ed in the 15th century. In front of this church and in the centre of the market is the statue of Caxton, whom the Dutch claim to be the inventor of printing while the Germans claim that honour for their countrymen Gutenberg. Haarlem like Leyden sustained a terrible siege by the Spaniards for seven months, but the resistance though noble and heroic, was ineffectual. Ten thousand citizens are said to have perished in making the defence and even women led by the heroic Kenu Simons Hasselaar took a share in it. But the city fell at last and the cruel conqueror,—the son of the notorious Duke of Alva—executed the noble commandant, the whole of the Protestant clergy and 2000 of the surviving brave defenders! Such cruelty works its own ruin, and the Spaniards were driven from the town four years later.
At last I reached the capital of Holland. In the close of the eleventh century a small number of fishermen built their poor huts in the spot where the river Amstel flows into the river Y, Amsterdam.and the united stream flows into Zuider Zee. Those huts were the commencement of one of the greatest trade centres of the modern world. The lord of Amstel built a castle here in 1204 and constructed the dam on the Amstel which has given rise to the name of the town. In 1311 the town was united to Holland and in the same century it gradually rose in importance as exiled citizens from the older trade centres in Belgium came to settle here. But it was in the 16th century when Antwerp was ruined by the Spanish war and the Spanish inquisition that the manufacturers and tra-
