the 17th instant, we left Brompton Square in very rainy and stormy
weather, and drove down to the Custom-house wharf and went on board our
destined steamer, the William Joliffe, a dirty, black-looking, tub-like
thing, about as large but not half so neat as a North River wood-sloop.
The wind was full from the Southwest, blowing a gale with rain, and I
confess I did not much fancy leaving land in so unpromising a craft and
in such weather; yet our vessel proved an excellent seaboat, and,
although all were sick on board but Mr. Ellsworth and myself, we had a
safe but rough passage across the boisterous North Sea."

Stopping but a short time in Rotterdam, the party proceeded through the
Hague and Haarlem to Amsterdam, and from the latter place they visited
the village of Broek:--

"The inn at Broek was another example of the same neatness. Here we took
a little refreshment before going into the village. We walked of course,
for no carriage, not even a wheelbarrow, appeared to be allowed any more
than in a gentleman's parlor. Everything about the exterior of the houses
and gardens was as carefully cared for as the furniture and
embellishments of the interior. The streets (or rather alleys, like those
of a garden) were narrow and paved with small variously colored bricks
forming every variety of ornamental figures. The houses, from the highest
to the lowest class, exhibited not merely comfort but luxury, yet it was
a selfish sort of luxury. The perpetually closed door and shut-up rooms
of ceremony, the largest and most conspicuous of all in the house, gave
an air of inhospitableness which, I should hope, was not indicative of
the real character of the inhabitants. Yet it seemed to be a deserted
village, a place of the dead rather than of the living, an ornamental
graveyard. The liveliness of social beings was absent and was even
inconsistent with the superlative neatness of all around us. It was a