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When his father was able to sit up and talk, Pete started to row back to the little wharf in front of his home. But where was it, the farm, with the house and fields? Whither had they gone? Ryer was too mystified to get his bearings, but Pete knew the points of the compass. Yet his father's farm was not there. He looked at the shore of Overijssel, which he had left.
After a while, he moved to the shore of the Zuyder Zee and into Overijssel. Overijssel means over the Ijssel River. There he bought a new farm, near the village of Blokzyl. By dyking and pumping, certain wise men had changed ten acres, of sand and heath, into pasture and land for plowing. They surrounded it on three sides with canals. The fourth side fronted on the Zuyder Zee.
"Hundreds of hectares of floating pastures," says our author, "which have nothing in their appearance to distinguish them from grass-lands resting on solid bog, are found in Overijssel, in North Holland, and near Utrecht. In short, they occur in all deep bogs, and wherever deep water is left long undisturbed."
Meanwhile, what had become of the farm and "the Queezel," as the neighbors still called her that is, the mother with the children. These good people soon saw that they were floating off somewhere. The mainland was every moment receding further into the distance. In fact, the farm was moving from Overijssel northward, towards Friesland.
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