extends a dike ten kilometres long, constructed of masses of Norwegian granite, which descends more than sixty metres into the sea.  The whole province of Friesland, for the length of eighty-eight kilometres, is defended by three rows of piles sustained by masses of Norwegian and German granite.  Amsterdam, all the cities of the Zuyder Zee, and all the islands,—­fragments of vanished lands,—­which are strung like beads between Friesland and North Holland, are protected by dikes.  From the mouths of the Ems to those of the Scheldt, Holland is an impenetrable fortress, of whose immense bastions the mills are the towers, the cataracts are the gates, the islands the advanced forts; and like a true fortress, it shows to its enemy, the sea, only the tops of its bell-towers and the roofs of its houses, as if in defiance and derision.

Holland is a fortress, and her people live as in a fortress, on a war footing with the sea.  An army of engineers, directed by the Minister of the Interior, spread over the country, and, ordered like an army, continually spy the enemy, watch over the internal waters, foresee the bursting of the dikes, order and direct the defensive works.  The expenses of the war are divided,—­one part to the State, one part to the provinces; every proprietor pays, beside the general imposts, a special impost for the dikes, in proportion to the extent of his lands and their proximity to the water.  An accidental rupture, an inadvertence, may cause a flood; the peril is unceasing; the sentinels are at their posts upon the bulwarks; at the first assault of the sea, they shout the war-cry, and Holland sends men, material, and money.  And even when there is no great battle, a quiet, silent struggle is forever going on.  The innumerable mills, even in the drained districts, continue to work unresting, to absorb and turn into the canals the water that falls in rain and that which filters in from the sea.  Every day the cataracts of the bays and rivers close their gigantic gates against the high tide trying to rush into the heart of the land.  The work of strengthening dikes, fortifying sand-banks with plantations, throwing out new dikes where the banks are low, straight as great lances, vibrating in the bosom of the sea and breaking the first impetus of the wave, is forever going on.  And the sea eternally knocks at the river-gates, beats upon the ramparts, growls on every side her ceaseless menace, lifting her curious waves as if to see the land she counts as hers, piling up banks of sand before the gates to kill the commerce of the cities, forever gnawing, scratching, digging at the coast; and failing to overthrow the ramparts upon which she foams and fumes in angry effort, she casts at their feet ships full of the dead, that they may announce to the rebellious country her fury and her strength.