so unsteady. Some days a wind mill will
work, and some days it will lie still; and thus in regard to the time
when it will do what is required of it, no reliance can be placed upon
it. This is of very little consequence in the work of pumping up water
from the sunken country in Holland; for, if for several days the mills
should not do their work, no great harm would come of it, since the
amount of water which would accumulate in that time would not do any
harm. The ground might become more wet, and the canals and reservoirs
get full,--just as brooks and rivers do on any upland country after a
long rain. But then, after the calm was over and the wind began to blow
again, the mills would all go industriously to work, and the surplus
water would soon be pumped up, and discharged over the dikes into the
sea again.

Thus the irregularity in the action of the wind mills in doing such work
as this, is of comparatively little consequence.

But in the case of some other kinds of work,--as for example the driving
of a cotton mill, or any other great manufactory in which a large number
of persons are employed,--it would be of the greatest possible
consequence; for when a calm time came, and the wind mill would not
work, all the hands would be thrown out of employ. They might sometimes
remain idle thus a number of days at a time, at a great expense to their
employers, or else at a great loss to themselves. Sometimes, for
example, there might be a fine breeze in the morning, and all the hands
would go to the mill and begin their work. In an hour the breeze might
entirely die away, and the spinners and weavers would all find their
jennies and looms going slower and slower, and finally stopping
altogether. And then, perhaps, two hours afterwards, when they had all
given up the day's work and gone away to their respective homes, the
breeze would spring up again, and the wind mill would go to work more
industriously than ever.

This would not answer at all for a cotton mill, but it does very well
for pumping up water from a great reservoir into which drains and canals
discharge themselves to keep a country dry.

And this reminds me of one great advantage which the people of Holland
enjoy on account of the low and level condition of their country; and
that is, it is extremely easy to make canals there. There are not only
no mountains or rocks in the way to impede the digging of them, but,
what is perhaps a still more important advant