"So it is," was the answer. "That's the result of not heeding the advice of common-sense, prudent people. A handful of bragging citizens of Amsterdam insisted upon it, that they should have a canal right across into the sea. They had one already, in which they might have made some improvements, but that would not satisfy them. Well, after a good deal of agitation, they got their canal. How much it may have cost them I do not pretend to know; no doubt a good deal more than many of them must have liked. However, now that they had it, it proved, after all, 'a fair-weather Jack;' for as soon as the wind lost its temper--and such things do happen along our coast--the skippers did not venture to come too near to the shore. At the first November storm the harbour became full of sand, to clear which would have been to wash the negro. "Thus the canal had had little power to benefit navigation. Still, matters did not come to the worst until, in 1980, the springtide fell in simultaneously with a storm such as the memory of living man could not trace. Sluices and dykes gave way, and North Holland, the greater portion of which was situated from one to five meters [13] below the mean level of the sea, was rapidly swallowed up by the raging element. Shortly after the play-going public of Rotterdam enjoyed a new drama, entitled 'The Horse of Troy.'" [14] "Terrible, terrible!" I could not refrain from exclaiming, although the man who supplied me with the "terrible" information did not appear to see it. I had already inferred from the latter part of his remarks that he was a native of Rotterdam, and this suggested to me the idea of once more looking through the telescope, and turning my looks towards the city where I had passed the earlier part of my youth. At first I did not feel at home at all. So much had the city of the Meuse enlarged itself into every direction, and so densely populated was the whole province of South Holland, that the towns of Leiden, the Hague, Delft, Schiedam, and Rotterdam seemed to form but one large city.