For the full distance from Groningen to Zwolle I traveled in the same compartment with three of the most rabid stale air agitators I have ever run afoul of. To make matters worse, one was highly perfumed with a mixture of musk and mint, and wore the nails of his little fingers long--half an inch would not be an exaggeration--as some sort of a mark of caste, possibly borrowed from the Chinese. During the trip they tried to make things as blithe and agreeable for me as possible--although with the opposite intent, judging from several remarks which I finally succeeded in translating--by giving a variety of imitations of various barnyard animals because I guarded one open window with my life. All through the province of Drenthe the sources of another industry in which little Holland is preëminent may be seen from the car windows--the great peat bogs. Upon peat the Dutch housewife must rely for her fuel, for the coal mines in the Netherlands are next thing to null and void; so the preparation of peat has become at once an art and an industry. Towns and hamlets are named for it--“_veen_” with an appropriate prefix. It is as indigent to Holland as the wild turkey to the mountains of Virginia. But, instead of striving to eliminate as quickly as possible a very essential natural resource, the Dutch have developed the scientific cultivation of peat and made the vast bogs into almost inexhaustible producers of fuel. The lighter, more fibrous peat, _laagveen_, in Dutch--found several feet in thickness in the eastern part of Groningen, all through Drenthe, and even stretching well across the German border--is contrasted with the dry peat, or _hoogeveen_, underlying a thick layer of clay. In the case of the latter, the layer of clay is removed carefully, the peat is dredged from under it, and what water remains is drained off. The peat is then spread upon the ground and worked by foot pressure until the process, assisted by exposure to the sun, brings it to a certain consistency. It is then cut into convenient lengths, stacked, and allowed to dry. In the meantime the layer of clay has been mixed with sand, replaced, and planted with crops. With respect to the bog peat, the fen is first surrounded with a canal for drainage purposes; also the plant putrefaction is assisted by successive reformations of soil from city refuse, laden with which the peat boats return to the fens.