight difference in butter and beef would be more than compensated by the more salable character of their calves, even in the eyes of one's farmer neighbors Which of the two will produce the Larger amount of butter from a given amount of food, is an unsettled question The champions of each island claim superiority for their own race, and both have statistics to support their opiniona Mr. Le Comu says: "It is an open question whether the cows of i j or of Guernsey are the best The Guernsey cattle are the I of the Channel Islands breed; but for symmetry, the palm is awarded 226 A FARMER'S VACATION. to those of Jersey. The former does not vary so much in color as the latter, but it is usually red and white It is the custom here also to tether cattle when out The produce may also be said to aver- age the same, for, although the greatest rivalry on this point exists be- tween the farmers of both islands, on investigation it will be found that the accounts of produce correspond. The fattening of oxen is carried on here to a certain extent, and it may be computed that one sixth of the supply (of meat) is fed on the island. One of the great properties of the breed is that it will fatten rapidly, and produce meat of excellent quality." Mr. F. Carey, of Woodlands, gives an account of the management of his own dairy which is so remarkable, and at the same time so com- plete a description of the intensive character of Channel Island farming, that it seems worth while to copy it entire. " Since 1845 I have con- stantly had five cows at Woodlands, renewing them when requisite, — seldom, and only on account of age. The land appropriated to their keep is about eight English acres of grass, one fourth acre of clover, and one half acre of vetches. From the grass land, however, I make from twenty to twenty-five tons of hay, extra, according to season ; they having the after- grass, and a bite from about two acres of the above in February and March, dressed early to admit of their doing so ere being mowed, and the clover and vetches. For their winter food, they have the produce of about one acre of yellow mangold, long and .globe, and of half an acre of long white or purple turnips. My cows have no swedes, having dis- continued the cultivation, which has failed these last three or four years, scarcely giving one third the weight of mangold, which is besides more nutritious. They are fed as follows, and milked three times a day : — 6 a. m., a little hay, previous to milking. 7 " a basket containing about 28 lbs. (English) mangold and turnips in equal proportions, or only the former when out of the latter. 8 " hay. 10 " mangold and turnips as before. 11 " hay, after milking. 1 P. m., hay, after being watered. 3 " mangold and turnips as before. GUERNSEY. 227 I i". m., hay. 6 " mangold, etc., after milking. 8 " hay, rather more than above, being for the night. "The several feeds of hay may comprise about twenty-three pounds English, and mangold, etc., one hundred and twelve pounds; this ia at- tended to (milking excepted) by a lad of fourteen, and among his other occupations. Weather permitting, and grass offering, however scanty, they are led out at midday and tethered for three or four hours, which re- freshes them greatly; in which case a feed of hay and another of man- gold less is given to them. These roots go through a turnip-cutter, sliced an inch thick, the diameter according to the size of the root. "In April or May, they begin with the clover, tethered of com usual, and changed six times a day, watered twice, and sleep out; their tether (12 feet long) is moved from one to two feet, according to crop, of which they have three or four bites according to and during the season. The vetches are eaten in June, and are about the month's con- sumption, if very line. In case of threatening weather, wind particularly, they are removed for the night against the hedge for shelter. "My rows are usually dry about one month before calving; otherwise, their food is reduced to make them so, — they are led to bull about three months after calving. On dropping, their calf if a heifer, which is always taken to the nursery, has the mother's milk for eight days only, then skimmed and given for a week longer; therefore milk is quickly brought into use as regards the dairy. If a bull calf, it is either fat- tened, also apart, with the mother's milk from four to five weeks, or sold immediately after birth, according to circumstances "The cows immediately after calving are offered the first milk, which some refuse, others drink ; in either case a small sheaf of barley is given them, which they always eat with avidity, — it accelerates the after-birth. They are sparingly fed for eight or ten days, during which, from the third day, a few Belgian carrots sliced and steeped in hot water, but allowed to cool ;t little, are given to them, increasing the quantity daily, for a week or ten days longer, — hay, of course, being their principal diet, — and then their usual food as already stated, giving 228 A FAKMEK'S VACATION. a preference to the white or purple turnip, which is not as cold as man- gold. For their drink, they have two or three times a day, for the three or four first days, about two quarts of bran thrown into a bucket of tepid water, which is replenished by the dairy-maid holding in her hand a canful of similar water, of which the cow drinks at her pleas- ure. The same quantity of oatmeal is then given them for eight or ten days longer, and beyond, according to weather: this is in reference to winter; for in spring and autumn we had them out to grass two or three days after calving, tethering them in a sheltered and shaded spot for a similar period, giving them the already stated drink, but for seven or eight days only. I however allow those calving in the former season to go out a fortnight after, provided the weather is very fine and com- paratively warm, the first two or three days, for about half an hour only, lengthening the time progressively, but always depending on the weather. My cows calve in January, April, August, October, and December, accordingly avoiding the hot months, during which the animal is subject to milk-fever, fatal in this island. In very warm weather they are tethered in the shade from eleven to three o'clock, when a feed of clover or vetch is given to them. "The greatest cleanliness is observed in every department of the dairy, so essential in the manufacture of so delicate an article as butter." Mr. F. F. Dally, of Guernsey, author of an Essay on the Agriculture of these islands, which was only second to Mr. Le Cornu's, gives much more detailed information about the farming and general characteristics of Guernsey than is to be found in the prize Essay. Dally is especially clear in matters relating to the cattle and the dairy of this island, — which are in the eye of the farmer its most