86 Hans Brinker

merchants’ warerooms, perched high up under the roofs of

their dwellings, with long arm-like cranes hoisting and lower-

ing goods past the household windows; the grand public build-

 

LONG ARM-LIKE CRANES, HOISTING
AND LOWERING GOODS.

ings, erected upon wooden
piles driven deep into the
marshy ground; the narrow
streets; the canals every-
where crossing the city; the
bridges; the locks; the vari-
ous costumes; and, strangest
of all, shops and dwellings
crouching close to the fronts
of the churches, sending their
long, disproportionate chim-
neys far upward along the
sacred walls.

If he looked up, he saw
tall, leaning houses, seeming
to pierce the sky with their
shining roofs; if he looked
down, there was the queer
street, without crossing or
curb, nothing to separate the
cobble-stone pavement from

the footpath of brick; and, if he rested his eyes halfway, he
saw complicated little mirrors (spionnen) fastened upon the

outside of nearly every window, so arranged that the inmates

of the houses could observe all that was going on in the street,

or inspect whoever might be knocking at the door, without

being seen themselves.

Sometimes a dog-cart, heaped with wooden-ware, passed him;