For five miles farther, to Westkapelle, the road lies first behind the dunes and then behind the giant dike for which this, one of the most exposed and at the same time one of the lowest sections of Holland, is famous. Presently you find yourself bowling along on top of the dike, with the sea lapping restlessly at its thick, beveled-stone hide on the right, and the village of Westkapelle, nestling some feet below the water level even at low tide, yet secure behind the backbone of its protector, on the left. This dike, being of necessity one of the largest and strongest along the Dutch coast, receives the tenderest of care in the hands of the Government, for, in case of a break in it, the Island of Walcheren would be reduced to its former state of shallow sea water in less time than it would take to set the type of the “scare-head” in the newspapers to tell of the catastrophe. The laborers who are constantly employed at work upon it are supposed to be the direct descendants of the Danish fishermen who dragged these waters with their nets far back in Norman times. Aside from its dike the most conspicuous object in the vicinity of Westkapelle is the lofty, square, Gothic tower, belonging originally to a fifteenth-century church burned down in 1831. This tower the Dutch have aptly turned into practical service by making a lighthouse of it. The powerful reflectors at its top have a radius of twenty-five miles or more and, even in the daytime, the tower is as much of a landmark along the west coast of the island as the church at Veere is along the north. Driving from Westkapelle back to Middelburg you scarcely pass out from the throes of one tollgate until you are enmeshed in those of another. You are assumed to be honest in Zeeland and expected to march right up to the door of the tollhouse, pass a cordial time of day with the character who keeps it, and pay your little five or six Dutch cents without even so much as giving vent to the time-honored conjecture that the farmers thereabouts must be too well off to work out their taxes on the roadway. Nor is it only the tollhouse keeper who has a pleasant word of greeting for you, but every native you pass, man, woman, or child, will have a nod and a smile and a cheery “Good evening”--although you may not recognize the verbiage. The sturdy truck farmer, with gold earrings and cropped hair, trudging homeward in the wake of his push-cart; the thickly padded maiden with her dangling milk pails; the tiny boys and girls, diminutive counterparts of their parents as regards a costume which wavers not with the change of fashion--all seem to think it their especial assignment to treat the tourist on Walcheren as a visitor and not an invader. III FROM MIDDELBURG TO DORTRECHT