"Caesar, Passing By, was the First to Name This People."

The story of the Netherlands goes back two thousand years and more; yet even Caesar, the great world-conqueror, who introduced its brave people into history, did not know its beginning. Geologists go still further back, to the great Ice Age, which has no definite date, but which in passing away defined the present limits of the water and land upon the earth.

The Netherlands form the single exception to this grand statement, and perhaps this is one reason why the world has never lost its interest in this northwestern corner of Europe. Tacitus and other Latin historians speak with respect of "The interpid barbarians who live upon a floating land, exposed to the intemperance of a cruel sky and the fury of a mysterious Northern Ocean."

The Dutch "barbarians' then clothed themselves with skins, and lived by hunting and fishing and the pasturing of cattle; they were faithful, open-hearted, chaste and hospitable. But no man can tell for how many centuries these brave men had been driving back the sea, chaining the rivers and making for themselves a dry land and of themselves a free people, before Caesar, passing by, 55 B. C., introduced them into history. Man's ability to overcome his environment is nowhere more strongly evidenced than in the story of the Netherlands (or low-lands), Holland (or hollow-land).

Holland has lately been called the "Holy-land of Modern Europe," for here, in a modern sense, liberty, civil and religious, was born. The study of such a land and such a people cannot but be intensely interesting. Topographically the present kingdom of the Netherlands lies between the mouths of the rivers Scheldt and Ems, as they empty into the North Sea or German Ocean. But until 1830 the Netherlands included also the Kingdom of Belgium, a triangular country lying south of Holland.

Just as Egypt is called "The Gift of the Nile," so Holland, the present Netherlands, may be called "The Gift of the Rhine." When the Rhine touches the sands of Holland it is still a great river, half a mile wide; but, like the Nile of Egypt, it then separates into many streams with many names, and forms a delta between the Scheldt and the Ems. The delta of the Rhine in modern history may be compared to the delta of the Nile in ancient history; and the evolution of the civilization of mankind might be successfully portrayed by a comparative study of the Nile and the Rhine.

Physically, the soil of the Netherlands gives proof of the great struggle between the ocean and the rivers; between the deposits of salt and fresh water. The rivers coming down from the Highlands are arrested by the incoming tides of the sea; while held in check, they overspread a large territory; when the tide recedes and the rivers return to their natural channels the land is covered with a deposit of mud, containing chalk, clay, sand, animal and vegetable matter. The sea, forcing back the rivers, has brought in salt and saline vegetable and mineral matter. Besides this, when the fresh water with its infusoria meets the salt water with its infusoria, a perceptible change takes place. The water becomes milky or turbid; the infusoria of the fresh water have been killed by the salt, and the infusoria of the salt water have been killed by the fresh water. This causes a precipitation of animal matter which acts as a strong fertilizer. So, from prehistoric times, men found these inundated debatable "Netherlands" rich and easily cultivated.

Men added brains to the struggle going on between the waters and the land; they banked out the seas by building dykes, and chained the rivers to their beds in like manner. This wonderful people thus made for themselves the Nether, or low-lands; and later, at a greater cost than any other people, they gained for themselves liberty of conscience in religion and independence in governmental affairs. According to Rogers, "they were pioneers in navigation and discovery; the instructors in progressive and rational agriculture; the founders of intelligent commerce; in the seventeenth century foremost in physical research and in rational medicine; instructors of statesmen in finance, traders in banking and credit, philosophers in speculative sciences; whose presses put forth more books than all the rest of Europe; whose little storm-vexed nook in Northwestern Europe was the university of the civilized world, the center of European trade, the admiration, the envy, the example of nations." "Caesar, passing by, was the first to name this people." He was the first to give the Netherlands a place in history.