Dutch cities seem at first sight to be a bewildering jungle of
houses, bridges, churches, and ships, sprouting into masts,
steeples, and trees. In some cities vessels are hitched like
horses to their owners' doorposts and receive their freight from
the upper windows. Mothers scream to Lodewyk and Kassy not to
swing on the garden gate for fear they may be drowned! Water
roads are more frequent there than common roads and railways;
water fences in the form of lazy green ditches enclose
pleasure-ground, farm, and garden.

Sometimes fine green hedges are seen, but wooden fences such as
we have in America are rarely met with in Holland. As for stone
fences, a Dutchman would lift his hands with astonishment at the
very idea. There is no stone there, except for those great
masses of rock that have been brought from other lands to
strengthen and protect the coast. All the small stones or
pebbles, if there ever were any, seem to be imprisoned in
pavements or quite melted away. Boys with strong, quick arms may
grow from pinafores to full beards without ever finding one to
start the water rings or set the rabbits flying. The water roads
are nothing less than canals intersecting the country in every
direction. These are of all sizes, from the great North Holland
Ship Canal, which is the wonder of the world, to those which a
boy can leap. Water omnibuses, called trekschuiten, *{Canal
boats. Some of the first named are over thirty feet long. They
look like green houses lodged on barges and are drawn by horses
walking along the bank of the canal. The trekschuiten are
divided into two compartments, first and second class, and when
not too crowded, the passengers make themselves quite at home in
them; the men smoke, the women knit or sew, while children play