nd-power so extensively used. Almost every acre of the polders is
under cultivation, and these lands grow a very large part of the
vegetables and flowers consumed in the great cities of England, France,
and Belgium.

The coast sand-barrens have been converted into pasture-lands that
produce draught-horses, beef cattle, and dairy cattle. The horses find a
ready market in the United States and the large European cities; the
dairy cattle not needed at home are exported, the United States being a
heavy purchaser. The beef cattle are grown mainly for the markets of
London. Dutch butter is used far beyond the boundaries of the state, and
Edam cheese reaches nearly every large city of Europe and America.

The sugar-beet is extensively cultivated, in spite of the great trade
resulting from the cane-sugar industry of the East Indies. It is more
profitable to import wheat from the United States and rye from Russia in
order to use the land for the sugar-beet.

Practically no timber suitable for lumber manufacture exists, and
building material therefore must be imported. Pine is purchased from
Russia, Scandinavia, and the United States. Stone is purchased wherever
it may be obtained as return freight, or as ballast. The coast fisheries
yield oysters, herrings, and "anchovies," which are not anchovies, but
sprats.

For want of coal and iron there are few manufactures, and the garden and
dairy products are about the only export articles. There is an
abundance of clay, and of this brick for road-making, tiles for building
purposes, and porcelains are made. But little of the raw sugar is
refined; most of it is sold to foreign refiners, and the United States
is one of the chief customers.

Holland is a great commercial country, and for more than five hundred
years the Dutch flag has been found in almost every large port of the
world. Much of the commerce is derived from the tobacco, sugar, and
coffee plantations of the Dutch East Indies.

A very large part of the commerce, however, is neither import or export
trade, but a "transit" commerce. Thus, American coal-oil is transferred
from the great ocean tank-steamers to smaller tank-boats, and is then
carried across the state into Germany, France, and Belgium, through the
numerous canals.

This trade applies also to many of the products of the German industries
which will not bear a heavy freight tariff, such as coal, ores, etc. It
reaches the Rhine and Rhone river-basins and exten