Part 11 (1/2)

Utrecht.

It is entirely wrong for the tourist to come into a strange city late at night, but I could not avoid it this time on account of my sudden determination in Amsterdam not to spend the night there, as had been my intention. A clever and kind-hearted gentleman accompanied me through comparatively dark streets, and found a good hotel for me.

The next forenoon I ascended the high tower (469 steps, 321 feet in height). In this tower, at the height of 124 steps, lives the lady custodian of this stupendous building. She must have ”_high_ times” up there! The tower is a large square structure affording plenty of room even for several families; but I was thinking that she must have quite a time of it carrying up her water and all the numerous other things necessary to house-keeping.

The view from the top of the tower takes in the greater part of Holland.

The country all around is quite level, as far as the eye can see. Level, in Holland, _means_ level. Here one sees the innumerable wind-mills, and the labyrinthic net-work of ca.n.a.ls which intersect Holland. An almost boundless expanse of meadow land stretches out in every direction, and affords excellent pasture to the lowing herds that roam upon it. One sees but a few scattered trees, and several small woods, all the rest is clear and bear--no hedge-fences even to interrupt the dull monotony of the scene below. A strong wind, and it was high too, whistled around that lofty tower, reminding me of our winter storms when they whistle over the chimney-tops--a music that often makes melancholy hearts home-sick.

It was exactly 12:00 o'clock, and I was in the middle of the sentence, ”How beautiful these bells chime,” when a boy motioned me to come quickly to a certain place where I could see the cylinder revolve which communicates with the peal of bells.

Two points of lightning-rods crown this tower. Few lightning-rods are to be seen upon private buildings, in Europe, but upon public buildings they are occasionally met with.

I must not leave Holland without once more referring to the rattling of the wooden shoes upon the pavements, the red artificial flowers which old gray-headed women wear upon their heads and the gaudy colors of some of their dresses; also to the universal custom of carrying everything upon their heads.

The denominations of Dutch money are _florins_ or _guldins,_ and cents; 100 cents equal one florin. The florin is equal to 40 cents in United States money.

At 12:38 p.m., I left by train for Cologne, Germany. By 1:00 o'clock we entered a desolate section of country consisting of barren sandy soil, scanty crops, and dwarfish shrubs and trees. On our way, I formed the acquaintance of an elderly gentleman who moved from Holland to this country nineteen years ago. This gentleman explained to me the agricultural inst.i.tutions of Holland. He now lives in new Holland, Ottowa Co., Michigan, a town of 3,000 inhabitants, most of which are natives of Holland. There are about 15,000 more of his native countrymen living in the neighborhood of new Holland and at Grand Rapids. They have a newspaper published in their language in this country. At 2:25 we reached Arnheim where my Dutch friend left me.

At Zeevenaar (near the boundary between Holland and Germany) we pa.s.sed muster. Soon after we crossed the Rhine on a ferry, which carried us and the whole trains of cars over together. Thence we rode through Rhenish Prussia on, on, until we reached Cologne.

Chapter XII.

Cologne.

Koln, (or Cologne), the princ.i.p.al town in the Rhenish Province of Prussia, the seat of the supreme court of justice for the west bank of the Rhine, one of the chief commercial cities in Germany, and a military stronghold of the first cla.s.s, is an old Catholic city dating its foundation from the 1st century of the Christian era. In the beginning of the present century, it had 200 churches and chapels; it has at present 25 only, two of which are prodestant.

The Cathedral.

The first place that the traveler naturally goes to visit is the Cathedral, (Ger. Dom), which ”is perhaps” says Baedeker, ”the most magnificent Gothic edifice in the world.” This superb edifice is over an acre and a half in extent! It is 448 feet long and 249 feet through the transepts; the choir is 149 feet high. The magnificent south portal cost more than $500,000.

The central portal in the west end is 93 feet high, and 31 feet wide. The central window is 48 feet in height and 20 feet wide. The projected height of the twin towers is 511 feet. These are intended to consist of four stories, the third of which is approaching completion. A model representing in miniature what this structure is intended to be in the height of its glory when its towers are completed and crowned with spires, may be seen in a store adjacent to the _Dom-platz,_ where the ”only veritable” Cologne water (eau de Cologne) may also be obtained.

The foundation of this vast edifice was laid in 1248. Little work was done at it between 1322 and the beginning of the 16th century, and none from the latter date until 1816, when its restoration was begun under the auspices of the King of Prussia. Since that time $2,000,000 have been expended upon it. Those lower portions of the walls which were built 600 years ago, are old and gray and washed thinner by the rains of those half a dozen centuries. Such as appreciate the poetry of architecture, see in its mult.i.tude of spires and finials (large and small) a thousand vegetable forms, uniting to produce a bewildering effect upon the imagination; but no word-picture can do justice to the almost matchless beauty of this fine blossom of Gothic architecture. The tourist will love to go round about it and inspect and contemplate its every part, to take near views and distant views of it, and to revisit it time and again; and when he has bid adieu to Cologne and returned to his far distant home, he will dream dreams, by day and by night, in which he revisits and beholds again the beauties and glories of this magnificent temple.

_St. Ursula,_ a church that is said to have been been built in the 11th century, contains a monument erected (1658) to St. Ursula, a princess of England, who, according to the legend, when on her return from a pilgrimage to Rome, was barbarously murdered by the Huns at Cologne with her 11,000 virgin attendants. The skulls and bones of these martyrs are preserved in cases placed round the church. Large sections of the walls in the church are shelved and divided into pigeon holes, each containing a skull! I saw no less than 600 or 700 of these skulls (by actual count).

The bones ”are worked into the walls in a species of sepulchral mosaic.”

These bones, it is said, had been in their graves about 400 years. The old pictures of the apostles are painted upon slates, one of them bearing the date 1224.

In the Golden Chamber are preserved the most sacred relics; here is a bone which is claimed to have been in the right arm of St. Ursula, while a gilded shrine contains the rest of her bones. Do these identifications not prove conclusively that anatomy was better understood when these bones were cla.s.sified than it is even now? The name of the anatomist who selected St. Ursula's bones from among 11,000 and identified them is not given, but he certainly deserves much credit for it. Here are thorns from the crown and a piece of the rod with which Christ was scorged, one of the six jars of alabaster used at the marriage in Galilee, and a piece, about as thick as a hair and an inch or two long, of the ”true cross.” So they _say_. These things were brought hither from Syria by the crusaders in 1378.

The Museum.

The Museum in Cologne is one of the most interesting that I have yet seen.