lut au
Monde" of "the sail and steamships of the world" which in his mind's
eye he beholds as they

Wait steam'd up ready to start in the ports of Australia,
Wait at Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Marseilles, Lisbon, Naples,
Hamburg, Bremen, Bordeaux, The Hague, Copenhagen.

It is not easy for one of the "sail or steamships of the world" to
wait steamed up at The Hague; because The Hague has no harbour except
for small craft and barges. Shall we assume, with great charity,
that Walt feared that the word Rotterdam might impair his rhythm?

Not only big shipping: I think one may see barges and canal boats in
greater variety at Rotterdam than anywhere else. One curious thing
to be noticed as they lie at rest in the canals is the absence of
men. A woman is always there; her husband only rarely. The only
visible captain is the fussy, shrewish little dog which, suspicious
of the whole world, patrols the boat from stem to stern, and warns
you that it is against the law even to look at his property. I hope
his bite is not equal to his bark.

Every barge has its name. What the popular style was seven years
ago, when I was here last, I cannot remember; but to-day it is
"Wilhelmina". English suburban villas have not a greater variety of
fantastic names than the canal craft of Holland; nor, with all our
monopoly of the word "home," does the English suburban villa suggest
more compact cosiness than one catches gleams of through their cabin
windows or down their companions.

Spring cleaning goes on here, as in the Dutch houses, all the year
round, and the domiciliary part of the vessels is spotless. Every
bulwark has a washing tray that can be fixed or detached in a
moment. "It's a fine day, let us kill something," says the Englishman;
"Here's an odd moment, let us wash something," says the Dutch vrouw.

In some of the Rotterdam canals the barges are so packed that they
lie touching each other, with their burgees flying all in the same
direction, as the vanes of St. Sepulchre's in Holborn cannot do. How
they ever get disentangled again and proceed on their free way to
their distant homes is a mystery. But in the shipping world incredible
things can happen at night.

One does not, perhaps, in Rotterdam realise all at once that every drop
of water in these city-bound canals is related to every other drop of
water in the other canals of Holland, however distant. From any one
canal you can reach in time every other.