CONTENTS FROM THE LOG OF THE VELSA PART I HOLLAND CHAPTER I—VOYAGING ON THE CANALS CHAPTER II—DUTCH LEISURE CHAPTER III—DUTCH WORK CHAPTER IV—THE ZUYDER ZEE CHAPTER V—SOME TOWNS CHAPTER VI—MUSEUMS PART II—THE BALTIC CHAPTER VII—THE YACHT I LOST CHAPTER VIII—BALTIC COMMUNITIES CHAPTER IX—A day’s SAIL PART III COPENHAGEN CHAPTER X—THE DANISH CAPITAL CHAPTER XI—CAFÉS AND RESTAURANTS CHAPTER XII—ARISTOCRACY AND ART CHAPTER XIII—THE RETURN PART IV—ON THE FRENCH AND FLEMISH COAST CHAPTER XIV—FOLKESTON

T HE skipper, who, in addition to being a yachtsman, is a Dutchman, smiled with calm assurance as we approached the Dutch frontier in the August evening over the populous water of the canal which leads from Ghent to Terneuzen. He could not abide Belgium, possibly because it is rather like Holland in some ways. In his opinion the bureaucrats of Belgium did not understand yachts and the respect due to them, whereas the bureaucrats of Holland did. Holland was pictured for me as a paradise where a y

E VERY tourist knows that Holland is one of the historic cradles of political freedom, and also a chain of cities which are in effect museums of invaluable art. The voyager in a little ship may learn that in addition to all this Holland is the home of a vast number of plain persons who are under the necessity of keeping themselves alive seven days a week, and whose experiments in the adventure of living have an interest quite equal to the interest of ancient art. To judge that adventure in its f

W e passed through Rotterdam more than once, without seeing more of it than the amazing traffic of its river and its admirable zoological gardens full of chromatically inclined parrots; but we stopped at a minor town close by, on a canal off the Meuse, Schiedam. Instinct must have guided me, for the sociological interest of Schiedam was not inconsiderable. Schiedam is called by the Dutch “stinking Schiedam.” I made a circuit of the town canals in the dinghy and convinced myself that the epithet

W E reached the Zuyder Zee, out of a canal, at Monnikendam, which is a respectably picturesque townlet and the port of embarkation for Marken, the alleged jewel of the Zuyder Zee, the precious isle where the customs and the costumes of a pure age are mingled with the prices of New York for the instruction of tourists. We saw Marken, but only from the mainland, a long, serrated silhouette on the verge. The skipper said that Marken was a side-show and a swindle, and a disgrace to his native countr

H AARLEM is the capital of a province, and has the airs of a minor metropolis. When we moored in the Donkere Spaarne, all the architecture seemed to be saying to us, with innocent pride, that this was the city of the illustrious Frans Hals, and the only place where Frans Hals could be truly appreciated. Haarlem did not stare at strangers, as did other towns. The shops in the narrow, busy Saturday-night streets were small and slow, and it took us most of an evening, in and out of the heavy rain,

I DID not go yachting in Holland in order to visit museums; nevertheless, I saw a few. When it is possible to step off a yacht clean into a museum, and heavy rain is falling, the temptation to remain on board is not sufficiently powerful to keep you out of the museum. At Dordrecht there is a municipal museum manned by four officials. They received us with hope, with enthusiasm, with the most touching gratitude. Their interest in us was pathetic. They were all dying of ennui in those large rooms,

O UR adventures toward the Baltic began almost disastrously, because I put into the planning of them too much wisdom and calculation. We had a month of time at our disposal. Now, a fifty-ton yacht in foreign parts thinks nothing of a month. It is capable of using up a month in mere preliminaries. Hence, with admirable forethought, I determined to send the yacht on in advance. The Velsa was to cross from her home port, Brightlingsea, to the Dutch coast, and then, sheltered by many islands, to cre

A T Vordingborg, a small town at the extreme south of Sjaelland, the largest and easternmost of the Danish islands, we felt ourselves to be really for the first time in pure and simple Denmark (Esbjerg had a certain international quality). We had sailed through the Langelands Belt, skirting the monotonous agricultural coasts of all sorts of islands, great and small, until one evening we reached this city, which looked imposing on the map. When we had followed the skipper ashore on his marketing

