Now, if we remember that such a region has become one of the most
fertile, wealthiest and best regulated of the countries of the world,
we shall understand the justice of the saying that Holland is a
conquest made by man. But, it must be added, the conquest goes on
forever.
To drain the lakes of the country the Hollanders prest the air into
their service. The lakes, the marshes, were surrounded by dikes,
the dikes by canals; and an army of windmills, putting in motion
force-pumps, turned the water into the canals, which carried it off
to the rivers and the sea. Thus vast tracts of land buried under the
water, saw the sun, and were transformed, as if by magic, into fertile
fields, covered with villages, and intersected by canals and roads. In
the seventeenth century, in less than forty years, twenty-six lakes
were drained. At the beginning of the present century, in North
Holland alone, more than six thousand hectares, or fifteen thousand
acres, were thus redeemed from the waters; in South Holland, before
1844, twenty-nine thousand hectares; in the whole of Holland, from
1500 to 1858, three hundred and fifty-five thousand hectares.
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