IN HOLLAND.

Matamata Record, Volume VI, Issue 474, 24 September 1923, Page 4

IN HOLLAND.

IMPRESSIONS OP A VISITOR. Holland is a country of which one may get a delightful impression in two or three days—a vivid and definite impression, but etched, not painted —or in which one can wander pleasantly for weeks. Canals instead of roads, windmills cropping up everywhere, long tree-shaded pathways bv the water! long-roofed, quaint houses, slow and pleasant .people—these are some of one's first impressions of the, country, writes Haden Guest in John o' London's Weekly. What we are inclined to call " quaint houses " are characteristic Dutch houses. And it is indeed diflicult for us whose eyes and ears are too much accustomed to slums and suburbs to realise that a town like Haarlem, surrounded bygreen places, encircled by ramparts on which one may pleasantly walk, and deriving part of its livelihood from the beautiful .gardens of tulips',; hyacinths, lilies and other brilliant flowers, is really and seriously a town at all. Round Haarlem are, however, the famous bulb gardens, which are in themselves a great industry, and which help to brighten our lives by the quaintly-phrased catalogues which are sent widely to this country. An impression of quite another kind is to be got at Volendam, a little village on the Zuidcr Zee, the costume of which —balloon trousers, blouse, and sabots for men; short skirt, white starched head-dress, and sabots for women—is often accepted in this country as the typical Dutch costume because it has been so often painted. Volendam is quite near to Amsterdam, and the better part of the journey is best done on a,barge pulled along from the bank of the canal. The barge goes quietly, women washing at their doors look up as one passes, cattle browse serenely, and one gets little visions of ordinary " interiors" through open doors of cottage and farm, out of which glint the lights of tiled iloor, polished wood and yellow brass. But the observant, traveller will get a shock, for he will see the women, with a rage for cleanliness, scrubbing, washing, polishing their pans, milk vessels, plates, cups, in the water of the canal—which is water of the canal. Volendam is a long street—a decent hotel or so for the visitor—places where artists gregate, back streets where easels are set up to sketch unperturbed interiors (the tariff is fixed), children who smoke long cigars, a sea wall, and a fiat, wide and obviously shallow sea. And at Volendam the manners' and customs of all nations may be observed. The Volendamniers, it should be noted, wear nice bright clothes and pretty things round their necks nd things hanging from their hats and ears, and Americans also frequently wear nice bright clothes and things hanging from their hats and ears and from their waistbands. And to, see a large American, 'doing Volendam in an afternoon, go up to a fisher girl, pick up one of hot ornaments, and say, "Sadie, ain't this cute?" while the Volendam girl picks up one of the American's appendages and giggles out .something to her own friends standjng by, is to see international understanding in action.