few the greater part have only passed
through it by boat; hence it is mentioned only on rare occasions, and
then as if it were a far-off country. From the few words I heard
spoken by my fellow-voyagers, I learned that they had never been to
the province; so we were all equally curious, and the ship had not
weighed anchor ere we entered into conversation, and were exciting
each other's curiosity by questions which none of us could answer.

The ship started at sunrise, and for a time we enjoyed the view of the
spire of Antwerp Cathedral, wrought of Mechlin lace, as the enamoured
Napoleon said of it.

After a short stop at the fort of Lillo and the village of Doel, we
left Belgium and entered Zealand.

In passing the frontier of a country for the first time, although we
know that the scene will not change suddenly, we always look round
curiously as if we expect it to do so. In fact, all the passengers
leaned over the rail of the boat, that they might be present when the
apparition of Zealand should suddenly be revealed.

For some time our curiosity was not gratified: nothing was to be seen
but the smooth green shores of the Scheldt, wide as an arm of the sea,
dotted with banks of sand, over which flew flocks of screaming
sea-gulls, while the pure sky did not seem to be that of Holland.

We were sailing between the island of South Beveland and the strip of
land forming the left bank of the Scheldt, which is called Flanders of
the States, or Flemish Zealand.

The history of this piece of land is very curious. To a foreigner the
entrance of Holland is like the first page of a great epic entitled,
The Struggle with the Sea. In the Middle Ages it was nothing but a
wide gulf with a few small islands. At the beginning of the sixteenth
century this gulf was no longer in existence; four hundred years of
patient labor had changed it into a fertile plain, defended by
embankments, traversed by canals, populated by villages, and known as
Flemish Zealand. When the war of independence broke out the
inhabitants of Flemish Zealand, opened their dykes rather than yield
their land to the Spanish armies: the sea rushed in, again forming the
gulf of the Middle Ages, and destroying in one day the work of four
centuries. When the war of independence was ended they began to drain
it, and after three hundred years Flemish Zealand once more saw the
light, and was restored to the continent like a child raised from the
dead. Thus in Holland la