ise cross the Zuyder Zee in a huge railway raft. The steamer
takes an hour or a little longer--time enough to have lunch on deck if
it is fine, and watch Enkhuisen fading into nothingness and Stavoren
rising from the sea.

Before the thirteenth century the Zuyder Zee consisted only of
Lake Flevo, south of Stavoren and Enkhuisen, so that our passage
then would have been made on land. But in 1282 came a great tempest
which drove the German ocean over the north-west shores of Holland,
insulating Texel and pouring over the low land between Holland and
Friesland. The scheme now in contemplation to drain the Zuyder Zee
proposes a dam from Enkhuisen to Piaam, thus reclaiming some 1,350,000
acres for meadow land. Since what man has done man can do, there is
little doubt but that the Dutch will carry through this great project.

Concerning Stavoren there is now but one thing to say, and no writer
on Holland has had the temerity to avoid saying it. That thing is the
story of the widow and the sandbank. It seems that at Stavoren in its
palmy days was a wealthy widow shipowner, who once gave instructions
to one of her captains, bound for a foreign port, that he should
bring back the most valuable and precious thing to be found there,
in exchange for the outward cargo. The widow expected I know not
what--ivory, perhaps, or peacocks, or chrysoprase--and when the
captain brought only grain, she was so incensed that, though the poor
of Stavoren implored her to give it them, she bade him forthwith throw
it overboard. This he did, and the corn being cursed there sprang up
on that spot a sandbank which gradually ruined the harbour and the
town. The bank is called The Widow's Corn to this day.

It was near Stavoren that M. Havard engaged in a pleasant and improving
conversation with a lock-keeper who had fought with France, and from
him learned some curious things about Friesland customs. I quote
a little: "When a wife has given birth to a boy and added a son to
Friesland, all her female friends come to see her and drink in her room
the _brandewyn_, which is handed round in a special cup or goblet. Each
woman brings with her a large tart, all of which are laid out in the
room--sometimes they number as many as thirty. The more there are
and the finer the cakes the better, because that proves the number of
friends. A few days later the new-born Frieslander is taken to church,
all the girls from twelve years old accompanying the child and c