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waiters were in dread of my imbibing some pestilent disease, without this sort of fumigation, and expressed uncommon surprise, when they remarked that I declined using them. The Dutch will insist upon it that smoking is not only as necessary to preserve their constitutions, as paint is to protect the exterior of their houses from the effects of their moist climate, but that the vapour invigorates the mind, which mounted like an aerial spirit upon a cloud, pours forth treasures of reflection with a brilliancy little short of inspiration.

The Dutch go to an astonishing expense in their pipes, which assume an endless variety of shapes, and are decorated sometimes with the most coxcombical figures painted upon the head or cup of it, according to the taste of its possessor.

Many of the opulent Hollanders use a pipe, the head of which is made of a clay which is very rare, and found only in Turkey, of so beautiful a colour, that is called the Meerschaum, or froth of the sea; for this piece of luxury the value of eight and even ten guineas is frequently paid.

The lower orders of society, and many of the higher, carry in their pockets their pipe, a pricker to clear the tube, a piece of tinder made in Germany from the large mushrooms growing on old trees, resembling spunge, a small steel and flint to kindle the fire with, and a box frequently capacious enough to contain a pound of tobacco.

It is curious to observe how naturally a pipe depends from a Dutchman's mouth, and with what perfect facility he smokes without the assistance of either hand: he literally appears to have been formed by nature to breathe through this tube, with which he rides on horseback, drives in a carriage, and even dances. I have seen little boys take this instrument and puff away with an apparently instinctive predilection for the transatlantic weed. Smoking is a Dutchman's panacea, he thinks it good in all cases, whether of consumptions, or plethora, nervous debility, or fiery fever: as a masticatory, tobacco is but little used even by the fishermen, sailors and boors; and I was surprised to find, that in the social shape of snuff, it seemed to have not many admirers.

Tobacco had many enemies to contend with. In 1610, the smoking of tobacco was known at Constantinople, but it was thought so injurious a custom, that to remove it by ridicule, a Turk who had been found smoking, was conducted about the streets with a pipe transfixed through his nose: it was a long time before the Dutch cultivated the plant themselves; previous to that period they purchased it, and that the very refuse of the English. In 1615, tobacco began to be sown about Amsfort in Holland.

By James I. the practice of smoking was severely and most whimsically denounced in a work, called “ King James the Sixth's (of Scotland) Counterblast to Tobacco," in which the royal pedant states, "that some gentlemen of his courts were accustomed to expend no less than three or four hundred pounds a year upon this indulgence." He also says, "that it was used as a powerful aphrodisiac." He particularly deplores the case of delicate, wholesome, clean complexioned wives, whose husbands were not ashamed to pollute them with the perpetual stinking torment of tobacco smoke: the concluding sentence of this extraordinary composition is somewhat laughable. "The use of tobacco," he says, " is a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrid Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless."

Few would wish to withhold from a Dutchman the narcotic enjoyment of his pipe, when they reflect, that he seeks no other species of oblivion to his care; for, I believe, notwithstanding a Dutchman's eulogium upon his pipe, that it produces more oblivion than inspiration: he is scarcely ever seen intoxicated: indeed, drunkenness is held unpardonably infamous in Holland. To keep bad accounts, and to be seen inebriated, are equally disgraceful; and hence the use of wines and spirituous liquors is much less in Holland than in England.

The Dutch agree with Cassio's reasoning:

"Oh! that men should put an enemy into their mouths, to steal away their brains! That we should with joy, revel, pleasure, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!"

Othello, Act III. Scene 1.

The spill-houses are not the only objectionable instances of the abuse of the government; the police master is suffered to misuse his authority to a shameful excess. Instead of bringing delinquents to justice, he is in the frequent habit of privately compromising public offence, and putting the sum paid into his own pocket. Some time before I was in Rotterdam, a burgher who had been guilty of adultery, paid twenty thousand guilders to this minister of justice, who thus partaking of the commercial spirit of his country, becomes a merchant in delinquency.

I saw in several shops a great number of articles of English manufacture exposed to sale, particularly Manchester goods. The Dutch manufacture their own woollens, and they are esteemed to be very good. The black cloth of Holland is very well known, which is infinitely of a deeper and superior colour than ours. The principal cloth manufactures are at Leyden and Tielburg. There are also very capital and flourishing manufactures of velvets, silk, and carpets, at Hilversom; and those of linen and table-cloths, which are exquisite, at Overyssel; and numerous paper-mills.

