All the fair whites are so like ourselves that it will hardly do to call them _Strange Peoples_. Yet we would find many curious things even in those who are most like ourselves, as the Hollanders. You know something about little Holland? It is a low, flat country, and much of it was formerly under the sea. The industrious Hollanders have built great dikes or walls to keep the sea back, and, by pumping out the water, reclaimed the land. A rich and fertile land it is, intersected by a network of little canals. Everywhere you go in Holland you see windmills. Because the country _is_ so low and flat, there are no rapid streams to furnish water-power for mills, so they must use the wind. At some places, like Zaandam, hundreds may be seen at once. With us windmills are simply for pumping water, but in Holland they do many kinds of work. Some are flouring mills, others are sawmills for cutting timber, others run oil presses, etc. [Illustration: FISH-GIRL OF SCHEVENINGEN, HOLLAND (FROM A PHOTOGRAPH).] The fishing towns of Holland are interesting. Every traveller wants to see Vollendam and Scheveningen and the hamlets on the Island of Marken. The men and women in these towns are kind-hearted, simple people, who are proud of their own village and think their own dress finer than that of other towns. Each of these fishing villages has its characteristic costume. The men of the Island of Marken wear a close-fitting jacket which ends at the waist and great, baggy, knee pants. Marken women wear round, white caps, fitting the head closely, with an open-work border, and a bright waist, with striped sleeves, over the front of which is a square of handsomely embroidered cloth. Little girls all through Holland dress exactly like women. But for her child face you would take the little girl from Scheveningen to be a grown person. She wears a dainty white cap pinned on with two great round-headed pins. Her ample dress quite reaches the ground; her white apron is neatly tied, and her purple shawl, tightly wrapped about her shoulders, is demurely crossed, and the ends are tucked under her apron strings. She wears the common wooden shoes of the country. A crowd of boys running in such shoes over the hard paved roads makes a great clattering. On Sunday the wooden shoes of men and boys are usually fresh whitened; if their owners enter a house, they leave the shoes outside the door. I am sure you cannot guess what little Dutch boys do with old wooden shoes. They make capital little fishing boats out of them, which they sail on the canal. The real big fishing boats are really shaped very much like shoes too. [Illustration: BOATS MADE FROM SHOES, HOLLAND (HAITÉ).]