Its most interesting possession is the mouth of the Old Rhine, now restricted by a canal and controlled by locks.

There is perhaps no better example of the Dutch power over water than the contrast between the present narrow canal through which the river must disembogue and the unprofitable marsh which once spread here.

The locks, which are nearly a hundred years old, were among the works of the engineer Conrad, whose monument is in Haarlem church.
From the Old Rhine's mouth to Noordwyk is a lonely but very bracing walk of three miles along the sand, with the dunes on one's right hand and the sea on one's left.

One may meet perhaps a few shell gatherers, but no one else.

We drove before us all the way a white company consisting of a score of gulls, twice as many tern, two oyster catchers and one curlew.