The population of Rotterdam is estimated at sixty thousand inhabitants. Upon the whole, it is a gloomy place to live in; a constant iteration of the same canals, bridges, boats, houses, and figures, will soon damp the spirits of a traveller, unless naturally very vivacious. There is no theatre, no place of public amusement, but the spill-houses I have described, which are as much, at least to feeling minds, not accustomed to them, entitled to that appellation, as any of our houses of correction.

Here I bade adieu to my companions and friends, who proceeded direct to Germany, where I promised to rejoin them. I was by no means sorry to follow a lacquey to that quarter of the suburbs where the Delft boats set off every two hours, with my portmanteau, and to bid adieu to Rotterdam. Our treckschuyt lay ready for starting; at two o'clock, a little bell fastened on the outside of a house where the director resides, announced that all was ready; the horse was fastened to a very long, and rather a thin line, and we slipped through the liquid road, sensible of moving only from passing the objects that lined the sides of the canal,

consisting for a considerable way of pretty houses and avenues of

trees.

The treckschuyt is a long barge divided into two apartments; the after one, called the ruif or roof, possesses superior accommodations, and will hold from eight to a dozen persons, and the other from forty to fifty: this vessel, which is drawn by a single horse, moves so precisely at the rate of four miles an hour, that the Dutch always compute by the hour instead of the mile.* In the cabin or roof, there are four oblique windows, which move up and down, a table in the middle, with a long drawer filled with pipes. The seats are covered with handsome cushions; but the prime accommodations are a spitting-box, and a little iron pot filled with burning turf, to furnish the smokers with fire for their pipes. The price is about three pence an hour: this part is generally occupied by persons of a superior condition. So steady is the motion of the vessel, that the passenger may read, write, or draw in it, without interruption.

The treckschuyts preserve an easy intercourse between the most distant parts of the kingdom, and the cheapness of their conveyance places them within the reach of the most slender purse. Every thing relative to these vessels is conducted with such admirable punctuality, that the passenger can tell to the smallest cost in the kingdom what his expenses will amount to, and to a minute when he shall arrive at the end of his journey, in which, if it be long, he carries his provision with him, or purchases a frugal meal at the house where the boat stops a few minutes for that purpose. At those places where the treckschuyts stop on account of the course of the canal being interrupted, and where passengers are in consequence obliged to quit one vessel to go to another, there are females who offer refreshments for sale, consisting of little rolls and small birds, and slices of cold baked eels, fastened to a small stick.

* The Dutch boors are also so regular in smoking their pipes, that in calculating the distances of places, they say they are so many pipes

asunder.

The treckschuyts are all under the direction of government, and are truly punctual, convenient, cheap, and agreeable. The town of Delft was about twelve miles, or three hours distant. On the sides of the canal, the surface of the water was frequently covered by the nymphæa alba, a magnificent white water-lily, whose expanded and unsullied flowers had a charming effect, particularly when intermixed with menyanthes nymphoides, the yellow fringed water-lily, which are very uncommon in England.

We passed by several sawing or wood mills, which are moved by wind: the machinery of those buildings, which I afterwards examined, is very curious; they were originally invented by Corneille Van Uitgust. The flies of the mill are fixed to a large beam, which turns on an axis; in the centre of the beam the principal wheel is fixed, which impels one immediately below it, which is also fixed on the middle of a piece of timber, hanging on an axis, to which four perpendicular saws, ten in each compartment, are fastened, which, as the wheel revolves, are elevated and depressed. Two iron hooks are fastened at the end of this beam, which catch a wheel, and as the saw rises and falls, move this wheel one cog; that wheel impels another, which catches into a piece of iron, and draws it towards itself; at the end of this iron there is a cross bar, which presses against the end of the tree, while the other end is sawing, and gradually forces it on to the teeth of the saws, as they proceed in cutting.

I remember at Memel, in Polish Prussia, the sawing mills there had another mechanical power, that of drawing up the trees from the barks in which they were brought in the river, into the yard or store-house. I believe mills for sawing timber have been introduced only partially into England. All the mills in Holland rise to a very great height, to secure as much wind at all times as possible. Many of these mills were thatched on the sides as well as the roof.

A very ingenious discovery, infinitely more curious than the Dutch sawing-mill, has, however, been recently made in London, by Sir George Wright, Bart. of machinery for sawing stone, for which a patent has been obtained, now the property of Samuel

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