islands,--fragments of vanished
lands,--which are strung like beads between Friesland and North Holland,
are protected by dikes. From the mouths of the Ems to those of the
Scheldt, Holland is an impenetrable fortress, of whose immense bastions
the mills are the towers, the cataracts are the gates, the islands the
advanced forts; and like a true fortress, it shows to its enemy, the
sea, only the tops of its bell-towers and the roofs of its houses, as if
in defiance and derision.

Holland is a fortress, and her people live as in a fortress, on a war
footing with the sea. An army of engineers, directed by the Minister of
the Interior, spread over the country, and, ordered like an army,
continually spy the enemy, watch over the internal waters, foresee the
bursting of the dikes, order and direct the defensive works. The
expenses of the war are divided,--one part to the State, one part to the
provinces; every proprietor pays, beside the general imposts, a special
impost for the dikes, in proportion to the extent of his lands and
their proximity to the water. An accidental rupture, an inadvertence,
may cause a flood; the peril is unceasing; the sentinels are at their
posts upon the bulwarks; at the first assault of the sea, they shout the
war-cry, and Holland sends men, material, and money. And even when there
is no great battle, a quiet, silent struggle is forever going on. The
innumerable mills, even in the drained districts, continue to work
unresting, to absorb and turn into the canals the water that falls in
rain and that which filters in from the sea. Every day the cataracts of
the bays and rivers close their gigantic gates against the high tide
trying to rush into the heart of the land. The work of strengthening
dikes, fortifying sand-banks with plantations, throwing out new dikes
where the banks are low, straight as great lances, vibrating in the
bosom of the sea and breaking the first impetus of the wave, is forever
going on. And the sea eternally knocks at the river-gates, beats upon
the ramparts, growls on every side her ceaseless menace, lifting her
curious waves as if to see the land she counts as hers, piling up banks
of sand before the gates to kill the commerce of the cities, forever
gnawing, scratching, digging at the coast; and failing to overthrow the
ramparts upon which she foams and fumes in angry effort, she casts at
their feet ships full of the dead, that they may announce to the
rebellious country her