CHAPTER XIII.
Around Amsterdam: North To Marken--An _opera-bouffe_ island--Cultivated and profitable simplicity--Broek-in-Waterland--Cow-damp--The two doors--Gingerbread and love--Dead cities--Monnickendam--The overturned camera--Dutch phlegm--Brabant the quarrelsome--Edam--Holland's great churches--Edam's roll of honour--A beard of note--A Dutch Daniel Lambert--A virgin colossus--A ship-owner indeed--The mermaid--Volendam--Taciturnity and tobacco--Purmerend--The land of windmills--Zaandam--Green paint at its highest power--A riverside inn--Peter the Great.
An excursion which every one will say is indispensable takes one to Marken (pronounced Marriker); but I have my doubts.

The island may be reached from Amsterdam either by boat, going by way of canal and returning by sea, or one may take the steam-tram to Monnickendam or Edam, and then fall into the hands of a Marken mariner.

To escape his invitations to sail thither is a piece of good fortune that few visitors succeed in achieving.
Marken in winter wears perhaps a genuine air; in the season of tourists it has too much the suggestion of _opera bouffe_.

The men's costume is comic beyond reason; the inhabitants are picturesque of set design; the old women at their doorways are too consciously the owners of quaint habitations, glimpses of which catch the eye by well-studied accident.

I must confess to being glad to leave: for either one was intruding upon a simple folk entirely surrounded by water; or the simple folk, knowing human nature, had made itself up and sent out its importunate young from strictly mercenary motives.