interesting characteristics. There is no other feature of the agriculture of Guernsey to claim espe- cial attention in a short notice, but its horticulture is as suggestive of genial climate as that of Jersey. The same tropical vegetation, the same luxuriance of growth and bloom, greet us at every turn. Figs and oranges ripen in the open air. The aloe is a common lawn plant ; hedges are made of fuchsia and camellia; the geranium is a hardy shrub, and the fuchsia overhangs the second-story windows of the low farm-cottages, fringing their mossy thatch with a drapery of crimson pendants. GUERNSEY, 229 The scented magnolia forms a sturdy tree; the araucaria thrives, the arbutus attains a height often of thirty feet and its berries ripen; the myrtle grows to a good size and flowers freely. The rhododendron flow- ers abundantly from December until June. The lemon verbena assumes the proportions of a tree, with long, drooping branches. The beautiful Guernsey lily flowers regularly in the Channel Islands, while in England it can rarely he made to bloom the second time. The more beautiful belladonna -rows to really marvellous perfection, and is found everywhere. Even the smallest cottages have their front gardens stocked with flowers, and one may buy in the market for a few pence bouquets which, if better arranged, would command a high price at ( 'event Garden. The country people of Guernsey are industrious and thrifty. Even the laboring class make it a point to accumulate enough money to build a home on the shred of the patrimonial estate that has fallen to their lot. '•There aiv, perhaps, no people who rise earlier, or retire to rest later, than the native farmers of the Channel Islands. It is not uncommon to hear of their being at work in the morning before four o'clock, and yet seldom is it that they take their rest before ten at night." The question whether it must not be an exceptionally unexhausting climate where so little sleep is needed, and where men maintain almost youthful \ igor to a very great age. W'c went, one afternoon, down into a beautiful narrow valley, — a cleft of verdure opening out toward the sea, — to look at the pri/v of the year. The owner, who lacked only three months of eighty, showed the lailies and our friends an easier way around, and Led us down a difficult, steep path that ended with a jump of BOme feet. The COW which was probably the best cow, all in all, that we ever >.iw, and which had the head and the form of a Jersey, with the rich coloring of her own race) was young and sportive The old gentleman had his hat knocked off in the Struggle, and was nearly thrown, but he finally caught her nostrils and held her fast I proposed that we should return by the Longer way, but he scouted the idea, saying he was the yon man in the party if he had lived the longest, and he went back like a 230 A FARMER'S VACATION. boy, by the way we had come. I should be glad to compromise on such physical and mental vigor for my sixtieth year. At his snug stone house he took great delight in showing us a gold medal awarded him at the Paris Exposition for the best Guernsey cow exhibited there. Pyi-ola rotundiflora. Ophrys apifera. Convolvulus sepium Carex. Juncus. Schoenus. Galium palustre. Anagallis tenella. Poa. Arum maculatum. some til i:i:nm.y I'I.antn CHAPTER VII. SARK. WITH all its advantages, the best thing about Guernsey, so far as the tourist is concerned, is its nearness to Sark. The morning after our arrival "Boots" appeared "Please, sir, would you like to go to Sark? It is a tine day, and Purely is below, sir." Of course we would, and we were soon booked for the little sail-boat which makes irregular excursions, rather than to take the chances of the weather for the small steamer of the next day. He who goes to Sark, if he is do positive engagements behind him. The trip has all the excite- ment of uncertainty as to its duration. "When Dana, the artist, went over to pass the day, he was gone for a whole week. Sky, tide, and ru.k are all treacherous, and even old fishermen who have passed their lives in the perilous navigation of these waters make n<» calculation of the length ui' their trip. We were a party of seven, in a stout open boat, with little rags of sails Btretched from the movable masts; Purdy at the helm, and his two boys half asleep on the spray deck near the bows It was a beautiful day, with only a rippling breeze to move us slowly out of the harbor, under the -ray walls of Castle Cornet, across the swelling open sea, and into the narrow between the outlying rocks of Jethon and Herm, — wild, storm-beaten rocks, hung with yel- lowish^ -weed, the ceaseless spray breaking at their feet. Drowsy cormorants and snow-white gulls stood motionless upon them, basking in the warm ,suu, or swept slowly about in the very idleness of motion. On Jethou, near its only house, long unused, a few -..ats stopped nib- bling the grass to watch us. They were l'urdv's flock, and they alone represent the agriculture of Jethou. Across the narrow channel the tidy- 232 A FARMER'S VACATION. looking island of Herm lay, sloping its green fields to the sea, and stretching away its dismal coast, among the wild rocks, toward the west and north. It took some time for us to run through this rocky passage, where conflicting currents and unexpected eddies elevate navigation to the rank of a fine art. As Purdy expressed it, in some places the tides are reg- ular, and in others "it flows till half ebb . and ebbs till half flood. It takes a lifetime to un- derstand 'em, and then you don't." The day being fine and the sea quiet, we were bound for L'Epercherie Harbor, at the north end of Sark, — Sark, of which we had heard so much, which had seemed, as seen through the haze from Guernsey, such a dream of a high-lying blue fairy-land, and which now stood in its stern majesty high and wild above the glassy water. The little wind there had been had died quite away, and the boys had to be awakened to take a pull at the sweeps, rowing incessantly for nearly two hours before we reached the harbor. And what a harbor ! A little open bay flanked by rugged cliffs and set about with rocks, many of them half submerged and foam- ing with an angry swash, as the swell of the sea broke over their weed- grown crests. Below, through the clear water, the deep-lying bowlders told the tale of the devastation that had been wrought on the granite cliffs by the fearful north-wind seas. Small though our boat was, there was not even a friendly rock against which she could lie, and we had to be transferred to a very tub of a heavy surf-boat, which was rowed near the shore, and then hauled up, by men wading leg-deep, on the beach of rolling paving-stone. BOCKS ON THE WEST COAST OF SAI 8AKK. 233 Once landed, we found only a barely practicable foot-path leading, zig- zag, up the steep cliff Alter we had toiled to the top, we could have tossed a stone into the little boat which lay on the beach nearly three hundred feet below us. A small scion of the great huu.se of the De Carterete served as guide, and showed us our way over barren pastures and past neglected fields into the embowered road that leads past the arched entrance to the Seigneurie, through which we had our first glimpse of the beautiful grounds of the Lord of the Manor, whose picturesque buildings — parts very old, and all well kept and in good taste — are well suited to their charming setting. This place is worthy of careful study as a capital example of gardening in the natural style, where most judi- cious use has been made of the ample materials this genial climate allows to be employed F.XTRAWCf. TO SF.IGXEIR1E AN OLD FOl-XT.UN IX A SARK VALLEY. 