Part 2 (2/2)
A large and specially trained staff of engineers are in unceasing harness, a numerous band of d.y.k.e watchers are constantly on the look-out, and when they raise the shout, 'Come out! come out!' not a man, woman, or child must hold back from the summons to strengthen the weak points through which threatens to pa.s.s the flood that would overwhelm the land. It is a constant struggle with nature, in which the victory rests with man. As the d.y.k.e is the bulwark of Dutch prosperity in peace, it might be converted into the ally of despairing patriotism in war.
There are marked differences among the ca.n.a.ls. The two largest and best known ca.n.a.ls, the North Ca.n.a.l and the North Sea Ca.n.a.l, are pa.s.sages to the ocean for the largest s.h.i.+ps, and specially intended to benefit the trade of Amsterdam. The North Ca.n.a.l was made in 1819-25, soon after the restoration of the House of Orange, with an outlet at Helder, near the mouth of the Texel. It has a breadth of between 40 and 50 yards, a length of 50 miles, and a depth of 20 feet, which was then thought ample. After forty years' use this ca.n.a.l was found inadequate from every point of view.
It was accordingly decided to construct a new ca.n.a.l direct from Amsterdam to Ymuiden across the narrowest strip of Holland. Although the Y was utilized, the labour on this ca.n.a.l was immense, and occupied a period of eleven years, being finally thrown open to navigation in 1877. In length it is under 16 miles, but its average breadth is 100 yards, and the depth varies from 23 to 27 feet. Consequently the largest s.h.i.+ps from America or the Indies can reach the wharves of Amsterdam as easily as if it were a port on the sea-coast. Leaving aside the sea-pa.s.sages that have been ca.n.a.lized among the islands of Zeeland, the remaining ca.n.a.ls are inland waterways serving as the princ.i.p.al highways of the country, giving one part of the country access to the other, and especially serving as approaches or lanes to the great rivers Meuse and Rhine.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A Village in d.y.k.e-Land.]
The interesting ca.n.a.l population of Holland is, of course, to be found on these ca.n.a.ls, which are traversed in unceasing flow from year's end to year's end by the tjalks, or national barges. On these boats, which more resemble a lugger than a barge, they navigate not only the ca.n.a.ls of their own country, but the Rhine up to Coblentz, and even above that place. It has been computed that Germany imports half its food-supply through Rotterdam, and much of this is borne to its destined markets on tjalks.
The William Ca.n.a.l connects Bois le Duc with Limburg, and saves the great bend of the Meuse. The Yssel connects with the Drenthe the Orange and the Reitdiep ca.n.a.ls, which convey to the Rhine the produce of remote Groningen and Friesland. The Rhine represents the destination of the bulk of the permanent ca.n.a.l population of Holland, whose floating habitations furnish one of the most interesting sights to be met with on the waters of the country, but which represent one of the secret phases of the people's life, into which few tourists or visitors have the opportunity of peering.
The ca.n.a.l population of Holland is fixed on a moderate computation at 50,000 persons. For this number of persons the barge represents the only fixed home, and the year pa.s.ses in ceaseless movement across the inland waters of the country or on the great German river, excepting for the brief interval when the ca.n.a.ls are frozen over in the depth of winter.
Even during these periods of enforced idleness the barge does not the less continue to be their home, for the simple reason that the ca.n.a.l population possesses no other. Their whole life for generations, the bringing up and education of the children, the years of toil from youth to old age, are pa.s.sed on these barges, which, varying in size and still more in condition, are as closely identified with the name of home in their owners' minds as if they were built of brick and stone on firm land. The ambition of the youth who tugs at the rope is to possess a tjalk of his own, and he diligently looks out for the maiden whose dowry will a.s.sist him, with his own savings, to make the purchase. This he may hope to procure for five or six hundred gulden, if he will be content with one of limited dimensions, and somewhat marked by time. When a family comes he will want a larger and more commodious boat, but by that time the profits which his first tjalk will have earned as a carrier will go far towards buying a second.
