CHAPTER I.
Rotterdam To Rotterdam by water--To Rotterdam by rail--Holland's monotony of scenery--Holland in England--Rotterdam's few merits--The life of the river--The Rhine--Walt Whitman--Crowded canals--Barge life--The Dutch high-ways--A perfect holiday--The canal's influence on the national character--The florin and the franc--Lady Mary Wortley Montagu--The old and the poor--Holland's health--Funeral customs--The chemists' shops--Erasmus of Rotterdam--Latinised names--Peter de Hooch--True aristocracy--The Boymans treasures--Modern Dutch art--Matthew Maris--The Rotterdam Zoo--The herons--The stork's mission--The ourang-outang--An eighteenth-century miser--A successful merchant--The Queen-Mother--Tom Hood in Rotterdam--Gouda.
It was once possible to sail all the way to Rotterdam by either of the two lines of steamships from England--the Great Eastern, _via_ Harwich, and the Batavier, direct from London.

But that is possible now only by the Batavier, passengers by the better-known Harwich route being landed now and henceforward at the Hook at five A.M.I am sorry for this, because after a rough passage it was very pleasant to glide in the early morning steadily up the Maas and gradually acquire a sense of Dutch quietude and greyness.

No longer, however, can this be done, as the Batavier boats reach Rotterdam at night; and one therefore misses the river, with the little villages on its banks, each with a tiny canal-harbour of its own; the groups of trees in the early mist; the gulls and herons; and the increasing traffic as one drew nearer Schiedam and at last reached that forest of masts which is known as Rotterdam.
But now that the only road to Rotterdam by daylight is the road of iron all that is past, and yet there is some compensation, for short as the journey is one may in its progress ground oneself very thoroughly in the characteristic scenery of Holland.

No one who looks steadily out of the windows between the Hook and Rotterdam has much to learn thereafter.

Only changing skies and atmospheric effects can provide him with novelty, for most of Holland is like that.