234 A FAKMEE'S VACATION. From the Seigneurie we walked on past the very plain and unattrac- tive church and turned into the fields, taking a foot-path that led down a wooded valley, and coining soon upon an old stone fountain at which a young girl was filling her pail. This fountain was shaded by high trees and thick-growing shrubs, and from it ran a trickling stream that follows the course of DTxcart Val- ley to the edge of the eastern cliff's. Crossing a little foot-bridge, we as- cended the southern slope and came out in the grounds of the DTxcart Hotel, situated quite in the interior of the island, sheltered by hills and trees from every wind, and surrounded by the most home-like yards and offices. While we fortified ourselves with a hasty luncheon, our little guide went to engage a carriage for us, and we wandered slowly toward the high-road to meet it. Our path lay through a lane that is hardly excelled by any in Jersey, and which has the attraction of being almost the only one of its kind in Sark. About a quarter of a mile from the hotel this lane joins the main road running north and south through the island, crossing the "Coupee" which connects its two unequal parts. We drove to the Coupee, but old Mr. Guille, who owned this only "car- riage to let" in Sark (an open two-seated phaeton), declined to drive across, saying that he had driven over, but he never did so except in case of absolute necessity. We were very far from urging this as a case of necessity, and when we were fairly upon the Couple we were glad enough to be safely on our own feet, for the road, which had only re- cently been elevated from the condition of a foot-path, was barely wide enough for a single narrow vehicle, and at both sides the rock descended almost vertically to the little bays nearly three hundred feet below. The distance across is about two hundred yards, and the passage is guarded by no parapet of any sort, — not even a hand-rail, — save at two places where a harder rock has better resisted the action of the BARK. 235 miiis, and where the road lias been cul through. With all its improve- ment, the Coupee is but a rugged path along the crest of a narrow ver- tical ledge, from whose giddy height it requires a steady nerve to look down over the steep granite walls that support it, ami one naturally seeks a safer point from which to examine the ponderous cliffs that sur- round the adjoining hays. High though it is, it is muck lower than the mainland of Great Sark ami Little Sark, which have no other means of com- munication, and which, as seen from it, — OT from the sea at any point, — look like majestic rocks topped with treeless fields. The habitations of Sark are built mainly in sheltered nooks and valleys, where they are protected from the frequent tierce winds. In these hollows, too, vegetation is luxuriant almosl t" rankness, and the impression gained by even a hurried examination like ours is of a great wealth of vegetable lite and of the charm that this alone can lend: and this amid surroundings of such grandeur as makes Sark one of the wonders of the natural world. Mr. Guille must he a model "cocher" to those who understand — if any one hut horn to it can understand — the barbarous language of this island. Though a hyal Briton, he preferred t<> speak French, hut he had some original conceptions of that tongue. The information we gained from him was extremely meagre; in statistics and sociology it was confined to the tacts that the population of the island is Less than six hundred souls, and that of these Over ten per cent are continued 236 A FARMER'S VACATION. drunkards. Fortunately, the student of the Channel Islands has good help in the few books that have been written about them, and we found it chiefly important to be guided to the different points we indicated; and, after all, it was a real advantage to escape the routine gabble of the professional cicerone. From the Coupee we went to the Creux du Derrible on the eastern shore. This is a deep vertical shaft, about fifty feet in diameter, descend- ing from the high table-land — or from the side of a high hill, for one side of the opening is much lower than the other — to a yawning cavern into which the sea rises at every tide by two large entrances, wave fol- lowing wave, with a roar that conies up in deafening reverberations through the fearful Creux. It is possible at low tide for a good cliff- man to climb clown the face of the steep shore, by the aid of iron rings fastened to the rock, and to enter the cavern from below. Here the blue sky is seen above as from the bottom of a well, while through one of the entrances are seen the bright, clean-cut rocks of the Point du Derrible, and through the other the distant coast of Jersey. Returning to our vehicle we drove around by the road to the seaport of Sark, — Creux Harbor. This is the only landing-place on the island that is at all worthy of the name. The few valleys terminate in steep cliffs, up which it is impossible to climb. L'Epercherie is accessible only in calm weather, and is always difficult. Le Havre Gosselin, and I the Port-es-Sees, are practicable mly for the chamois-like fisher- THE SKAmr.T OF SAUK. SAKK. 237 TIIK GOULIOT RUCK FKOM THE HAVRE C.OSSKUN, SARK. men of Sark. Creux Harbor is a curiosity in itself, — a little cove shut in by a breakwater that leaves passage-way only for small boats, and within which these are secure only when hauled high above the reach > RROK, LOOKING oiTWfRi 238 A FARMER'S VACATION. of the tides and made fast with ropes and chains. On the land side there is only a rough beach of cobble-stones and bold rocks of enor- mous height, through one of which an artificial tunnel leads to the only road by which vehicles may reach the shore. Pas- sengers and goods arriving must be trans- ferred to small boats and landed inside the breakwater, and then be hauled up the steep picturesque valley, — a valley charming with superb seaward views, and well sheltered and shaded stone houses. 