Rollo in Holland
By Jacob Abbott
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Jacob Abbott
Jacob Abbott (1803-1879) was an American author, pastor, and professor. Born Jacob Abbot Ⅲ, he later added a “t” to the end of his name in order to break away from being “the third”. Abbott began his career as a professor of mathematics and philosophy at Amherst college in Massachusetts. He became a licensed preacher in 1826, and later went on to become the founder and pastor of the Eliot Congregational Church. Jacob Abbott wrote many works, including biographies, religious books, and juvenile fiction. By the end of his career, he co-wrote thirty-one titles, and authored one-hundred and eighty books on his own.
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Rollo in Holland - Jacob Abbott
Rollo in Holland
by
Jacob Abbott
Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.
This book is copyright and may not be
reproduced or copied in any way without
the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Contents
Rollo in Holland
Jacob Abbott
Chapter I. Preparations.
Chapter II. A Bad Travelling Companion.
Chapter III. The Mail Steamer.
Chapter IV. Entering Holland.
Chapter V. Walks About Rotterdam.
Chapter VI. Doing the Hague.
Chapter VII. Correspondence.
Chapter VIII. The Commissioner.
Chapter IX. The Great Canal.
Chapter X. The Dairy Village.
Chapter XI. Conclusion.
Jacob Abbott
Jacob Abbott was born on 14th November 1803 at Hallowell, Maine, United States. He was an American writer of children’s books, much loved for his historical and straightforward approach. Abbott spent his early education at the local Hallowell Academy, later studying at Bowdoin College and graduating in 1820. He then moved to Andover Theological Seminary, and on completing his course became a tutor there from 1824-1825. Abbott was clearly academically gifted and soon after (in 1829) was appointed professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Amherst College, having also been licensed to preach by the Hampshire Association in 1826. He also founded the Mount Vernon School for Young Ladies in Boston in 1829 and was principal of it until 1833.
After these academic and theological successes, Abbott became a full-time pastor of Eliot Congregational Church (which he founded) at Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1834-1835. With his brothers, he was also a founder, and in 1843–1851 a principal of Abbott’s Institute, and in 1845–1848 of the Mount Vernon School for Boys, in New York City. Abbott is best known for his writing however. He was a prolific author, writing juvenile fiction, brief histories, biographies, religious books for the general reader, and a few works in popular science. He wrote 180 books and was a co-author or editor of thirty-one more. His Rollo Books, such as Rollo at Work, Rollo at Play, Rollo in Europe, etc., are the best known of his writings, having as their chief characters a representative boy and his associates. Works of historical fiction, they recount Rollo and his every day adventures, growing up in nineteenth century rural America. Rollo enjoys playing in the woods, whether he’s building a wigwam, setting a trap for a squirrel, or rescuing a baby bird. Yet events don’t always turn out the way he wants — the squirrel escapes, the blueberry expedition is delayed by rain and, when it finally does happen, he encounters trouble on the mountain. Yet his friends and parents help Rollo through his difficulties, sometimes by aiding him directly but mostly by prompting him to think about his behaviour and come to a resolution himself.
Abbott had actually preceded these works with his Lucy Series, a similar endeavour, but directed at girls. He later penned Uncle George, using this character to teach young readers about ethics, geography, history and science. Abbott also wrote twenty-two volumes of biographical histories and a ten volume set titled the Franconia Stories. His biographical histories were especially well received, encompassing figures as diverse as Genghis Kahn, Margaret of Anjou, Richard I, II and III, Nero, Alexander the Great and Queen Elizabeth. They were specifically aimed at young people; from about fifteen to twenty-five years old, and within a few years of their publication (1848) they became standard reference works for juvenile history. Abraham Lincoln was even a fan! He wrote to the Abbots: ‘I want to thank you and your brother for Abbott’s series of Histories. I have not education enough to appreciate the profound works of voluminous historians, and if I had, I have no time to read them. But your series of Histories gives me, in brief compass, just that knowledge of past men and events which I need. I have read them with the greatest interest. To them I am indebted for about all the historical knowledge I have.’
Although the name of his wife is unrecorded, we do know that she died in 1843, after which Abbott moved to New York with his brother. Abbott had four sons, all of whom led happy and successful lives; Benjamin Vaughan Abbott and Austin Abbott were both eminent lawyers, whilst Lyman Abbott and Edward Abbott followed in their father’s footsteps and became well known authors. Abbott died on 31st October 1879, in Farmington, Maine, America. He had spent time here in 1839, and it was also the town where his brother, Samuel Phillips Abbott chose to found the Abbott School.
ROLLO’S TOUR IN EUROPE.
ORDER OF THE VOLUMES.
ROLLO ON THE ATLANTIC.
ROLLO IN PARIS.
ROLLO IN SWITZERLAND.
ROLLO IN LONDON.
ROLLO ON THE RHINE.
ROLLO IN SCOTLAND.
ROLLO IN GENEVA.
ROLLO IN HOLLAND.
