Not only is Zaandam's green the greenest, but its red roofs are the reddest, in Holland.

A single row of trees runs down each of its long streets, and on the other side of each are illimitable fields intersected by ditches which on a cloudless afternoon might be strips of the bluest ribbon.
We sat for an hour in the garden of "De Zon," a little inn on the west bank half-way between the dam and the bridge.

The landlady brought us coffee, and with it letters from other travellers who had liked her garden and had written to tell her so.

These she read and purred over, as a good landlady is entitled to do, while we watched the barges float past and disappear as the distant lock opened and swallowed them.
South of the dam the interest is centred in the hut where for a while in 1697 Peter the Great lived to see how the Dutchmen built their ships.

The belief that no other motive than the inspection of this very uninteresting cottage could bring a stranger hither is a tenet of faith to which the Zaandamer is bound with shackles of iron.