I fancy, with any intention of entering
it--and every eye among them probed me like a corkscrew. It is an
out of the world spot, to which it is possible no foreigner ever
before penetrated, and since their country was a show to me I had no
right to object to serve as a show to them. But such scrutiny is not
comfortable. I hastened to the sea.

One reaches the sea by a path across the fields to an inner dyke with a
high road upon it, and then by another footpath, or paths, beside green
ditches, to the ultimate dyke which holds Neptune in check. As I walked
I was continually conscious of heavy splashes just ahead of me, which
for a while I put down to water-rats. But chancing to stand still I
was presently aware of the proximity of a huge green frog, the largest
I have ever seen, who sat, solid as a paper weight, close beside me,
with one eye glittering upon me and the other upon the security of
the water, into which he jumped at a movement of my hand. Walking
then more warily I saw that the banks on either side were populous
with these monsters; and sometimes it needed only a flourish of the
handkerchief to send a dozen simultaneously into the ditch. I am glad
we have not such frogs at home. A little frog is an adorable creature,
but a frog half-way to realising his bovine ambition is a monster.

The sea dyke is many feet high. Its lowest visible stratum is of
black stones, beneath the sea-level; then a stratum of large red
bricks; then turf. The willow branches are invisible, within. The
land hereabout is undoubtedly some distance below sea-level, but it
is impossible either here or anywhere in Holland to believe in the
old and venerable story of the dyke plugged by an heroic thumb to
the exclusion of the ocean and the safety of the nation.

As I lay on the bank in the sun, listening to a thousand larks,
with all Friesland on one hand and the pearl grey sea on the other,
a passer-by stopped and asked me a question which I failed to
understand. My reply conveyed my nationality to him. "Ah," he said,
"Eenglish. Do it well with you?" I said that it did excellently
well. He walked on until he met half a dozen other men, some hundred
yards away, when I saw him pointing to me and telling them of the
long conversation he had been enjoying with me in my own difficult
tongue. It was quite clear from their interest that the others were
conscious of the honour of having a real linguist among them.

Another day I went to Harlin