'IT.WEI, K.NTKA.NCi; TO Ull.l.X UAl'.l'.iiK We now returned to the hotel to see what Sark, in its isolation, could do for us in the way of dinner, hoping at least to appease the hunger our clambering had aroused. Why will not some benefactor of his country send a ship-load of Ameri- can hotel-keepers to difficult Sark to learn from Mr. Gavey the important art of public hospitality ? Our repast was not sumptuous, but it was more than sufficient, and with ample variety. The cooking and the service, while they were simple, and such as might be easily compassed in any of our villages, were tasteful, cleanly, and thoroughly excellent. A dozen guests would crowd the house ; but our own caravansaries, made to ac- commodate hundreds, are barbaric feeding-shops compared with this home-like little inn, which, once known, remains in the traveller's mind as a perpetual invitation to return to the green valley in which it nestles. We left it with real regret, and if we are fortunate we shall some day return to it with delight. There is another hotel which is well spoken of, and comfortable lodgings are to be had in private houses. Sark offers many advantages to those who wish to spend some time in quiet retirement. The climate is perfect, better, if possible, than that of the other islands, and it is said that the inhabitants of Guernsey resort 8AEK. . 239 to it for the benefit of its more bracing air. It is, however, the student of nature who will get the greatest satisfaction from a sojourn in Sark. The botany of the island is quite similar to that of Guernsey. There is little cultivation of foreign plants, except in the grounds of the 9 neurie; but here there are very good examples of successful adaptation, and in every damp valley the native ferns grow in great variety and with remarkable luxuriance. TIIK BURONS, sWtK. The magnificent cliffs on every side of the island are pierced with huge caverns, where the sea has worn its way into the softer veins, and the shore is piled with masses oi fallen rock, and bowlders undermined or torn away by the waves. All is wild and weather-beaten, and one • every point combinations of nature's boldest rock-workj not less grand than those shown in the illustrations given herewith. Ansted says: "One must visit Sark t<> -<•<• what water can do with granite In walking through tin- remarkable cavern called the Boutiques, natural Insures are traversed more than a quarter of a mile long, not crossing the island, hut parallel to its length, opening from one, inter- sected by two others, and terminated by a fourth grand chasm The floor of this rleft is a wild chaos of rocks, some fallen from above, some 240 A FARMER'S VACATION. rolled in from the sea. The roof, some fifty feet overhead, is always falling, and becoming converted into rocks and pebbles; the floor, com- posed as it is of Titanic angular fragments, is rapidly removed, and as frequently replaced. The extremity is choked at one time by stones that even the old Druids would hardly have attempted to move ; at other times it is open to the sea, all these being swept away." The destructive action of the waves is constant. In all the little bays with which Sark is surrounded, and which can be approached only in boats, and in calm weather, the falling of the cliffs at all seasons is suf- ficient to compel caution in visiting them. Wherever cultivation has been carried too close to the cliffs, fields and fences fall into the sea, and in this way the land is slowly becoming narrowed. The sea is so deep, close to the shore, that there is little accumulation of debris at the foot of the cliffs, — all is rolled into the water, and buried forever out of sight. When it is remembered that the table-lands of both Great and Little Sark are three hundred and fifty feet above mean-tide (the highest parts even more than this), that the tide rises thirty or forty feet, and that its rush is aggravated by frequent storms, which lash it to fury, it will be seen that this remarkable island, with its outlying rocks, offers greater advantages than any other point in the range of ordinary travel for studying the destructive action of the sea. The adjoining island of Brechou, which is about three quarters of a mile long, is less high than Sark, but it has the same rough, bold coast, pierced with caverns, and the same angular cliffs.* The great attraction of Sark to the naturalist is to be found in the marine life of its frequent caverns. This is said not to be equalled in Europe, — not even by that of the celebrated caves of St. Catherine's Island, near Tenby. The zoophytes exist in singular multitude and vari- ety. To seek these requires the most vigorous and the most invigorat- ing cliff-work, and the stimulating element of danger is rarely absent. Ansted says on this branch of his subject : " The great range of tide, * Brecliou has two farms, and is inhabited, according to the last census, by seven human beings, one horse, one cow, one dog, and several sheep. SARK. 2 1 1 tlic complicated character and gloom of these vast natural vaults, who.se deeper recesses are not accessible more than a few hours in the year, arc among the causes of this wealth. They may, with truth, be teg as the Grilne Oewolbe of the Channel Islands. They arc treasure-houses, where, instead of the accumulated stores of mediaeval art, such as are lavishly spread out in the chambers so named in Dresden, we find all that is brightest and richest and most varied of nature's work There Lb, however, one curious difference. The beauty of form Lb here confined to animals, whose structure is of the simplest kind, and all we see of life is in a form that involves the smallest possible expenditure of other sub- stance than sea-water The largest and heaviest individuals, even it' carefully preserved, scarcely yield more than a few fractions of a grain of residuum, and with all the colors of the rainbow, and varied forms imitating trees and flowers, there is no more substance in them than in a soap-bubble." Taken all in all, Sark and its surroundings combine more of out-of- door attaction, especially for a vigorous and studious tourist, than any Other spot of equal size of which 1 have knowledge. A literary man seeking retirement would find it as well suited to his want- as a light- bouse; and the artist would find here such marvels of marine grandeur as, if faithfully portrayed, would bring him the reputation of a genius. Of the early history of Sark not much is known. Tnlike the other islands, it was long held by the French, who took it in the reign of Edward IV. It was recaptured during the reign of Queen Mary by the aid of the friendly Flemings, The following ace, ,11111 of the recapture, given by Sir Walter Raleigh sometime governor of Jersey . is copied from Falle's history: -The [aland of Sark was surprised by the French and could never have been recovered again by strong hand, having Cattle and Corn enough upon the place to feed bo many Men as will serve