18 , Hans Brinker

there found shelter and encouragement. If we Americans
—many of us surely of Holland stock —can laugh at the
Dutch, and call them human beavers, and hint that their
country may float off any day at high tide, we can also know
that they have proved themselves heroes, and that their country
will zot float off while there is a Dutchman left to grapple it.

There are said to be at least ninety-nine hundred large wind-
mills in Holland, with sails ranging from eighty to one hundred
and twenty feet long. They are employed in sawing timber,
beating hemp, grinding, and many other kinds of work; but
their principal use is for pumping water from the lowlands into
the canals, and for guarding against the inland freshets that so
often deluge the country. Their yearly cost is said to be
nearly ten millions of dollars. The large ones are of great
power. Their huge, circular tower, rising sometimes from the
midst of factory buildings, is surmounted with a smaller one,
tapering into a caplike roof. This upper tower is encircled at
its base with a balcony, high above which juts the axis, turned
by its four prodigious ladder-backed sails.

Many of the windmills are primitive affairs, seeming sadly
in need of Yankee “improvements ;”’ but some of the new
ones are admirable. ‘They are so constructed that, by some
ingenious contrivance, they present their fans, or wings, to the
wind in precisely the right direction to work with the requisite
power. In other words, the miller may take a nap, and feel
quite sure that his mill will study the wind, and make the
most of it, until he wakens. Should there be but a slight cur-
rent of air, every sail will spread itself to catch the faintest
breath; but, if a heavy “blow” should come, they will shrink
at its touch, like great mimosa-leaves, and only give it half a
chance to move them.