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Having purchased Cook's tickets to Geneva, via Holland, Belgium, Germany, and Austria, taking the principal cities in Switzerland and Chamouni in our route, we must bid good-bye to London for the present.

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CHAPTER XV.

MSTERDAM, JULY 18.-Here we are in Holland, stopping at the Amsted Hotel, the leading public house in Amsterdam, and said to be the best in Holland. We left London in a pouring rain, at seven P. M., on the 16th, took the steamer from Harwich about nine, and reached Rotterdam next morning at half-past nine, after a most wretched night of sea-sickness, so far as the writer was concerned. His fair companion having been so fortunate as to secure a lounge, passed the night quite comfortably. No such luck for him! Every berth in the gentlemen's cabin was engaged, and the best that could be done for him was a mattress on the cabin floor across the stern of the boat, a hard pillow about two inches thick, one blanket, and a wash-bowl as a compagnon de lit. This arrangement, however, had this advantage-it avoided the necessity of undressing. But such a bed, and such an irregular rocking, pitching, and twisting! All night long the boat was dancing a crazy jig, and you might as well have tried to dodge chain-lightning as attempted to accommodate yourself to its erratic motions. Travelers between England and the Continent may well bid the day good speed when they

may make the passage by rail through a submarine tunnel. We made only a short stop in Rotterdam, but long enough to see that it is a large city; and we had a good view of it as we approached it by the river Meuse, whose green banks, after such a night, were beautiful to behold. The city is threaded by canals, with draw and stationary bridges, and much of the communication is by ferryboats. In the market-place there is a bronze statue of Erasmus, and the house in which he was born, in 1467, is still preserved.

From Rotterdam we proceeded to the Hague, the capital of Holland, and a charmingly neat and clean city, also abounding in canals. The streets and sidewalks are well paved and shaded by long rows of trees, and extending into the city stands a large forest, kept entirely clear of all underbrush. A drive of one or two miles through this forest took us to the "Queen's House in the Woods." The grounds around it are beautifully laid out, and adorned by flower gardens, fountains, and statuary. In appearance the exterior of the Palace is unpretending, but its rooms and furniture are remarkably fine. The ball-room is very spacious, and is full of paintings, many of which illustrate the life of Frederick, the first King of the Netherlands. Family portraits adorn the billiard-room. There is a Chinese and likewise a Japanese room, each provided with furniture from those countries respectively. The former has furniture upholstered with white embroidered silk, and the latter with light green silk, elaborately worked, all gifts to the Queen from those countries. We understand that the Queen's family consists of herself, husband, and two sons. The King occupies his Palace in the city, paying

only occasional visits to the Queen; Harper's Handbook says "once a year," but that seems unreasonable. We passed but did not enter the King's Palace. We have visited the old and new House of Lords and House of Commons, having to pay fees to three attendants before we could get in; as we were obliged to pay, also, one guilder (one franc each) admission fee to the House in the Woods. The chief attraction was in the National Museum, (admission free,) formerly the Palace of Prince Maurice, where there is a large collection of paintings, mostly by Dutch and Flemish artists. We saw here the famous picture of the "Young Bull," by Paul Potter. It is stated that Napoleon seized this picture and had it hung up in the Louvre in Paris, notwithstanding the Dutch government offered him $100,000 to leave it undisturbed. It represents a young bull with white and brown spots, a cow reclining on the greensward before him, a horned ram, with a sheep and lamb, lying at his head, and an old cowherd leaning against a large tree, under the shade of which and an adjoining tree all (life size) seem to be resting in quiet contemplation. Another noted picture is "Venus Asleep," by Poussin. We turned away, without reluctance, from a large painting by Rembrandt, representing the dissection of a dead man by a professor and his pupils. It is considered. a great work of art. There is here also a Royal Cabinet of Curiosities, comprising costumes of the Chinese and Japanese, a large collection of Japanese ware, weapons, coats-of-mail, and thousands of other things of more or less interest.

Amsterdam is an hour and a half by rail from the Hague. Here, too, there is a Royal Palace, regarded as the most magnificent building in the city. We

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went into the bell-tower and stopped to hear the chime of bells there. From this point we had a good view of the city and surrounding country. The whole city rests on piles, and it is divided by deep canals into no less than ninety islands, which are connected by hundreds of bridges. Descending from the tower, we were shown through the various rooms of the palace, one of which, called the marble room, is unusually superb, and in all of which are many fine paintings, the most striking of which, perhaps, is a large one representing the blowing up of his ship by Van Speyk rather than surrender to the Belgian forces. In the Museum, likewise, we saw some five hundred pictures, with some of which we were much pleased. Those of the Dutch and Flemish schools predominate. One large painting by Rembrandt represents the "Night Patrol;" and a still larger one, considered the masterpiece of Van der Heist, "represents a banquet of the Garde Bourgeoise, which took place June 18, 1648, in the grand Salle de St. Loris Docle in the Single at Amsterdam, to celebrate the conclusion of the peace of Munster." There are twenty-five figures, said to be all portraits, in this picture. Rembrandt's "Five Masters of the Draper's Company" is also regarded as one of his greatest works.

From the Museum, wishing to take a carriage to the Zoological Gardens, we were not a little amused as well as puzzled to find that we were utterly unable to make any of the hackmen understand what we wanted. We did not understand a word of Dutch, and those "foreigners," as Mark Twain might call them, were equally ignorant both of English and French, which we tried upon them in vain. At length an omnibus driver, who understood a few

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