"The king's court is square and stands at the right-hand side as one enters the town by the gate of Gotton, and is certainly as large as the town of Harlem, and entirely surrounded by a special wall like that which encircles the town. It is divided into many magnificent palaces, houses and apartments for courtiers and comprises beautiful long and square galleries about as large as the Exchange at Amsterdam, but one larger than another, resting on wooden pillars from top to bottom, covered with cast copper on which are engraved the pictures of their war exploits and battles, and are kept very clean. Most palaces and houses are covered with palm leaves instead of square pieces of wood [shingles], and every roof is decorated with a small turret, ending in a small point on which birds are standing, these birds being cast in copper, and having outspread wings cleverly made after living models. "The town has thirty very straight and broad streets, each of them about one hundred and twenty feet wide or about as wide as the Heeren or Keezersgracht [canals] at Amsterdam from one row of houses to the other, from which branch out many side streets, also broad, but less so than the main streets. "The houses are built alongside the street in good order, the one close to the other as here in this country [Holland], adorned with gables and steps and roofs made of palm or banana leaves, or leaves from other trees; they are not higher than a 'stadie,' but usually broad with long galleries inside, especially so in the case of the houses of the nobility, and divided into many rooms, which are separated by walls made of red clay, very well erected, and they can make and keep them as shiny and smooth by washing and rubbing as any wall in Holland can be made with chalk, and they are like mirrors. The upper storys are made of the same sort of clay; moreover, every house is provided with a well for a supply of fresh water."