When we reached Rotterdam, how strange it was to find, instead of a row of houses across from our hotel, a wharf and a row of ships! Such a great, comfortable room as awaited us! with deep, wide arm-chairs, a heavy round table suggesting endless teas, and toast unlimited, and everything else after the same hearty, substantial manner. There was no paper upon the walls, but, in its place, paintings upon canvas. Delilah sat over the mantel, with the head of the sleeping Samson in her lap, and Rebekah and the thirsty camels were behind our bed curtains. From the wide windows we watched the loading and unloading of the ships, while the song of the sailors came in on the evening breeze, and with it, we half-fancied, the odor of sandal-wood and spices from the East Indiamen anchored across the way. Our hotel was upon the Boompjes, the quay that borders the river; but through nearly all the streets flow the canals, deep enough to float large ships. You can appreciate the advantage of sailing a ship to the very door of one's warehouse, as you might drive a cart up to unload; and you can imagine, perhaps, the peculiar appearance of the city, with its mingled masts and chimneys, its irregular, but by no means picturesque, houses, and the inhabitants equally at home upon water or land. Among the women of the lower classes may still be seen some national peculiarities in dress, shown principally in the startling ornaments--twisted gold wire horns, and balls, and rings of mammoth size thrust out from their caps just above their ears. Whether their bare red arms would come under the head of dress, might be questioned; but a national peculiarity they certainly were, and unlike anything ever seen before in the way of human flesh. Was that painfully deep magenta hue nature or art? We could never tell. There were some very pretty faces among the girls carrying milk about the city in bright brass cans, or in pails suspended from a yoke over their shoulders--faces of one type, round, red-cheeked, blue-eyed, with the mouth called rosebud by poets, and bewitching little brown noses of an upward tendency. As they all wore clean purple calico gowns, and had each a small white cap on their heads, the resemblance among them was rather striking. These caps left the whole top of the head exposed to the sun. Only an iron-clad, fire-proof brain could endure it, I am sure.