The boat stops at a village and the passengers go ashore. The village is a model of Dutch cleanliness. The neatly built houses, mostly one story in height, are handsomely painted, and the paint is always kept fresh. The mirror-like windows are closely hung with snow-white curtains. There is a little garden in front of every house. The pavements consist of small red and blue tiles so laid that they resemble the pattern of a Turkish carpet. No filth is permitted to remain upon the streets. They are thoroughly washed and sprinkled with white sand and sometimes with flowers. No cow or horse is allowed to stray about. They are all kept in stalls in the rear of the houses. Not only the wooden implements in the houses, but the gates, the trellises, and posts in the fields against which the cattle rub themselves are painted, and some of the latter have carved work at the top. Every house has two doors, one at the rear for ordinary outgoing and incoming, the other being used as the principal entrance, and opened only upon the occasion of christenings, marriages, and funerals. This door, the pride of the owner, is covered with carving and here and there gilded. Flowers grow luxuriously in the gardens. The tops of the trees are cut off and the trunks smeared with white paint. This description will give the reader a picture of a Dutch village of that time as well as of the well-to-do condition of the people. After our travellers had drunk some good beer and eaten a lobster, they hired horses and were soon on their way to Arnheim, a servant who was to bring the horses back following them. The nearer they came to the city the more delightful was the country, which began to look like a large garden. Although there were no rocky heights, the high dikes which rose along the way, the multitude of country seats, mansions, and towers, the beautiful groups of trees in the fields and meadows and upon the edges of the streams, varied the landscape continually and presented pictures worthy of the brush of the greatest painter. Cities, villages, castles with their luxurious surroundings, country houses of every style of architecture with handsome gardens, boundless grassy meadows with herds of cattle, lakes which had been made by peat-cutters, countless islands upon which long reeds were cultivated as thatch for the houses, serving also as homes for great flocks of waterfowl,—such was the panorama which met the eyes of the Prince. The life of the Prince in this richly blest country was permanently influenced by it. His love of art and science was developed and he gained greatly in knowledge of State affairs and the ways of the world from his intercourse with Dutch statesmen, burghers, and peasants. It was of the highest significance also in relation to the future that he studied the plans and schemes of the great Prince of Orange. The army of this man was still a nursery of field-marshals and naval officers.