twenty feet long. They are employed in sawing timber, beating
hemp, grinding, and many other kinds of work; but their principal
use is for pumping water from the lowlands into the canals, and
for guarding against the inland freshets that so often deluge the
country. Their yearly cost is said to be nearly ten million
dollars. The large ones are of great power. The huge circular
tower, rising sometimes from the midst of factory buildings, is
surmounted with a smaller one tapering into a caplike roof. This
upper tower is encircled at its base with a balcony, high above
which juts the axis turned by its four prodigious ladder-back
sails.

Many of the windmills are primitive affairs, seeming sadly in
need of Yankee "improvements," but some of the new ones are
admirable. They are constructed so that by some ingenious
contrivance they present their fans, or wings, to the wind in
precisely the right direction to work with the requisite power.
In other words, the miller may take a nap and feel quite sure
that his mill will study the wind and make the most of it, until
he wakens. Should there be but a slight current of air, every
sail will spread itself to catch the faintest breath, but if a
heavy "blow" should come, they will shrink at its touch, like
great mimosa leaves, and only give it half a chance to move them.

One of the old prisons of Amsterdam, called the Rasphouse,
because the thieves and vagrants who were confined there were
employed in rasping logwood, had a cell for the punishment of
lazy prisoners. In one corner of this cell was a pump, and in
another, an opening through which a steady stream of water was
admitted. The prisoner could take his choice, either to stand