ROLLO IN NAPLES.
ROLLO IN ROME.
VIEW IN HOLLAND.
ROLLO IN HOLLAND.
Chapter I.
Preparations.
Holland is one of the most remarkable countries on the globe. The peculiarities which make it remarkable arise from the fact that it is almost perfectly level throughout, and it lies so low. A very large portion of it, in fact, lies below the level of the sea, the waters being kept out, as every body knows, by immense dikes that have stood for ages.
These dikes are so immense, and they are so concealed by the houses, and trees, and mills, and even villages that cover and disguise them, that when the traveller first sees them he can hardly believe that they are dikes. Some of them are several hundred feet wide, and have a good broad public road upon the top, with a canal perhaps by the side of it, and avenues of trees, and road-side inns, and immense wind mills on the other hand. When riding or walking along upon such a dike on one side, down a long slope, they have a glimpse of water between the trees. On the other, at an equal distance you see a green expanse of country, with gardens, orchards, fields of corn and grain, and scattered farm houses extending far and wide. At first you do not perceive that this beautiful country that you see spreading in every direction on one side of the road is below the level of the water that you see on the other side; but on a careful comparison you find that it is so. When the tide is high the difference is very great, and were it not for the dikes the people would be inundated.[1]
Indeed, the dikes alone would not prevent the country from being inundated; for it is not possible to make them perfectly tight, and even if it were so, the soil beneath them is more or less pervious to water, and thus the water of the sea and of the rivers would slowly press its way through the lower strata, and oozing up into the land beyond, would soon make it all a swamp.
Then, besides the interpercolation from the soil, there is the rain. In upland countries, the surplus water that falls in rain flows off in brooks and rivers to the sea; but in land that is below the level of the sea, there can be no natural flow of either brooks or rivers. The rain water, therefore, that falls on this low land would remain there stagnant, except the comparatively small portion of it that would be evaporated by the sun and wind.
Thus you see, that if the people of Holland were to rely on the dikes alone to keep the land dry, the country would become in a very short time one immense morass.
To prevent this result it is necessary to adopt some plan to raise the water, as fast as it accumulates in the low grounds, and convey it away. This is done by pumps and other such hydraulic engines, and these are worked in general by wind mills.
They might be worked by steam engines; but steam engines are much more expensive than wind mills. It not only costs much more to make them, but the expense of working them from day to day is very great, on account of the fuel which they require. The necessary attendance on a steam engine, too, is very expensive. There must be engineers, with high pay, to watch the engine and to keep it always in order, and firemen to feed the fires, and ashmen to carry away the ashes and cinders. Whereas a wind mill takes care of itself.
The wind makes the wind mills go, and the wind costs nothing. It is true, that the head of the mill must be changed from time to time, so as to present the sails always in proper direction to the wind. But even this is done by the wind itself. There is a contrivance by which the mill is made to turn itself so as to face always in the right direction towards the wind; and not only so, but the mill is sometimes so constructed that if the wind blows too hard, it takes in a part of the sails by its own spontaneous action, and thus diminishes the strain which might otherwise be injurious to the machinery.
Now, since the advantages of wind mills are so great over steam engines, in respect especially to cheapness, perhaps you will ask why steam is employed at all to turn machinery, instead of always using the wind. The reason is, because the wind is so unsteady. Some days a wind mill will work, and some days it will lie still; and thus in regard to the time when it will do what is required of it, no reliance can be placed upon it. This is of very little consequence in the work of pumping up water from the sunken country in Holland; for, if for several days the mills should not do their work, no great harm would come of it, since the amount of water which would accumulate in that time would not do any harm. The ground might become more wet, and the canals and reservoirs get full,—just as brooks and rivers do on any upland country after a long rain. But then, after the calm was over and the wind began to blow again, the mills would all go industriously to work, and the surplus water would soon be pumped up, and discharged over the dikes into the sea again.
Thus the irregularity in the action of the wind mills in doing such work as this, is of comparatively little consequence.
But in the case of some other kinds of work,—as for example the driving of a cotton mill, or any other great manufactory in which a large number of persons are employed,—it would be of the greatest possible consequence; for when a calm time came, and the wind mill would not work, all the hands would be thrown out of employ. They might sometimes remain idle thus a number of days at a time, at a great expense to their employers, or else at a great loss to themselves. Sometimes, for example, there might be a fine breeze in the morning, and all the hands would go to the mill and begin their work. In an hour the breeze might entirely die away, and the spinners and weavers would all find their jennies and looms going slower and slower, and finally stopping altogether. And then, perhaps, two hours afterwards, when they had all given up the day’s work and gone away to their respective homes, the breeze would spring up again, and the wind mill would go to work more industriously than ever.
This would not answer at all for a cotton mill, but it does very well for pumping up water from a great reservoir into which drains and canals discharge themselves to keep a country dry.
And this reminds me of one great advantage which the people of Holland enjoy on account of the low and level condition of their country; and that is, it is extremely easy to make canals there. There are