iance and
derision.

Holland is a fortress, and her people live as in a fortress on a
war-footing with the sea. An army of engineers, directed by the
Minister of the Interior, spread over the country, and ordered like
an army, continually spy the enemy, watch over the internal waters,
foresee the bursting of the dikes, order and direct the defensive
works. The expenses of the war are divided; one part to the State,
one part to the provinces; every proprietor pays, besides the general
imposts, a special impost for the dikes, in proportion to the extent
of his lands and their proximity to the water. An accidental rupture,
an inadvertence, may cause a flood; the peril is unceasing; the
sentinels are at their posts upon the bulwarks at the first assault of
the sea; they shout the war-cry, and Holland sends men, material, and
money. And even when there is not a great battle, a quiet, silent
struggle is for ever going on.

The innumerable mills, even in the drained districts, continue to work
unresting, to absorb and turn into the canals the water that falls in
rain and that which filters in from the sea.

But Holland has done more than defend herself against the waters;
she has made herself mistress of them, and has used them for her own
defense. Should a foreign army invade her territory, she has but to
open her dikes and unchain the sea and the rivers, as she did against
the Romans, against the Spaniards, against the army of Louis XIV., and
defend the land cities with her fleet. Water was the source of her
poverty, she has made it the source of wealth. Over the whole country
extends an immense net-work of canals which serve both for the
irrigation of the land and as a means of communication. The cities,
by means of canals, communicate with the sea; canals run from town to
town, and from them to villages, which are themselves bound together
by these watery ways, and are connected even to the houses scattered
over the country; smaller canals surround the fields and orchards,
pastures and kitchen-gardens, serving at once as boundary-wall, hedge,
and roadway; every house is a little port. Ships, boats, rafts move
about in all directions, as in other places carts and carriages. The
canals are the arteries of Holland, and the water her life-blood.

But even setting aside the canals, the draining of the lakes, and
the defensive works, on every side are seen the traces of marvelous
undertakings. The soil, which in other count