The Netherlands
which is perhaps less dead, may be styled its sister city, for both these once prosperous ports show few signs of any activity. In the latter, the St. Jans Gasthuis is a quaint and marvellous architectural achievement. At Zaandam is a shrine visited yearly by hundreds, for there stands the hut (Czaar Peterhuisje) wherein dwelt one Peter Mikhailoff, also known to his fellow-workers as “Peterbaas”—“Boss” Peter—who learnt shipbuilding in a practical fashion in the yard of the Heer Kalb, and whom history knows as Peter the Great.
Down the Maas is a little town seldom trodden by the traveller; but the Watergeuzen, the sturdy “sea-beggars” lovingly enshrined in the chronicles of the Dutch, have given it immortality. Its official name is nowadays Brielle, but the true name is Briel. It has been stated that
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