In Holland they don’t have many horses; they use dogs to haul and bicycles to carry. Dogs eat less than horses,they don’t have to have stables, and bicycles don’t have to have garages. Dogs can be trained like horses to haul small carts, large enough to carry milk cans. Sometimes, however, when a cat comes along, there is trouble.

Though there are few horses in Holland, there are many cows. They have black and white cows called Holsteins. Holsteincows give a great deal of milk, more milk than any other kind of cow. The milk is used for making cheese, for which Holland is famous. The cheese is made in big pieces and then varnished so that it will keep a long time. Theyhave markets in which nothing but cheese is sold—cheese markets.

The Dutch keep their houses very clean. The kitchen is usually the living-room and dining-room too. They scrub andscrub and scrub, outside as well as inside, even the sidewalks, and in some towns even the street. The cow sheds are often part of the house and are kept just as clean as the houses, with white curtains at the windows, andhooks to hold up the tails of the cows while they are being milked. People wear wooden shoes, because Holland is such a damp country, and they take them off and leave them at the door, as we do overshoes, before entering thehouse. In some places in Holland the men wear trousers as big as pillow-cases and the girls wear very big skirts and white bonnets. In the large cities, however, the people dress about the same as we do.

Dam means a dike, and as there are so many dikes in Holland there are many towns’ and cities’ names ending in“dam.” Amsterdam and Rotterdam are the two largest cities.

Amsterdam is a city of diamonds. The diamonds are not found in Holland but are brought there from Africa. When theyare taken out of the diamond mines in Africa they don’t look like diamonds but look like pebbles, and you would never guess they could be made into anything beautiful. But at Amsterdam they are made into the beautiful sparklingjewels that we know. A diamond is the hardest thing in the World. You cannot cut it with a steel tool nor grind it on a grindstone; you cannot scratch it with sandpaper nor make a mark on it with a file. The only thing thatwill cut a diamond or scratch a diamond is another diamond. So in Amsterdam they chip one diamond with another diamond and polish it into a many sided jewel with diamond dust.