to defend it, and being every way so inaccessible that it might be held against the Grreal Turk. Yet by the industry of a Gentleman of the Netherlands, it was in this sort regained- He anchored in the Road 242 A FAEMERIS VACATION. with one Ship, and pretending the Death of his Merchant, besought the French that they might bury their Merchant in hallowed ground, and in the Chappel of that Isle ; offering a Present to the French of such com- modities as they had aboard. Whereto (with condition that they should not come ashore with any weapon, no not so much as with a knife) the French yielded. Then did the Flemings put a Coffin into their Boat, not filled with a dead carcass, but with Swords, Targets, and Harque- buzes. The French received them at their Landing, and searching every one of them so narrowly as they could not hide a Penknife, gave them leave to draw their Coffin up the rocks with great difficulty. Some part of the French took their boat and rowed aboard their ship to fetch the commodities promised, and what else they pleased, but being entered, they were taken and bound. The Flemings on the land, when they had carried their Coffin into the Chappel, shut the door to them, and taking their weapons out of the Coffin Set upon the French : They run to the Cliff and cry to their Companions aboard the Fleming to come to their succor. But finding the boat charged with Flemings, yielded themselves and the Place." In the reign of Elizabeth, Helier. de Carteret, of Jersey, falsely repre- senting Sark as being uninhabited, it was granted to him in fee, in consideration of services rendered the state. He settled on it, as his tenants, forty families from Jersey, so that the present population are mostly of Jersey origin. The Seigneurie has passed out of the De Car- teret family, but the name is not uncommon, and the descendants in the direct line still occupy a substantial stone cottage, well overgrown with flowering shrubs and vines. Politically, Sark belongs to the "Bailiwick of Guernsey," but it has, much in the same way that our States have, an independent legal exist- ence. The local government is vested in an Assembly, consisting of the Seigneur and his forty tenants. He must be present at all meetings (three times a year), either in person or by deputy, and his approval is necessary to the validity of all ordinances. He alone receives all tithes, SAltK. 243 getting the tenth sheaf of wheat, barley, oats, and peas; also the tenth of wool and lamb. His tenants, who hold the forty divisions of the island outside of the Seigneurie, are tenants by right of birth and pur- chase, — absolute owners under the laws of the island, but owing certain feudal obligations to theii chief The holdings are indivisible No ten- ant can sell, or in any way dispose of a portion of his property. Be may sell the whole, but in that case one thirteenth of the pri the lord. In* case of death, the property all goes to the eldest sou, or, in the absence of sons, to the eldest daughter, or to the oext heir. Iu this way, all properties continue intact, as -ranted by the first De Carteret The Jersey system of agriculture prevails ; the soil is said to be even more fertile than that of the larger islands. The dairy has little promi- nence, and the cows are inferior. Parsnips are very largely grown, and are much used for fattening oxen and swine. The supply of meat and -rain to Guernsey is the principal source of money income to the farmer. Sea-weed is hardly less used than in the other islands, notwithstanding the difficulty of collecting it, and the enormous labor of hauling it up the steep mad from the sea. Formerly a silver-mine in Little Sark was actively worked, but it is now abandoned, and the industry of the island is confined exclusively to fishing and farming, and latterly to the supplying of a considerable num- ber of visitors; of these there were in 1873 over tour thousand. The language of the people is "Sarkais." It should be a dialect of the Jersey, but it has peculiarities which seem to ally it to the pal Beam and Gascony, — such as the use oft for d To the stranger it has even a ruder sound than the dialects of the either islands. As the day was closing, we climbed down the steep foot-path, and regained our boat, leaving Sark with the light of the rosy sunset on its western cliffs, and with the unfading light of the rosiest memorii tied forever on its image in our minds. V7e bad a charming moonlight sail back to Si Petei Port, and during 244 A FARMER'S VACATION. dd TWO "CIIASSE-MAREES." the rest of our stay in Guernsey the clean-cut outline of the enchanted island remained unclouded before our window. The sea kept its unrip- pled stillness, and we had the unspeakable satisfaction of glassy smooth water for our trip to South- ampton, — not a frequent experience on this journey. At the three-towered Cas- quets we bade good by to the material presence of the Channel Islands; but, once known, they remain bright in the recollection for many to renewed acquaintance, in a degree equalled by THE CASOTETS. a long day, inviting few other places. CHAPTER VIII THE CLIMATE OF THE CHANNEL ISLANDS. SINCE the first publication of the foregoing papers, I have been fre- quently asked about the climate of the Channel Islands, with refer- ence to the residence of invalids. The following additional information, from Mr. Ansted's elaborate work, is therefore appended: — Mean Results of Observations extending over sixteen years, from January 1, 1843, to December 31, 1858. By S. Elliott IIaskixs, M. D., F. R. S., F. R. C. P., Member of the British Meteorological Society. Latitude of station, 27J' N. Longitude, 'T 32' W. Height of station above mean sea- LeveL 204 feet. 1 MlMKVATIONS. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May June July Aug. Sept. Oct Dec. M a t Mean Temperature of Air, Cor- 43.6 30.3 6.4 1.844 19.3 56.0 31 i 19.6 7.1 3.889 13.6 ..i 31 1 J I - T - 13.fi IT. 1 I J .1 9.3 •2.513 13.-1 03 .0 46.0 73.0 .'1 - in I 10. ft 61 - 51.6 80.0 14.0 11.6 •2.100 10.0 55.1 50.0 93 A 10.7 10.9 54.0 19.9 70.5 41.0 •20.4 18.0 48.7 43.7 62.0 30.5 19.7 6.1 3.788 16.8 46.5 40.7 59.0 20.1 6.3 3.536 51.6 H l 94 I 91 I - 1 34.766 Mean Temperature of Dew Point Beadingi "f Thermometer Lowest Reading! of Thermometer Mean Monthlj Range of Temper- ature Mean Daily Range of Temperature Amount of Rain collected Number of Dayaof Rain, Mail, and Snow •20.3 10.0 9.089 10.9 53.6 76.0 90 ■ 1 9.711 11.9 •• Whilst the temperature of the year in Guernsey la only two and a half degrees above that of Greenwich London), it appears thai the au- tumn temperature is four degrees, and the winter as much as six d< warmer. On the other hand, there is only a difference of one degree in the Bpring months, and the Bummei months are more than half a degree cooler in the island than in the southeast of England." Guernsey. 48.7° Difference in favor of Guernsey. 