But then, a Dutch locomotive is not nearly so offensive, I might say, as one of the American breed; and if the proper legislation is forthcoming we shall be sending experts to Holland soon to take notes on how they do it. All railway locomotives in Holland are under the supervision of an arm of the government service, and although the most of them bear the shop-plate of Glasgow or Manchester, they must be equipped with an apparatus, not only for consuming the smoke but for the prevention of the emission of sparks and other combustible matter. Descriptions and drawings showing the details and workings of these contrivances must be submitted to the Supervising Board of Railways before each new type of locomotive is purchased. Upon its delivery every newly purchased locomotive must undergo a thorough test and be approved by the inspector of the Board before it may be placed in service. The same regulations apply to stationary engines burning bituminous coal, which would otherwise emit great clouds of black smoke, gases, and soot. Restrictions, in some localities, are even placed upon the particular kind of fuel locomotives may burn. The province of Zuid-Holland, for example, has issued the eikon that only coke may be used upon the locomotives that traverse its railway lines. A few miles before you come to Dortrecht the railway crosses a long bridge that spans an arm of the North Sea known as the Hollandsch Diep. The actual breadth of the Diep is a mile and five-eighths, but its projecting stone piers cut the length of the bridge down to slightly less than a mile. This, the longest bridge in Holland, was completed in November, 1871, after being more than three years in the building, and its fourteen arches, with a span of 110 yards each, rest upon stone buttresses, the foundations of some of which are sunk fifty or sixty feet below low water mark. From the center of the structure you may look out over the Hollandsch Diep on the left and, on the right, the eastern end of the Biesbosch, or “reed forest”--a great, watery district more than forty square miles in area and lately reclaimed. It was formed in 1421, at the same time and under the same conditions as the Hollandsch Diep, by a terrific overflow of the sea that blotted out seventy-two towns and villages and the lives of 100,000 people. Dortrecht, called Dordt by the Dutch, is practically a survivor of that calamity. The town was founded away back in 1008 and, four hundred years later, made an island by the obstreperous Merwede--the name given to a short part of the river formed by the confluence of the Maas and the Waal, which, beyond Dortrecht, is called De Noord and, by the time it approaches Rotterdam, known as the Maas again.