The army lay among the sand-hills, where it had fought on the day of landing, until the 1st September, when the artillery and cavalry being landed, it moved forward into the interior of the country. Our regiment left the Helder, another occupying it, and joined the army, which took up a position in the afternoon, upon one of those huge dykes that are in Holland, which extended from the German Ocean, where we posted our right, to the Zuyder-sea, where we posted our left, a distance of about eight miles. We occupied it, at all the parts that were passable, and threw up works upon it, particularly at the extremities. It formed a most excellent position of defence in such a flat country, on account of its thickness and height. The top of it was so broad that any carriages had full liberty to pass, and was one of the best roads in the country; and it was not made in a straight line, but bent in curves, like the bastions of a garrison line wall. A large ditch runs the whole length in front of it, with large reservoirs of water in the curves. The use of this dyke was to prevent the rain that falls in the winter, on the south side of it, from flooding the country on the north side, where the level is lower. The reservoirs in the curves of the dyke receive the water, and there are sluices that are opened to allow it to pass by degrees, under the dyke, into a large canal, a little in the rear of it, from whence it is let out into the sea, when the tide is low. We had no tents, but were lodged in the farm houses, which, in Holland, are large, and of a peculiar construction, having the byre, stable, hayloft, and barn, under one large oblong square roof, made of thatch. A great number of these houses were ranged at such regular distances, along the banks of the canals, in the rear of the dyke, that they formed convenient cantonments; and each house contained from one to two hundred, who slept in a loft among the hay, without any other covering than their great coats and the hay. The fields are all divided by broad and deep ditches, in place of hedges, which are only to be seen upon parts of the road sides, and round the orchards at the farm houses and gentlemen's seats. All the ditches have communications with the large canals that communicate with the sea. A great number of wind-mills are employed in forcing the water up into the canals, which are above the level of the ground in the winter time, and in forcing the water into the ditches whose elevation is highest, from whence it flows over locks into the lower ditches in the summer season, so that the ditches are always full. The apparatus of the wind-mills is simple: a number of long broad paddles are fixed in an axle, the lower ends of which dip into a box of little more than their own breadth, into which the water of the lower level flows, and the rapidity with which the paddles are driven makes them throw the water off their flat sides, to all the height that is needed.