The tjalks are all built in the same form and from a common model. They carry a mast and sail, although for the greater part of their journeys they are towed by their owners, or rather by the familles, wife and children, of the owner. Mynheer, the barge-owner, is usually to be seen smoking his pipe and taking his ease near the tiller. Formerly it was otherwise, for the towing was done by dogs, under the personal direction of, and no doubt with some a.s.sistance from, the barge-owner himself, while his wife and children remained on the p.o.o.p of the boat. But five and twenty years ago the authorities of Amsterdam issued a law prohibiting the employment of dogs in the work of towing, and gradually this law was generally adopted and enforced throughout the country. When dogs were emanc.i.p.ated from their servitude on the ca.n.a.l-bank the family had to take their places, and by degrees the ease-loving head of the family has grown content to look on and think towing a labour reflecting on his dignity.
There is nothing unusual in the sight of a barge being towed by an old woman, her daughter or daughter-in-law, and several children. As they strain at the rope the work seems extremely hard, but the people themselves appear unconscious of any hards.h.i.+p or inequality in the distribution of labour.
The barge is in the first place a conveyance. The whole of the front part of the boat represents the hold in which the cargo is placed. This is generally represented by cheese or vegetables, timber, peat, and stones, the last-named being a return-cargo for the repairing of d.y.k.es and the construction of quays. But in the second place it is a house or place of residence, and the stern of the boat is given up for that purpose. The living room is the raised deck or p.o.o.p, on which is not only the tiller, but the cooking-stove. The sleeping-room forms the one covered-in apartment. It is easily divisible into two by a temporary or removable part.i.tion, and it always possesses the two little windows, one on each side of the tiller, which give it so great a resemblance to a doll's house. This resemblance is certainly heightened by the custom of colouring the barges, which are always painted a bright colour, red or green being perhaps the most usual. As ornament there is usually a good deal of bra.s.swork; the handle of the tiller is generally bordered with the metal, and the owner seems to take pride in nailing bra.s.s along the bulwarks of his boat where it is not wanted and is even little seen. It has been suggested that the polis.h.i.+ng of these bra.s.s plates or bars provides a pleasant change from the dull routine work of towing. The brightness of the paint and the bra.s.swork const.i.tutes the pride of the barge-owners, and supplies a standard of comparison among them.
To increase the homelike aspect of this water residence, birds and plants, always in more or less quant.i.ty and variety, are to be seen either in the windows or on the deck. The poorest bargee, which generally means the youngest or the beginner, will have one song-bird in a gilt cage, and as he acc.u.mulates money in his really profitable calling, he will add to his collection of birds a row of flowers and bulbs in pots. Thus he says, with a glow of satisfaction, 'I possess an aviary and a garden, like my cousin Hans on the polders, although my home is on the moving waters.' To strengthen the illusion what does he do but fix a toy gate on the p.o.o.p above his sleeping-cabin, and thus cherishes the belief that he is on his own domain? In the evening, when the towing is over for the day, the women bring out their sewing, the children play round the tiller, and the good man smokes his immense pipe with complete and indolent satisfaction. And so day pa.s.ses on to day without a variation, and life runs by without a ripple or a murmur for the ca.n.a.l population, while the mere landsmen look on with envy at what seems to them an idyllic existence, and even ladies of breeding and high station have been known to declare that they would gladly change places with the mistress of the bargee's quarter-deck. That was no doubt in the days before women had to take on themselves the brunt and burden of the towing.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A Ca.n.a.l in Dordrecht.]
But even for the ca.n.a.l population of Holland the halcyon days are past.
The spirit of reform is in the air. It may not be long before the tjalk, with its doll's house and its residential population, will finally disappear, and leave the ca.n.a.ls of Holland as dull and colourless as the inland waters of any other country. The reform seems likely to come about in this way. There are at least 30,000 children resident on the ca.n.a.l-boats. How are they to be properly educated and brought up as useful citizens if they are to continue to lead a migratory existence which never leaves them for a fortnight in a single place? Formerly, n.o.body cared whether they were educated or not. They were left undisturbed to live their lives in their own simple and primitive way. As De Amicis wrote: 'The children are born and grow up on the water; the boat carries all their small belongings, their domestic affections, their past, their present, and their future. They labour and save, and after many years they buy a larger boat, selling the old one to a family poorer than themselves, or handing it over to the eldest son, who in his turn instals his wife, taken from another boat, and seen for the first time in a chance meeting on the ca.n.a.l.' But now the State has begun to interest itself in the children, and its intervention threatens to put a rude and summary ending to the system of heredity and exclusion which has kept the ca.n.a.l population a cla.s.s apart.
