In the distance was a tiny sailing boat with its sail set to catch what few puffs of wind were moving.

Its only occupant was a man in crimson trousers, the reflection from which made little splashes of warm colour in the pearl grey sea.

At Hoorn there seems to be a tendency to sail for pleasure, for as we came away a party of chattering girls glided out in the care of an elderly man--bound for a cruise in the Zuyder Zee.
It is conjectured that Hoorn took its name from the mole protecting the harbour, which might be considered to have the shape of a horn.

The city as she used to be (now dwindled to something less, although the cheese industry makes her prosperous enough and happy enough) was called by the poet Vondel the trumpet and capital of the Zuyder Zee, the blessed Horn.

He referred particularly to the days of Tromp, whose ravaging and victorious navy was composed largely of Hoorn ships.
Cape Horn, at the foot of South America, is the name-child of the Dutch port, for the first to discover the passage round that headland and to give it its style was Willem Schouten, a Hoorn sailor.