Harwich, and the Batavier, direct from London. But that is possible
now only by the Batavier, passengers by the better-known Harwich
route being landed now and henceforward at the Hook at five A.M. I am
sorry for this, because after a rough passage it was very pleasant
to glide in the early morning steadily up the Maas and gradually
acquire a sense of Dutch quietude and greyness. No longer, however,
can this be done, as the Batavier boats reach Rotterdam at night;
and one therefore misses the river, with the little villages on its
banks, each with a tiny canal-harbour of its own; the groups of trees
in the early mist; the gulls and herons; and the increasing traffic
as one drew nearer Schiedam and at last reached that forest of masts
which is known as Rotterdam.

But now that the only road to Rotterdam by daylight is the road
of iron all that is past, and yet there is some compensation, for
short as the journey is one may in its progress ground oneself very
thoroughly in the characteristic scenery of Holland. No one who looks
steadily out of the windows between the Hook and Rotterdam has much
to learn thereafter. Only changing skies and atmospheric effects can
provide him with novelty, for most of Holland is like that. He has the
formula. Nor is it necessarily new to him if he knows England well,
North Holland being merely the Norfolk Broads, the Essex marshlands
about Burnham-on-Crouch, extended. Only in its peculiarity of light
and in its towns has Holland anything that we have not at home.

England has even its canal life too, if one cared to investigate
it; the Broads are populous with wherries and barges; cheese is
manufactured in England in a score of districts; cows range our
meadows as they range the meadows of the Dutch. We go to Holland to
see the towns, the pictures and the people. We go also because so