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Updated: June 12, 2025
The canal furnished a way of transportation for the small farmers living near it, too, whose little farms had been reclaimed from the bog, and their produce was brought into Oldenburg on the canal-boats. We could see better-looking buildings back farther, where the land was more fertile.
But when the two girls, instead of bringing forward their dolls and tea-sets with which to entertain their visitors, produced from their treasures two good-sized toy canal-boats, fully equipped with everything a canal-boat needed, he admitted to himself that girls who liked to sail boats might be good for something.
They are drawn by horses, like canal-boats; and a horse being attached to our own barge, he trotted off at a reasonable pace, and we slipped through the water behind him, with a gentle and pleasant motion, which, save for the constant vicissitude of cultivated scenery, was like no motion at all. It was life without the trouble of living; nothing was ever more quietly agreeable.
Just before dawn we made our fire and roasted the potatoes. They tasted fine, and as the day was warm and bright, we began to feel more cheerful. That day we heard the deep-booming whistles of steamboats, and the shriller notes of the canal-boats. Although we knew the river boats were passing up and down just below us, we restrained our curiosity and stayed closely hidden.
This flat, flourishing, easy country never could have looked more rich and prosperous than in that opening summer of 1815, when its green fields and quiet cities were enlivened by multiplied red-coats: when its wide chaussees swarmed with brilliant English equipages: when its great canal-boats, gliding by rich pastures and pleasant quaint old villages, by old chateaux lying amongst old trees, were all crowded with well-to-do English travellers: when the soldier who drank at the village inn, not only drank, but paid his score; and Donald, the Highlander, billeted in the Flemish farm-house, rocked the baby's cradle, while Jean and Jeannette were out getting in the hay.
Our task was to unload canal-boats, carrying huge stay-bolts on our shoulders, like railroad ties, into the prison. As I worked I sized up the situation and studied the chances for a get-away. There wasn't the ghost of a show. Along the tops of the walls marched guards armed with repeating rifles, and I was told, furthermore, that there were machine-guns in the sentry-towers. I did not worry.
"There is stuff in him," said Maurice, "to outweigh half a dozen Contra-Remonstrant preachers." Everywhere in Holland the opponents of the Five Points refused to go to the churches, and set up tabernacles for themselves in barns, outhouses, canal-boats.
So the elements in Holland set man the example he will not rush himself to death when not even the wind does. Then another thing: Holland has many canals. Farmers load their hay on canal-boats and take it to the barn, women go to market in boats, lovers sail, seemingly, right across the fields canals everywhere. Traveling by canal is not rapid transit.
Canal-boats, drawn by mules, swim by, feeling their way along like blind men led by dogs.
In fact, the entire country is a kind of saturated sponge or, as the English poet, Butler, called it, A land that rides at anchor, and is moor'd, In which they do not live, but go aboard. Persons are born, live, and die, and even have their gardens on canal-boats.
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