ints out, subsequent reports and the
recent finds seem to bear out the truth of his account.

According to Dapper,

"the town comprising the queen's court is about five or six
[Dutch] miles in circumference, or, leaving out the court, three
miles inside the gates. It is protected at one side by a wall ten
feet high, made of double stockades of big trees tied to each
other by cross beams, fastened crosswise and stuffed up with red
clay solidly put together.... The town possesses several gates,
eight or nine feet in height, and five feet in width, with doors
made of a single piece of timber hanging, or turning on a peg
like the peasants' fences here in this country. [Holland.]

"The king's court is square and stands at the right-hand side as
one enters the town by the gate of Gotton, and is certainly as
large as the town of Harlem, and entirely surrounded by a special
wall like that which encircles the town. It is divided into many
magnificent palaces, houses and apartments for courtiers and
comprises beautiful long and square galleries about as large as
the Exchange at Amsterdam, but one larger than another, resting
on wooden pillars from top to bottom, covered with cast copper on
which are engraved the pictures of their war exploits and
battles, and are kept very clean. Most palaces and houses are
covered with palm leaves instead of square pieces of wood
[shingles], and every roof is decorated with a small turret,
ending in a small point on which birds are standing, these birds
being cast in copper, and having outspread wings cleverly made
after living models.

"The town has thirty very straight and broad streets, each of
them about one hundred and twenty feet wide or about as wide as
the Heeren or Keezersgracht [canals] at Amsterdam from one row of
houses to the other, from which branch out many side streets,
also broad, but less so than the main streets.

"The houses are built alongside the street in good order, the one
close to the other as here in this country [Holland], adorned
with gables and steps and roofs made of palm or banana leaves, or
leaves from other trees; they are not higher than a 'stadie,' but
usually broad with long galleries inside, especially so in the
case of the houses of the nobility, and divided into many rooms,