are also soft thick blankets with scarlet borders, which make one warm
merely to look at them.

The Dutch people are industrious, and cleanly. The women are the most
active and nicest house-wives in the world; they scour and brighten,
and rub not only the furniture and inside of their houses, but the
outside as well; the houses in Holland, by-the-bye, look like painted
baby-houses, and are roofed with glossy delft tiles, and the rooms are
lined with smooth square tiles of delft, and the floors paved with
marble. The people are never idle in Holland, but are always working
at a great variety of manufactures, among which are leather, woollen,
and linen articles,--also, paper, wax, starch, pottery, and tiles.
Large quantities of gin are likewise made, and this liquor is in
England called "Hollands" for that reason. Carts are not much used by
the Dutch; their goods are carried on sledges, very light waggons, and
boats. The reason of this is, that they are afraid lest the wheels of
vehicles should injure the foundations of their cities, which are
generally built on piles of huge trees, driven like stakes into the
bog beneath. The common people are very humane to their cattle; they
rub down the cows and oxen, and keep them as clean and sleek as our
English horses. Canals run through the principal streets, and in
winter they are frozen over for two or three months, when the whole
country is like a fair; booths are erected upon the ice, with fires in
them. The country people skate to market, with milk and vegetables;
and every kind of sport is seen on the frozen canals. Sledges fly from
one street to another, gaily decorated, and numberless skaters glide
about with astonishing swiftness and dexterity. No people skate so
well as the Dutch.

[Illustration]