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Show IMPRESSIONS OLD AND NEW Flushing The Island of Walcheren England's Eng-land's Disastrous Expedition Admiral de Ruyter Van Tromp Dort's Loyalty to the House of Orange Its Industries. (Special Correspondence.) "I remember the black wharves and the slips And the sea tides tossing free." Flushing, called by the Dutch Vlissingen, is a world-known seaport, standing at the mouth of the Western Schelde where the latter disgorges itself into the sea. As you enter into the port, vessels of all sizes and nationalities surround you, from the grim dark man-of-war bristling with guns to the gay bright pleasure boat of the lord and millionaire. mil-lionaire. Before you in this city, thoroughly Dutch in its garb and manners, and the island that lies just a little to the north of the great river's mouth, you have read and heard about it, for the name Walcheren is inseparably linked with one of the most disastrous expeditions in history. It was the year 1809. Soult and Wellington were contending on the Peninsula, Austria was completely overthrown over-thrown by Xapoleon and his veterans at Wagram, and the great move of the English, namely, to take Antwerp from Xapoleon and stir the Dutch to revolt re-volt ended disastrously around Walcheren. History His-tory informs us that 40,000 English soldiers were dispatched by the Portland ministry with the main object of taking the important seaport of Antwerp. The ships steamed up to Flushing, bombarded it and finally captured it, but in turn the victorious were attacked by an enemy more deadly than those who use steel and iron, an enemy that strikes and spares not the dread fever. Forth it came from the fens and marshes of Holland and, hovering over Flushing and Walcheren, struck down the bone and sinew of England. In the marshes of Walcheren half of the 40.000 who went so gaily forth to drive Xapoleon from "the phlegmatic swamps" lay down to sleep the- sleep that knows no waking. As your steamer slowly feels its way to its place of anchor, you obtain an excellent view of the harbor of Flushing and those fine new docks which were opened in the year 1S73. I confess that I did not pay much attention to the shape or construction con-struction of the harbor at the time, for I was after devouring an old guide-book, and that old guidebook guide-book was just after filling my mind with three things Walcheren, Admiral de Ruyter and the famous fa-mous old war-dog Van Tromp. That was all the old guide-book told me about Flushing, and telling me that it told enough to make Flushing great for all time. I have said my say about Walcheren, but about De Ruyter well, he did what no man ever did before be-fore or will ever do again: He sailed up the Thames and knocked the fortifications of Chatham into smithereens. And in the old Dutch city of Flushing right before me that man was born in the year 1007. I was just ruminating in my mind .whether he or that other grim old war-dog Van Tromp was the greater when a sailor of the peaceable peace-able type cut short my reverie with the words, "Have you any baggage, sir?" He seemed disappointed disap-pointed when I answered, "Xo," and I fancy I could hear him saying as he made his way to where an old lady stood surrounded' by every species of hat case, trunk and umbrella, "What business have you traveling, anyway?" There is not much to be seen at Flushing; at least, I failed to find anything interesting there, so, after a night's rest at the Hotel Albion, I made my way past Middleburg to the old city of Dordrecht, Dord-recht, better known to us English-speaking peoples under the name of Dort. This city is inseparably connected with William III of England, and during dur-ing the Reformation it was the center of many stormy religious discussions, which finally elided in the city's adoption of the sour and dour creed of Calvin. Dort had a very checkered career. It passed through many vicissitudes of fortune during dur-ing the reign of Louis XIV, and suffered much at the hands of the latter because of its unswerving loyalty to the House of Orange. The city of Dort may be under many obligations to the House of Orange, but being an Irishman, that house has not a very warm place in my heart,- and still I am charitable, char-itable, and all the harm I wished that old city as I entered it for its loyalty to the Williams was that some powerful hand might take the Orange part of Belfast and make it a suburb of Orange Dort. But I'm thinking Orange Dort would not cotton to the addition, for no civilized city in the world could endure for one moment ranting, canting, narrow-minded narrow-minded King Billy Belfast. Dort is nicely situated on the River Maas, and is principally noted for its sawmills. Being in communication with the Up per Rhine, the timbers of the forests surrounding the reaches of that river are floated down past Coblentz and Cologne, Dusseldorf and Wesel to Dort, where the great trunks are divided into planks. Mills abound everywhere in the city, and the chief means of employment for the inhabitants is the sawing of lumber. There is nothing remarkable remark-able about any of the buildings at Dort as far as I could make out. The city has a museum, hut its pictures if we except Schotel's and Schoumann's, have nothing of a world wide celebrity about them. The country around Dort gives you a very fine idea of Dutch life. Everything breathes industry and thrift and simplicity. The cottages are clean and painted in many colors. You have windmills at every turn and boats and barges constantly ply past you on the canals. The well-cultivated gardens, gar-dens, teeming with every kind of flower and vegetable, vege-table, lie cosily at the back of the cottages and beyond be-yond the accurately cut hedges you have the white and black cattle browsing on the rich, sweet grass. There is a quietness,' a simplicity over all things that seizes you and makes you feel that it is good to be here out of the rush and push, noise and fret that constitute the life of so many of our modern cities. Dort was ever a very patriotic town, and history tells us that its people were amongst the first in Dutchland to raise the banner of revolt against Xapoleon when they saw that he was losing his hold over Europe and from that day till now there have been no people who have -worked so pa- J triotically and unselfishly in the interests of their country as the people of Dort. The population ot Dort is about 40,000. Xot far from Dort you have the famous fortress, of Bergen-op-Zoom, built on the River Zoom. It played an important part in the many wars of the Xetherlands. and it was almost al-most impossible to take it, for Coehorn, the rival of Vaugan, set his mind in every stone and this added to the swampy nature o'f the surrounding countrv renders Bergen-op-Zoom a hard nut to crack. ' Xext week we will visit Rotterdam and The Hague. XAPPER TAXDY. |