On landing next day, we found the half of the regiment which had so fortunately escaped shipwreck, with the transport which had drifted past us in the night of the gale. Here we took leave of our kind friends the captain and officers of the Nightingale, and next day marched to Buitensluys, a little town nearly opposite to Willemstadt. Here we were detained for several days, it not being possible to cross the intervening branch of the sea, in consequence of the quantities of ice which were floating down from the rivers. We soon got ourselves billeted out in the town and neighbouring country, and established a temporary mess at the principal inn of the place, where we began to practise the Dutch accomplishments of drinking gin and smoking, for which we had a convenient excuse in the humidity and coldness of the climate. Our hard drinkers, of course, did not fail to inculcate the doctrine, that wine and spirits were the "sovereignest remedy" in the world for the ague, of which disease they seemed to live in constant dread, particularly after dinner. During our sojourn at Buitensluys, our great amusement through the day was skaiting on the ice with the country girls, who were nothing shy, and played all manners of tricks with us, by upsetting us, &c. &c. thus affording rather a dangerous precedent, which was sometimes returned on themselves with interest. We are accustomed to hear of the Dutch phlegm, which certainly forms a distinguishing feature in their "physical character;" they are dull and slow in being excited to the strong emotions, but it is a great mistake to suppose that this constitutional sluggishness implies any deficiency in the milder moral virtues. The Dutch, I generally found to possess, in a high degree, the kindly, charitable feelings of human nature, which show themselves to the greater advantage, from the native simplicity of their manners. I had got a comfortable billet at a miller's house, a little out of the village. The good folks finding that I was a Scotchman, for which people they have a particular liking from some similarity in their manners, began to treat me with great cordiality, and threw off that reserve, which is so natural with people who have soldiers forced into their houses whether they will or not. The miller and his cheerful "frow" never tired of showing me every kindness in their power while I remained with them, and to such a degree did they carry this, that it quite distressed me. On leaving Buitensluys, neither my landlord nor his wife would accept of any remuneration, though I urgently pressed it on them. When the avarice of the Dutch character is taken into account, they certainly deserve no small praise for this disinterested kind-heartedness.