5.5° 4G.5 7.2 43.6 7.0 42.5 3.9 43.5 2.1 47.4 1.2 246 A FARMER'S VACATION. The following is the comparison of the winter temperature by months Greenwich. November 43.2 December 39.3 January 36.6 February 38.6 March 41.4 April 46.2 "It will be seen that the temperature of November at Greenwich cor- responds with that of January in Guernsey, while November at Guernsey differs but little from October at Greenwich Combining the obser- vations of mean temperature and comparing Guernsey with Greenwich, we see, therefore, that in Guernsey the spring is a little warmer than in England, and the summer rather cooler. In Guernsey, however, the tem- perature of July and August continues, with little change, into September and October, the summer and autumn differing little, and the latter ex- tending into the months which in England are regarded as midwinter. Winter may, therefore, be said to be altogether absent as a season in Guernsey; but on the other hand the spring is cold and late." However, as a sanitary question the daily range of the thermometer is really of more consequence than is the mean temperature of whole sea- sons. Ansted says : " In Guernsey this range is so small as to be alto- gether exceptional among northern climates. While at Greenwich, as shown from an average of ten years, the mean daily range is 16.2°, in Guernsey it is exactly one half, or 8.1°. In this, however, as in the temperature, it is not so much the annual average, as the distribution of the averages, that is significant. The following tabular statement of the mean daily range of each month will point out the essential facts : — April . . Greenwich. . 19.1° Guernsey. 9.3° October . Greenwich. . 14.6° Guernsey 6.7°' May . . . 20.2 10.5 November . 11.7 6.1 June . . 20.8 11.6 December . 9.5 6.2 July . . . 21.3 10.7 January . . . 10.0 6.4 August . 20.0 10.0 February . . . 12.3 7.1 September . 19.8 8.5 March . . . 15.2 7.8 THE CLIMATE OF THE CHANNEL [SLANDS. 247 "The difference of climate thus indicated is total The days of Bummer are not very hut, but the nights are comparatively warm, and there is hardly any chill in the night-air at any time of the year. Od tli.' other hand, the days of spring are uniformly cold; the Bummer does not commence early, and in the summer days the heat is rarely ex- treme The absolute maxima and minima recorded are very much below those of any part of England or France.* "A Long series of observations is required for accurate comparison, but we may Bafely state that there is no recorded climate, and probably no climate whatever, in north temperate latitudes on either side of the At- lantic, that presents so small a daily range of the thermometer as the [sland of Guernsey It appears from careful observation that, in spite of the low temperature of the Guernsey spring months, many kinds of flowering plants and shrubs are at least a fortnight earlier there than even in the warmer parts of England; and in lace of the fact that the summer is cooler than at Greenwich, the ripening of fruit in the open air during July, August, and September is some days earlier in Guernsey. "Although the rain is considerable, the climate of Guernsey is certainly not inconvenient from wetness. During the wet months the continuance of more than twelve hours' rain is very rare: and in summer, and indeed at all other times, it rarely happens that a wet morning is not succeeded by a bright evening. On the other hand, a brilliant morning is rarely the precursor of a beautiful afternoon. ■ A clouded Btate of the atmosphere prevails with remarkable uniform- ity throughout the year. Estimating a completely concealed sky at 10, the mean cloudiness of the year is about ">.'.. April, dune, duly, and September are Blightly clearer than the mean, and October, November, and January abort as much cloudier. September is the clearest and January the cloudiest month. Notwithstanding this tabulated result, it must not he BUpposed that there is any want of bright sunshine in Guernsey. The fact seems to he that changes are frequent, and sional cloud common, while continued obscuration is rate. * Meaning, obviously, that 1 1 » *- maxima arc below and the mini • ee of the other countries. Probably the comparison isnol intended to cover the Mediterranean short' of France. 248 A FARMEE'S VACATION. "Snow rarely falls in this island, and still more rarely lies on the ground more than a few hours. " Guernsey is uniformly more cloudy than Jersey, the only exceptions being the months of February and December. In the former the differ- ence would seem to be pretty uniformly the other way. In the latter month, and in January, the difference is too small to have significance. "As the sky is more frequently clouded in Guernsey than in Jersey, so the number of days of rain-fall is greater, and the quantity of rain that falls decidedly larger. During the six years of the joint record (from the 1st of July, 1850, to the 30th of June, 1855), there were in all 909 days during which rain fell in Jersey, and 931 in Guernsey; while the quantity of rain that fell was in the one island 188.6 inches, and in the other 207.7. The seasons may conveniently be divided into the wet, the medium, and the dry. The wet months are from October to January inclusive, — October being very much the wettest in both islands. The average rain-fall of this month in each island during the years of record was 5.7 inches, the maximum being in 1852, when no less than 8.2 inches fell in Jersey. Very nearly as much (7.9 inches) fell in the October of 1854, while in each year the fall in Guernsey was .7 inches less. November and January are less wet than October, the rain- fall during each of those months in both islands being nearly the same. In December the quantity of rain is considerably less than in November and January, but the number of days of rain-fall almost as large. So far as these months are concerned, the rain-fall is almost invariably heavier in Guernsey than in Jersey, as might indeed have been ex- pected, since rain generally comes from westerly winds, and these deposit their moisture on the land they first approach. On the setting in of cold in Europe, after the close of autumn, it would seem inevitable that Guernsey should receive more rain than Jersey. It does so, as is evi- dent from the tabulated results. "The month of September (preceding the autumnal equinox) is com- paratively a wet month in Guernsey, but not in Jersey. The number of days of rain-fall is then about the same in each island, but the quantity of rain is one third less in Jersey. The month of March, however (pre- THE CLIMATE OF THE CHANNEL [SLAND8. 249 ceding the vernal equinox), exhibits the same amount of rain-nil] in the two islands, and this amount scarcely differs from that of September in Jersey, namely, 2.1 inches. May, June and August are wetter than Match, the average being 2\ inches in Guernsey and about three tenths of an inch less in Jersey; but here again there is a difference observ- able, May and June being nearly alike in the two islands, and .