Rollo in Holland | Page 2

as fast as it accumulates in the low grounds, and convey it away.
This is done by pumps and other such hydraulic engines, and these are
worked in general by wind mills.
They might be worked by steam engines; but steam engines are much
more expensive than wind mills. It not only costs much more to make
them, but the expense of working them from day to day is very great,
on account of the fuel which they require. The necessary attendance on
a steam engine, too, is very expensive. There must be engineers, with
high pay, to watch the engine and to keep it always in order, and

firemen to feed the fires, and ashmen to carry away the ashes and
cinders. Whereas a wind mill takes care of itself.
The wind makes the wind mills go, and the wind costs nothing. It is
true, that the head of the mill must be changed from time to time, so as
to present the sails always in proper direction to the wind. But even this
is done by the wind itself. There is a contrivance by which the mill is
made to turn itself so as to face always in the right direction towards
the wind; and not only so, but the mill is sometimes so constructed that
if the wind blows too hard, it takes in a part of the sails by its own
spontaneous action, and thus diminishes the strain which might
otherwise be injurious to the machinery.
Now, since the advantages of wind mills are so great over steam
engines, in respect especially to cheapness, perhaps you will ask why
steam is employed at all to turn machinery, instead of always using the
wind. The reason is, because the wind is so unsteady. Some days a
wind mill will work, and some days it will lie still; and thus in regard to
the time when it will do what is required of it, no reliance can be placed
upon it. This is of very little consequence in the work of pumping up
water from the sunken country in Holland; for, if for several days the
mills should not do their work, no great harm would come of it, since
the amount of water which would accumulate in that time would not do
any harm. The ground might become more wet, and the canals and
reservoirs get full,--just as brooks and rivers do on any upland country
after a long rain. But then, after the calm was over and the wind began
to blow again, the mills would all go industriously to work, and the
surplus water would soon be pumped up, and discharged over the dikes
into the sea again.
Thus the irregularity in the action of the wind mills in doing such work
as this, is of comparatively little consequence.
But in the case of some other kinds of work,--as for example the
driving of a cotton mill, or any other great manufactory in which a
large number of persons are employed,--it would be of the greatest
possible consequence; for when a calm time came, and the wind mill
would not work, all the hands would be thrown out of employ. They

might sometimes remain idle thus a number of days at a time, at a great
expense to their employers, or else at a great loss to themselves.
Sometimes, for example, there might be a fine breeze in the morning,
and all the hands would go to the mill and begin their work. In an hour
the breeze might entirely die away, and the spinners and weavers would
all find their jennies and looms going slower and slower, and finally
stopping altogether. And then, perhaps, two hours afterwards, when
they had all given up the day's work and gone away to their respective
homes, the breeze would spring up again, and the wind mill would go
to work more industriously than ever.
This would not answer at all for a cotton mill, but it does very well for
pumping up water from a great reservoir into which drains and canals
discharge themselves to keep a country dry.
And this reminds me of one great advantage which the people of
Holland enjoy on account of the low and level condition of their
country; and that is, it is extremely easy to make canals there. There are
not only no mountains or rocks in the way to impede the digging of
them, but, what is perhaps a still more important advantage, there is no
difficulty in filling them with water. In other countries, when a canal is
to be made, the very first question is, How is it to be filled? For this
purpose the engineer explores the whole country through which the
canal is to pass, to find