My advice to any one visiting Amsterdam is first to study a map of the
city--Bædeker gives a very useful one--and thus to begin with a general
idea of the lie of the land and the water. With this knowledge, and
the assistance of the trams, it should not appear a very bewildering
place. The Dam is its heart: a fact the acquisition of which will
help very sensibly. All roads in Amsterdam lead to the Dam, and all
lead from it. The Dam gives the city its name--Amstel dam, the dam
which stops the river Amstel on its course to the Zuyder Zee. It also
gives English and American visitors opportunities for facetiousness
which I tingle to recall. Every tram sooner or later reaches the Dam:
that is another simplifying piece of information. The course of each
tram may not be very easily acquired, but with a common destination
like this you cannot be carried very far wrong.

One soon learns that the trams stop only at fixed points, and waits
accordingly. The next lesson, which is not quite so simple, is that
some of these points belong exclusively to trams going one way and
some exclusively to trams going the other. If there is one thing
calculated to reduce a perplexed foreigner in Amsterdam to rage and
despair, it is, after a tiring day among pictures, to hail a half
empty tram at a fixed point, with _Tram-halte_ written on it, and
be treated to a pitying smile from the driver as it rushes by. Upon
such mortifications is education based; for one then looks again more
narrowly at the sign and sees that underneath it is a little arrow
pointing in the opposite direction to which one wished to go. One
then walks on to the next point, at which the arrow will be pointing
homewards, and waits there. Sometimes--O happy moment--a double arrow
is found, facing both ways.

It is on the Dam that guides will come and pester you. The guide