\ much diver than either of them in Jersey, although equally wet in ( ruernsej , - February, April, and July are dry months in both islands, the aver- in-fall bring nearly the same; but February and April are equally dry in Jersey, and February much the dryest in Guernsey. The months in which rain falls during the smallest number of days are April, -\ and September in Guernsey, and April and September in Jersey; . . . . heavier rain falls occasionally in Jersey, but more rain falls during the year and it falls on a larger number of days in Guernsey. In all these points we see that the insular character of the climate is much mure strongly marked in Guernsey than in Jersey." There are two reasons why Mr. Ansted has given so much more at- tention to the climate of Guernsey than to that of Jersey: first, that he was for some years a resident of Guernsey; and second, that very accurate meteorological records were kept for a long series of years in Guernsey, while none sufficiently accurate for scientific purposes were kepi during the same period in Jersey. From my own limited means of information, I should say that there is no essential difference, so far as the residence of invalids is concerned, between the two islands, and that either would be decidedly favorable for persons suffering from pul- monary weakness. POST SCRIPTUM. October, 1875. Having occasion to make a second visit to Amsterdam, and being much favored by the weather, — it had poured in torrents for some days, so that all the draining wind-mills in Holland were straining their broad sails to make head against the growing flood, — I had an opportunity to see the great pumping- engine (the Lijnden, which I had examined at rest two years before) in full work. Mr. van der Poll, the Dijkgraaf, kindly drove us from the station to the engine at Halfway, where the six paddle-wheels were slowly, but steadily and forcibly, thrusting the tide of the encircling canal through the sluice-gates into the I J. Thence we went to the Lijnden, which, before we came in sight, announced itself by long, slow aspirations, as of some mighty monster of the deep. As we drew near we saw the ponderous working-beams slowly and smoothly rising and falling, as though gently waving an adieu to the waters of the polder. Even as we walked around the outer gallery, and saw seven of the pumps -discharging, seven times per minute, each one its eight tons of water on to the spilling-floor, there was no more apparent effort or strain than in the dipping of spoonfuls from a wineglass. The great pistons and the enormous load of ballast were raised by the direct pressure of the steam, and in their fall, aided by the expansion against the top of the annular piston, they raised the plungers with their burden of water. It would be useless to attempt, by description or by computation, to give the reader the impression which this vast artificial flood produces on one who sees it for the first time. The stream as it flows from the spilling-floor to the canal is too deep and too broad to be very turbulent ; but the seven columns of water, more than five feet in diameter and ten feet high, rising at such rapid intervals, convert the whole chamber above the floor into a foaming torrent Avhich is vastly impressive from the depth and force of its universal POST SCEIF1 I'M. 251 movement, the water boiling and tumbling as in a seething caldron Titanic Ores. The Dijkgraaf, wishing to give us a yet clearer idea of the capacity of the pomps, caused ti. be closed, emptying the chamber back into the lake. And thru the work began anew. As the contents of the pumps at the first stroke discharged themselves over the spilling-floor, and as volume alter volume was added to the mass, there was a more obvious demonstration of the gigantic capacity of the machinery than we could have received in any other way. As the water rose to the level of that in the encircling canal, the sluice-gates hung for a moment in the balance, and with the next stroke of the pumps slowly swung back on their hinges, : _i\iuu r outlet t<> the tlood whose uninterrupted movement for so many months was needed for the draining of the Haarlem Lake. I thought that I had realized before the enormous meaning of this work ; but, seeing the actual movement of the machinery and the torrent, 1 found that imagination had been entirely power- less to compass the stupendous fact From the Lijnden we drove some miles over the well-made roads at tl of the lake, passed through one of its busy villages, ami later through the beautiful suburbs of Haarlem, whence we went to Leyden ami t<> the charming chateau d'Endegeest for a pleasant hour with Mr. Gevers, now eighty-three of age and still happy and enthusiastic over the success of the work, in tin- execution of which, as President of the Commission, he bore so important a part. For want .if time I could not inspect the work on the North Sea Canal, hut it i< progressing rapidly, and it i- probable that within a year the 1. 1 will all be drained, and the canal ready for the passage of small vessels. The drainage of the Zuyder Zee is still under discussion as t<> its d but it seems a foregone conclusion that the work cannot be much delayed Mr. Amersfoort is now preparing models to illustrate this | for exhibition at Philadelphia next year. Cnnbridjn K!r. untyped and Printed 1>t Welch. Bigelow, k Co. AMSTERDAM'* ENTERPRISE, , ^g !enedbythe King- of Holland, in person, the ■eatest engineering work which this country, so ollflc In such works, has ever undertaken. The lipping world Is well aware that hitherto the ily way to Amsterdam for vessels of more than re feet draft Is the North Holland Canal, con- acting that town with the Helder, or Nlenwe Lep. It was constructed in the reign of William , is fifty-one miles long, very tortuous and nar- w, and only available for vessels drawing six- en feet of water. The idea of joining Amster- im with the sea by a direct communication had ng been entertained and investigated By vari- is committes, and, though many were incredu- us of its ever being possible to carry on such a ork, a commission was given in 1861. In 1868 a inipany was formed, and in lSiKi the firm under- ok the execution of the entire work, for a sum H far short of two and a half millions sterling. Ms great enterprise may be said to consist or nee parts : l. The shutting out of the tidal waters of the .lyder Zee from, the Lake Y (pronounced I), su- ited to the west of Amsterdam. 