A LTHOUGH there is a lively pleasure in discovering even the dullest and smallest towns and villages, the finest experience offered by the Baltic is the savor of the Baltic itself in a long day’s sail. I mean a day of fourteen hours at least, from six in the morning till eight at night, through varied seascapes and landscapes and varied weather. As soon as the yacht leaves harbor in the bracing chill of sunrise she becomes a distinct entity, independent, self-reliant. The half-dozen men on her,

A CROSS the great expanse of Kjoge Bay, Copenhagen first became visible as a group of factory chimneys under a firmament of smoke. We approached it rapidly upon smooth water, and ran into the narrowing bottle-neck of Kallebo, with the main island of Sjælland to the west and the appendant island of Amager to the east. Copenhagen stands on both, straddling over a wide connecting bridge which carries double lines of electric trams and all the traffic of a metropolis. When a yacht, even a small one,

T HE most interesting thing, to the complete stranger, in a large foreign city that does not live on its own past is not the museums, but the restaurants and cafés, even in the dead season. We were told that August was the dead season in Copenhagen, and that all the world was at the seaside resorts. We had, however, visited a number of Danish seaside resorts, and they were without exception far more dead than Copenhagen. In particular Marienlyst, reputed to be the haunt of fashion and elegance,

T HE harbor-master would not allow us to remain for more than three days in our original berth, which served us very well as a sort of grand stand for viewing the life of Copenhagen. His theory was that we were in the way of honest laboring folk, and that we ought to be up in the “sound,” on the northeastern edge of the city, where the yachts lie. We contested his theory, but we went, because it is unwise to quarrel with a bureaucracy of whose language you are ignorant. The sound did not suit us

W E left Copenhagen with regrets, for the entity of the town was very romantic and attractive. Even the humble New Haven, where we sheltered from the eye of the harbor-master, had its charm for us. It was the real sailors’ quarter, thoroughly ungentlemanly and downright. The shops on each side of the creek were below the level of the street and even of the water, and every one of them was either a café, with mysterious music heating behind glazed doors, or an emporium of some sort for sailors. R

W E waited for the weather a day and a night at Folkestone, which, though one of the gateways of England, is a poor and primitive place to lie in. Most of the time we were on the mud, and to get up into England we had to climb a craggy precipice called the quay-wall. Nevertheless, the harbor (so styled) is picturesque, and in the less respectable part of the town, between the big hotels and band-stands and the mail-steamers; there are agreeable second-hand book shops, in one of which I bought an

A T 6 a. M. we, too, were passing disdainfully the still-hoisted cone. Rain descended in sheets, in blankets, and in curtains, and when we did not happen to be in the rain, we could see rain-squalls of the most theatrical appearance in every quarter of the horizon. The gale had somewhat moderated, but not the sea; the wind, behind us, was against the tide, and considerably quarreling therewith. Now we were inclosed in walls of water, and now we were balanced on the summit of a mountain of water,

W E moored at the Quai Spinola, with one of the most picturesque views in Bruges in front of us, an irresistible temptation to the watercolorist, even in wet weather. I had originally visited Bruges about twenty years earlier. It was the first historical and consistently beautiful city I had ever seen, and even now it did not appear to have sunk much in my esteem. It is incomparably superior to Ghent, which is a far more important place, but in which I have never been fortunate. Ghent is gloomy,

A FTER the exoticism of foreign parts, this chapter is very English. But no island could be more surpassingly strange, romantic, and baffling than this island. I had a doubt about the propriety of using the phrase “East Anglia” in the title. I asked, therefore, three educated people whether the northern part of Essex could be termed East Anglia, according to current usage. One said he did n’t know. The next said that East Anglia began only north of the Stour. The third said that East Anglia exte

T HE Orwell is reputed to have the finest estuary in East Anglia. It is a broad stream, and immediately Shotley Barracks and the engines of destruction have been left behind, it begins to be humane and reassuring. Thanks to the surprising modernity of the town of Ipswich, which has discovered that there are interests more important than those of local pilots, it is thoroughly well buoyed, so that the stranger and the amateur cannot fail to keep in the channel. It insinuates itself into Suffolk i

T IME was when I agreed with the popular, and the guide-book, verdict that the Orwell is the finest estuary in these parts; but now that I know it better, I unhesitatingly give the palm to the Blackwater. It is a nobler stream, a true arm of the sea; its moods are more various, its banks wilder, and its atmospheric effects much grander. The defect of it is that it does not gracefully curve. The season for cruising on the Blackwater is September, when the village regattas take place, and the sunr