ires and its Harbour Tower beautifully unreal. And as the
ship comes nearer there is the additional interest of wondering how
the apparently landlocked harbour is to be entered, a long green bar
seeming to stretch unbrokenly from side to side. At the last minute
the passage is revealed, and one glides into this romantic port. I
put Hoorn next to Middelburg in the matter of charm, but seen from
the sea it is of greater fascination. In many ways Hoorn is more
remarkable as a town, but more of my heart belongs to Middelburg.

I sat on the coping of the harbour at sundown and watched a merry party
dining in the saloon of a white and exceedingly comfortable-looking
yacht, some thirty or forty yards away. Two neat maids continually
passed from the galley to the saloon, and laughter came over
the water. The yacht was from Arnheim, its owner having all the
appearance of a retired East Indian official. In the distance was
a tiny sailing boat with its sail set to catch what few puffs of
wind were moving. Its only occupant was a man in crimson trousers,
the reflection from which made little splashes of warm colour in the
pearl grey sea. At Hoorn there seems to be a tendency to sail for
pleasure, for as we came away a party of chattering girls glided out
in the care of an elderly man--bound for a cruise in the Zuyder Zee.

It is conjectured that Hoorn took its name from the mole protecting the
harbour, which might be considered to have the shape of a horn. The
city as she used to be (now dwindled to something less, although
the cheese industry makes her prosperous enough and happy enough)
was called by the poet Vondel the trumpet and capital of the Zuyder
Zee, the blessed Horn. He referred particularly to the days of Tromp,
whose ravaging and victorious navy was composed largely of Hoorn ships.

Cape Horn, at the foot of South America, is the name-child of the Dutch
port, for the first to discover the passage round that headland and to
give it its style was Willem Schouten, a Hoorn sailor. It was another
Hoorn sailor, Abel Tasman, who discovered Van Diemen's Land (now called
after him) and also New Zealand; and a third, Jan Pieters Coen (whose
statue may be seen at Hoorn) who founded the Dutch dominions in the
East Indies, and thus changed the whole character of his own country,
leading to that orientalising to which I have so often referred.

A more picturesque hero was John Haring of Hoorn, who performed a
great feat in 1572,