Page:A Tour Through the Batavian Republic.djvu/381

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THE BATAVIAN REPUBLIC
369

circumstances, we should have paid in England.

We travelled from Amsterdam to Utrecht in treckschuyts, and were so fortunate on our passage as to obtain in all the boats places in the roof. Our journey occupied about nine hours, and we arrived at Utrecht much fatigued and exhausted. On each side of the canal, from Amsterdam to Utrecht, there is, with little intermission, a continuation of pleasant houses, country seats, and gardens adorned, in the Dutch taste, with grotesque temples, statues, stagnate pools, Chinese bridges, and trees planted in a straight line, or tortured into a thousand shapes. The country through which we passed seemed extremely populous and well cultivated; and there was less water on the lands than we had observed elsewhere, not because it was higher, but because the mills for pumping it off into the canals are more numerous, and serve better to drain the land.

Utrecht is one of the most agreeable cities in the Batavian republic, and somewhat larger than the Hague. On account of the