n a child's
birthday cake sprinkled with "hundreds of thousands." After that, I
laughed as much as I liked at everything, though I was sure the people
who had built the houses took them quite seriously, and admired them
beyond words. You felt that each man had put his whole soul into the
scheme of his house, trying to outdo his neighbors in color or
originality.

There would be a house with a red-brick front for the lower story, and
the upper one, including gables, done in wood painted pea-green. Then
the sides of the house would be in green and white stripes, the
window-frames sky-blue, the tiny sparkling panes twinkling out like
diamonds set in turquoises. But these would not be the only colors to
dazzle your eyes as you flashed through the tall Gothic archway of trees
darkening the road. There would be a three-foot deep band of ultramarine
distemper running all round a house, the trunks of the trees and the
fence would be brilliantly blue, and despite a dash of scarlet here and
there, as you approached you had the impression of coming to a lake of
azure water.

Further on would be another house, yellow and scarlet and white, having
a door like a mosaic with raised patterns of flowers in pink, blue, and
purple on a background of gold or black; and the high, pointed roof,
half thatched, half covered with glittering black tiles.

These roofs made the houses look as if they had bald, shiny foreheads,
with thick hair on top, and gave the windows a curiously wise
expression.

But if the homesteads (with their additions for families of horses and
cows) were extraordinary, they were commonplace compared with the
chicken or pigeon-houses, shaped like chateaux, or Chinese pagodas,
wreathed with flowers.

When at last we drove under a gateway across the road, and the color was
suddenly extinguished as if a show of fireworks were over, we all felt
as though we had come back to the everyday world after an excursion into
elfland.

It was the entrance to Enkhuisen, the last of the Dead Cities which we
were to visit--a strange, sad old town, with a charming park, churches
three times too big for it, and beautiful seventeenth-century houses,
small but perfect as cameos. We drove to the harbor, not only to see the
wonderful humpbacked Dromedary Tower, but to find out whether there were
any news of our boat, before going to the hotel.

A stiff wind was blowing; the sea was gray, and waves tossed angrily
against the breakwater