We had a dog on board, but he was a lazy, mangy fellow, and gave us little trouble.  The wind continued favourable, and on the sixth evening, the lights of Goeree and Helvoetsluis were visible.  Some of the passengers left us at the latter town; but I merely went ashore and took a rapid look of the streets, and of the guard-ship, which was in the Dock in the centre of the town, and returned to the smack by the captain’s boat.  I saw rather a curious scene on board the man-of-war.  Some of her men had been engaged in a row the previous night, and were sentenced to be flogged.  After being stripped, they seemed to dip each man in the water before commencing the more disagreeable part of the operation.  If I had not been in such a hurry, I should certainly have made bold to have carried a biscuit to a poor little midshipman, who was condemned to remain twelve hours at the mast-head for some nonsense or other, and who looked most miserably cold.

Mynheer is certainly a strange fat-bottomed animal after all.  His pipe never seems to be out of his mouth, nor his hands out of his pockets.  The pilots who came on board, with their very little hats, their immense wide, short breeches, and large wooden shoes, surprised me not a little.  The Dutch get the credit of being very cleanly, but I cannot say much as to that, in their persons at least.  The Bad Huis, or Bath Hotel, which is on the Boom Keys, the best street in Rotterdam, was recommended to me as the only one a gentleman could go to, and there accordingly I and four of the passengers took up our quarters.

Upon the whole, there did not appear much to be seen in the town.  The inhabitants seemed more an eating and drinking sort of people than any thing else.  Their ferries through the town are a very great nuisance, as one cannot always have a doit about them; and a surly, brown, Dutch rascal at one time had the impudence to stop me till I had to borrow from a friend.  The statue of Erasmus is a shabby concern.

A party were intending, I found, to make a trip along the Rhine; so I thought I could not do better than join them.  We went by the Hague, Haarlem, and Amsterdam.  With the last, I was much disappointed.  They say it contains 200,000 human inhabitants, but it has not even a tolerable hotel.  The famous Haarlem tulip gardens, I of course visited, particularly those of Van Eeden.  I wonder what the fools could see in tulips, who gave 10,000 guilders for one root.  The organ is certainly very fine; but it nearly cracked the drum of my ears.

When at Amsterdam, I was nearly carried off to Archangel, which would, at the time, have been rather a bore indeed.  After a grand let-off, given by a rich burgo-master, to which my friends got me a special invitation, I incautiously exceeded in the curacoa, of which I did not at all then know the strength.  The vessel put to sea, and I had enough to do to secure my retreat in the pilot boat.  From Amsterdam we