The initial move in this really marvelous process of making land while you wait consists of building a dike around the prospective _polder_ to fortify it against future inundations. Next, they literally kick the water out of the inclosed area by means of a peculiarly constructed water wheel, formerly driven by a windmill, but latterly--the Dutch having become inoculated with twentieth century impatience--by the adaptation of steam or gasoline power to the task. Often, however, the bed of the marsh or lake to be reclaimed lies too deep to admit of its water being at once kicked into the main canals to be carried off to the ocean. Such a condition of affairs will necessitate the lake being surrounded with a veritable series of dikes, each higher than the one before, like the amphitheater of a clinic (a slightly exaggerated simile), and each with a canal on its farther side from the _polder_. The water is then pumped from a lower level to a higher one until, finally, it is forced to admit the utter uselessness of trying to compete with the Dutch. The _polder_ near Goes, known as the Wilhelminapolder, is something like 4,000 acres in extent and was reclaimed from the sea the same year that Napoleon was undoing the history of ecclesiastical architecture in Veere. _Polder_ making is a specialty with the Dutch engineers, and the end of their ingenuity is not yet in sight. Even now they are making gigantic preparations to spend upwards of $80,000,000 in the reclamation of the whole lower half of the Zuyder Zee, two thirds of which is to be constructed into a _polder_ having an area of 1,400 square miles. The dike will stretch across the Zee from the village of Ewyksluis in North Holland to Piaam in Friesland, the cost of which alone is estimated at about $18,000,000. [Illustration: Dutch engineers are planning a stupendous project to reclaim the shaded portions that are now part of the Zuyder Zee.] On any other day but Tuesday there can be no excuse for the traveler to take the least heed of the train conductor’s garglings and stop off at Goes; but the costumes of Zeeland, as seen at a Tuesday’s market, are well worth a break in the journey. A few miles beyond Goes the train crosses the Zuid-Beveland Canal, which intersects the long, straggling island of that name and of which Goes is the capital. The canal was cut through by the Dutch engineers in 1863–66 as a sort of apology to nature for their having deliberately closed up an arm of the Scheldt called the Kreekerak--a body of water that the Dutch never trusted since its contribution to the inundation of the east coast of Flemish Zeeland. Previous to 1532 that east coast was fertile farm land and populated by peace-loving peasants. But in that year the dike burst. Three thousand inhabitants are alleged to have perished, and the locality is still under water, it being known to-day as Verdronken Land, or “Drowned Land.”