but he was a lazy, mangy fellow, and gave us
little trouble. The wind continued favourable, and on the sixth evening,
the lights of Goeree and Helvoetsluis were visible. Some of the
passengers left us at the latter town; but I merely went ashore and took
a rapid look of the streets, and of the guard-ship, which was in the Dock
in the centre of the town, and returned to the smack by the captain's
boat. I saw rather a curious scene on board the man-of-war. Some of her
men had been engaged in a row the previous night, and were sentenced to
be flogged. After being stripped, they seemed to dip each man in the
water before commencing the more disagreeable part of the operation. If I
had not been in such a hurry, I should certainly have made bold to have
carried a biscuit to a poor little midshipman, who was condemned to
remain twelve hours at the mast-head for some nonsense or other, and who
looked most miserably cold.

Mynheer is certainly a strange fat-bottomed animal after all. His pipe
never seems to be out of his mouth, nor his hands out of his pockets. The
pilots who came on board, with their very little hats, their immense wide,
short breeches, and large wooden shoes, surprised me not a little. The
Dutch get the credit of being very cleanly, but I cannot say much as to
that, in their persons at least. The Bad Huis, or Bath Hotel, which is on
the Boom Keys, the best street in Rotterdam, was recommended to me as the
only one a gentleman could go to, and there accordingly I and four of the
passengers took up our quarters.

Upon the whole, there did not appear much to be seen in the town. The
inhabitants seemed more an eating and drinking sort of people than any
thing else. Their ferries through the town are a very great nuisance,
as one cannot always have a doit about them; and a surly, brown, Dutch
rascal at one time had the impudence to stop me till I had to borrow
from a friend. The statue of Erasmus is a shabby concern.

A party were intending, I found, to make a trip along the Rhine; so
I thought I could not do better than join them. We went by the Hague,
Haarlem, and Amsterdam. With the last, I was much disappointed. They say
it contains 200,000 human inhabitants, but it has not even a tolerable
hotel. The famous Haarlem tulip gardens, I of course visited,
particularly those of Van Eeden. I wonder what the fools could see in
tulips, who gave 10,000 guilders for one root. The organ is certainly
very fine; but it n