Holland draws the greater part of
her wealth from commerce; but before commerce comes the cultivation
of the soil; and the soil had to be created. There were sand-banks,
interspersed with layers of peat, broad downs swept by the winds,
great tracts of barren land apparently condemned to an external
sterility. The first elements of manufacture, iron and coal, were
wanting; there was no wood, because the forests had already been
destroyed by tempests when agriculture began; there was no stone,
there were no metals.
Nature, says a Dutch poet, had refused all her gifts to Holland; the
Hollanders had to do everything in spite of nature. They began by
fertilizing the sand. In some places they formed a productive soil
with earth brought from a distance, as a garden is made; they spread
the siliceous dust of the downs over the too watery meadows; they
mixed with the sandy earth the remains of peat taken from the bottoms;
they extracted clay to lend fertility to the surface of their lands;
they labored to break up the downs with the plow; and thus in a
thousand ways, and continually fighting off the menacing waters, they
succeeded in bringing Holland to a state of cultivation not inferior
to that of more favored regions.
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