CHAPTER XV.
Friesland: Stavoren to Leeuwarden Enkhuisen to Stavoren--Draining the Zuyder Zee--The widow and the sandbank--Frisian births and courtships--Hindeloopen--Quaint rooms and houses--A pious pun--Biers for all trades--Sneek--Barge life--Two giants--Bolsward--The cow--A digression on the weed.
The traveller from Amsterdam enters Free Frisia at Stavoren, once the home of kings and now a mere haven.

A little steamer carries the passengers from Enkhuisen, while the cattle trucks and vans of merchandise cross the Zuyder Zee in a huge railway raft.

The steamer takes an hour or a little longer--time enough to have lunch on deck if it is fine, and watch Enkhuisen fading into nothingness and Stavoren rising from the sea.
Before the thirteenth century the Zuyder Zee consisted only of Lake Flevo, south of Stavoren and Enkhuisen, so that our passage then would have been made on land.

But in 1282 came a great tempest which drove the German ocean over the north-west shores of Holland, insulating Texel and pouring over the low land between Holland and Friesland.

The scheme now in contemplation to drain the Zuyder Zee proposes a dam from Enkhuisen to Piaam, thus reclaiming some 1,350,000 acres for meadow land.