I saw in several shops a great number of articles of English manufacture exposed to sale, particularly Manchester goods. The Dutch manufacture their own woollens, and they are esteemed to be very good. The black cloth of Holland is very well known, which is infinitely of a deeper and superior colour than ours. The principal cloth manufactures are at Leyden and Tielburg. There are also very capital and flourishing manufactures of velvets, silk, and carpets, at Hilversom; and those of linen and table-cloths, which are exquisite, at Overyssel; and numerous paper-mills. The population of Rotterdam is estimated at sixty thousand inhabitants. Upon the whole, it is a gloomy place to live in; a constant iteration of the same canals, bridges, boats, houses, and figures, will soon damp the spirits of a traveller, unless naturally very vivacious. There is no theatre, no place of public amusement, but the spill-houses I have described, which are as much, at least to feeling minds, not accustomed to them, entitled to that appellation, as any of our houses of correction. Here I bade adieu to my companions and friends, who proceeded direct to Germany, where I promised to rejoin them. I was by no means sorry to follow a lacquey to that quarter of the suburbs where the Delft boats set off every two hours, with my portmanteau, and to bid adieu to Rotterdam. Our treckschuyt lay ready for starting; at two o’clock, a little bell fastened on the outside of a house where the director resides, announced that all was ready; the horse was fastened to a very long, and rather a thin line, and we slipped through the _liquid road_, sensible of moving only from passing the objects that lined the sides of the canal, consisting for a considerable way of pretty houses and avenues of trees. The treckschuyt is a long barge divided into two apartments; the after one, called the ruif or roof, possesses superior accommodations, and will hold from eight to a dozen persons, and the other from forty to fifty: this vessel, which is drawn by a single horse, moves so precisely at the rate of four miles an hour, that the Dutch always compute by the hour instead of the mile.[1] In the cabin or roof, there are four oblique windows, which move up and down, a table in the middle, with a long drawer filled with pipes. The seats are covered with handsome cushions; but the prime accommodations are a spitting-box, and a little iron pot filled with burning turf, to furnish the smokers with fire for their pipes. The price is about three pence an hour: this part is generally occupied by persons of a superior condition. So steady is the motion of the vessel, that the passenger may read, write, or draw in it, without interruption. Footnote 1: The Dutch boors are also so regular in smoking their pipes, that in calculating the distances of places, they say they are so many pipes asunder.