All along the rivers and canals there were little painted
houses, with gay pavilions and balconies with fanciful carved
railings overhanging the water, and stages of flower-pot arranged in
them. Sometimes a stout Dutch vrow with full, white, spotless
sleeves, many-coloured substantial petticoats, gold buckles in her
shoes, and a great white cap with a kind of gold band round her head,
sat knitting there; or sometimes a Dutchman in trunk hose was fishing
there. We saw them all, for we had entered a barge or trekschuyt,
towed by horses on the bank, a great flat-bottomed thing, that
perfectly held our carriage. Thus we were to go by the canals to the
Hague, and no words can describe the strange silence and tranquillity
of our motion along still waters.
My sister and her nurse, who had so often cried out against both the
noisiness and the dirtiness of poor France, might well be satisfied
now. They said they had never seen anything approaching to it in
England. It was more like being shut up in a china closet than
anything else, and it seemed as if the people were all dumb or dead,
as we passed through those silent villages, while the great windmills
along the banks kept waving their huge arms in silence, till Annora
declared she felt she must presently scream, or ride a tilt with them
like Don Quixote.
And all the time, as we came nearer and nearer, our hearts sank more
and more, as we wondered in what state we should find our dear
brother, and whether we should find him at all.
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