For some time past schools have been in existence, especially devoted to the education of the barge children, and whenever the barges are moored in harbour the children are expected to attend them. But these periods of halting are very brief and uncertain. The stationary barge earns no money, and it may even be that the parents evade the law as far as possible for fear of seeing their children acquire a distaste for the life in which they have been brought up. But the Government, having taken one step in the matter, cannot afford to go back, and it must also have definite satisfactory results to show for its legislation. The tentative measure of temporary schools along the ca.n.a.ls has not leavened the illiteracy of the ca.n.a.l population. It will, therefore, become necessary at no great interval to devise some fresh and drastic regulations. Compulsory attendance at school for nine months of the year, which now applies to children in normal circ.u.mstances, may not be the lot of the barge children for some time, but when it comes, as it inevitably will one day, it will of necessity mean the break-up of the home life on the ca.n.a.ls, for the children will have to be left behind during the almost unceasing voyages, and a place of residence will have to be provided on land. Where the children are the women will soon be, and gradually this place of residence will become the home, displacing the barge in the a.s.sociations and affections of the ca.n.a.l population. Whether these changes will benefit those most affected by them cannot be guaranteed, but at least they will put an end to the separate existence of the ca.n.a.l population.
When this result has been compa.s.sed by the inexorable progress of education and knowledge, the gradual disappearance of the ca.n.a.l population, the cla.s.s of hereditary bargees as we have known it, and as it still exists, may be expected to follow at no remote date, for it was based on the enforcement of the family principle, and on the devotion of a whole community, from its youngest to its eldest member, to its maintenance. As it is the tow-barge is something of an anachronism, but the withdrawal of the youthful recruits, whose up-bringing alone rendered it possible, will entail its inevitable extinction. The decay and break-up of the guild of tjalk owners will be hastened by the introduction of steam and electricity as means of locomotion. The ca.n.a.ls will lose the bright-coloured barges which are to-day their most striking feature, and the population that has so long floated over their surface. Life will be duller and more monotonous. The ca.n.a.l population, so long distinct, will be merged in the rest of the community. The tug will displace the tow-rope. The pullers will be housed on land, mastering the three R's instead of learning to strain at the girth.
But there is still a brief period left during which the ca.n.a.l population may be seen in its original primitive existence, devoted to the barge, which is the only home known to six or seven thousand families, and traversing the water roads of their country in unceasing and endless progression. There is nothing like it in any other country of Europe.
Venice has its water routes, but the gondola is not a domicile. There was a ca.n.a.l population in England, but, like much else in our modern life, it has lost whatever picturesqueness it might once have claimed. For a true ca.n.a.l population, bright and happy, living the same life from father to son and generation to generation, we must go to Holland. There these inland navigators ply their vocation with only one ambition, and that to become the owner of a tjalk, and to rear thereon a family of towers. It is said that the life is one that requires the consumption of unlimited quant.i.tics of 'schnapps,' and the humidity of the atmosphere is undoubted.
But even free libations do not diminish the prosperity of the bargees.
They are a thriving race, and it must also be noted to their credit that they are well behaved, and not given to quarrels. Collisions on the thickly-covered ca.n.a.ls are rare; malicious collisions are unknown. The barges pa.s.s and repa.s.s without hindrance, the tow-ropes never get entangled, there is mutual forbearance, and the skill derived from long experience in slipping the ropes uncler the barges does the rest. The conditions under which the ca.n.a.l population exists and thrives are a survival of an older order of things. When they disappear another of the few picturesque heritages of mediaeval life will have been removecl from the hurly-burly and fierce compet.i.tion of modern existence.
Chapter VII
A Dutch Village
Villages in Holland are towns in miniature, for the simple reason that when you have a marsh to live in you drain a part of it and build on that part, and so build in streets, and do not form a village as in England, by houses dotted here and there round a green or down leafy lanes. The village green in Holland is the village street or square in front of the church or 'Raadhuis.' Here the children play, for you cannot play in a swamp, and that is what polder land is seven months out of the year, and so we find that a Dutch village in most parts of the country is a town in miniature.
[Ill.u.s.tration: An Overyssel Farmhouse.]
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