The canals of this city are very convenient, but many of them most offensively impure, the uniform greenness of which is chequered only by dead cats, dogs, offal, and vegetable substances of every kind, which are left to putrefy at the top, until the canal scavengers, who are employed to clean the canals, remove them: the barges which are used on these occasions, and the persons employed in them, present a very disgusting appearance; the mud which is raised by them, forms most excellent manure, and the sum it fetches in Brabant, is calculated to be equal to the expenses of the voyage. Some of the most eminent Dutch physicians maintain that the effluvia arising from the floating animal and vegetable matter of these canals, is not injurious, and in proof, during a contagious fever which ravaged this city, it was observed, that the inhabitants who resided nearest to the foulest canals, were not infected, whilst those who lived near purer water, only in few instances escaped; but this by no means confirms the assertion, because those inhabitants who lived adjoining to foul canals, were inured to contagion from its habitual application, for the same reason that medical men and nurses generally escape infection, from being so constantly exposed to it. The fair criterion would be to ascertain whether, when the city is healthy, such quarters of it continue more so. The effluvia arising from putrid animal matter, by the medical people of this country, and of almost every other, is considered far from being innoxious, but infinitely less injurious than that evolved by the decomposition of vegetables: at the same time there are many offensive smells that are far from being unwholesome, for instance, that of the bilge-water of a ship, and others might be enumerated. The water of these canals is in general about eight or nine feet deep, and the mud at the bottom about six more. Except in very foggy nights, few deaths by drowning, considering the amount of the population, occur in these canals, and fewer would still happen, if they were guarded against by a railing, which is rarely erected in any part of the city. At night, as the city is well lighted, a passenger, unless he is blind, or very much inebriated, a disgraceful condition, which as I have before observed is not often displayed in Holland, is not very likely to experience a watery death.