2. The making a harbor on the shore of the North Sea, at the ltraiice of the canal. The first, part consists of sea- cfyke, cutUugoff the waters of the Zuydor re to the east of Amsterdam, which is inter- ■pted by large locks having three basins and a . imping station containing three powerful imps. The locks are for the use of the numer- is small craft and fishing smacks sailing from msterdam to the different towns on the shores the Zuyder Zee, and the pumps are for keeping i e water in the canal at its proper levej. The u-dyke is admitted to be the linest of the kind the kingdom. Great difficulty was encountered making it, the ground on which it stands being soft, and for the Same reason -the cofferdam eke through during the construction of the cks. The engines and pumus. are the largest in olland, being each T- r . horse-power, and dis- largiug together over T4,0(hj cubic feet of water :r minute. The second part consists of cutting the canal trough the sandhills, or dunes, near the North :a, and of the construction there of large locks ith two basins, the bigger one being able to ac- immodate vessels s'jo feet long, 59 feet wide and •awing 27 feet of water. Nearly 8,000,000 cubic irds of sand have been removed from this part the canal alone. It then passes through the ike Y, where banks had to be made on each side yd the channel dredged to its proper depth. Lis was done in a very ingenldus and quite novel ay, by attaching centrifugal pumus to bucket- eugers, and by their means passimr the sand trough pipes to a distance sometimes of 400 yards 3d more. Five million cubic yards of dredging- i id to be done on tlds part originally, but on ac- I Hint of the company being continually called I con to sluice off the water by the North Sea i cks to prevent Ine flooding of Amsterdam, e canal- to toe extent I : nearly h.ooo.ih"' . Ion each de of the ea.ua: aimed, itched enormously nigh tutting in - to £120 an acre. There are nearly !,500 acres of reclaimed land, and by the cone.es- | en they become the property of the company, he canal will, when fully completed, be 23 feet ?ep, 20 yards wide at the bottom, and have a va- ring width of from TO to ISO yards, Its length U xteen miles. The third portion consists of malting a harbor n the coast at the entrance of the canal. This as been done by running out two Jetties, each 8O0 yards long. They start on the shore t a distance from each other of 1,300 yards, ad converge so as to leave an fin- ance 2yo yards In width. These jetties are uilt bv concrete blocks, forming a wall with a >p width of twenty-two feet, and have a ibre- loring of loose blocks on the sea side. Tfie great spenence gained by the construction of the lagnlficent Admiralty pier at Dover, availed but ttlc for the shifting sands of the Dutch coast, nd great difficulties had in the commencemeat to e overcome. IVir. D nt i > n succeeded in doing this sea Abiding, which in this shifting ground it was impossible to wpfk with; An Idea of these piers may be formed by the fact that they will, when quite Bnlsned, have consumed over 040,600 torn of I concrete. The south pier, which is the most forward, and oractlcally completed, is a penvat | woi k of its kind, aud does great credit to its con- structors. The area of the harbor Inclosed by these piers Is about 450 acres, a great portion of which has to be dredged to its proper depth. Fo r this purpose a novel kind of dredger is in use', consisting of a centrifugal pump.called a <; T:tan," which raises the sand together with a certain pro- portion of water, and discharges it in the bi , where the sand sinks to the bottom and the water flows over. I A glance at the map will show the value and Importance of this harbor. It is situated just half way between Hoek van Holland (entrance into Rotterdam) and the Helder or Nienwe Diep, which are nearly loo miles apart. This forms the only refuge for vessels between these two places alon'f this barren and sandy coast. The canal and har- bor were already so far advanced in the la tier part, of September a3 to allow of the passage of the iron-clad turret- ship Koning der Neiderandeff, the largest and most recent addition to the Dutch navy. Since then many other steamers and yachts have passed out of Amsterdam this way. Trade having been greatly on the decline of fote years, the opening of this new water-way has raised great expectations in the mercantile community of Amsterdam, and great preparations are being made for th' """e celebration of this import -" event. •: > & A PRACTICAL SOLUTION OP THE PAUPER QUESTION, A society of charity at the Hague | in Holland, consisting of a number of wealthy men, purchased, in 1816, 15,000 acres of State land, on which they settled a number of families of "beggars and paupers, who had been such for years, with the earnest desire to make them industrious and self-supporting. " Not less than 24,- 000 persons finally subscribed to the enterprise, each paying two florins, or about $1.10 of our money, annually I for its maintenance. Each adult, if able and willing to work, was provid- ed with a small cottage, two acres of land, a pig and a cow, and occasional- ly a few sheep. The tillage, labor, and general management was careful- ly supervised. If the pauper or beg- ger, was ignorant of agriculture, as is usually the case in cities, he received daily instruction until he had learned whatever it was necessary for him to know. His children were sent to school, for which competent teachers were furnished by the society. The women were employed in sewing, spinning, and weaving, and every one was kept busy, the rule of the society being that no one shall be idle. At the close of the day, a laborer gets a card with an exact statement of his earnings', for which he is paid in food oi clothing. Whatever he needs the first year is furnished; but after that he is expect- ed to pay the cost of his equipment; and most of the colonists have done so. The great majoritv are self-sup- porting, and some of them have laid by considerable money. Subject to strict rules and under severe discipline while they remain, they are permitted to go away, if they wish, after they have discharged their indebtedness and gathered the first harvest. Those who are idle, refractory, or dishonest are sent to a penal colony— a decayed fortress, surrounded by a broad canal — and guarded to prevent escape. Tailoring, weaving, and carpentering are carried on there for reformation. The failure of this enterprise was gen- erally predicted; but the sine.-- is now assured, as the government par- tially supports " Fredrick's Ord '' and it> connections. There are at present over 11,1)00 persons in all the colonies; and the cost per head is about Sim- per annum. — Report of BoefON In- dustrial AidSvcut'/. 5 ev- V 'Hi -KfticCxs Jt^jh ; ^ /^ ' Usr'» -£*J ^<, dj ' >V- tf £V . C* i \ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY BERKELEY Return to desk from which borrowed This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. l$]un52B£ LD 21-95m-ll,'50(2877sl6)476 830852 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY