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When, through the captain of the Haarlem, as interpreter, I explained to the Dutch crew that it was my intention to call upon them to continue to work the ship, they seemed disposed at the outset to refuse; but I soon brought them to a more reasonable frame of mind by giving them the choice of remaining in their own forecastle and enjoying the liberty of the Haarlem's deck, on the one hand, and being transferred to the frigate and confined below, on the other, when it took them but a few minutes to make up their minds that the first alternative was by far the more desirable of the two.
By a heavy payment, the burghers purchased immunity from the flames; but for eight days the town was given up to the lust and ferocity of an uncontrolled soldiery, from whose senseless destruction it took thirty years to recover. Egmond, with its great abbey, was pillaged; and then it was Haarlem's turn to suffer. But by this time resistance had been organized.
After the charm of Haarlem's suburbs, Hilversum, where merchants of Amsterdam play at being in the country, was disappointing; but having lunched in open air, and spun on toward Amersfoort, we ran into a district which holds some delightful houses, set among plane trees, varied with flowering acacias and plantations of oak.
While other towns boast of the magnificence of their arsenals and dock-yards, and the splendour of their shops and markets, Haarlem's claims to fame rest upon her superiority to all other provincial cities in the number and beauty of her spreading elms, graceful poplars, and, more than all, upon her pleasant walks, shaded by the lovely arches of magnificent oaks, lindens, and chestnuts.
To many of us the picture smiles less than it thrills with sadness. Perhaps it speaks thus only to those who find a kind of hurt in the revival of the spring, which promises so much and may fulfill so little." Hobbema's "Watermill" is very well-known and so are his "Wooded Landscape," and "Haarlem's Little Forest."
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