About the formation of this gulf there has collected a varied and confused history of cities destroyed and people drowned, to which has been added in later times another history, of new cities rising on new shores, becoming powerful and famous, and being in their turn reduced to poor and mean villages, with streets overgrown with grass, and sand-choked ports.  Records of great calamities, wonderful traditions, fantastic horrors, strange usages and customs, are found upon the waters and about the shores of this peculiar sea, born but yesterday, and already encircled with ruins and condemned to disappear; and a month’s voyage would not suffice to gather up the chief of them; but the thought alone of beholding from a distance those decrepit cities, those mysterious islands, those fatal sand-banks, excited my imagination....

Marken is as famous among the islands of the Zuyder Zee as Broek is among the villages of Holland; but with all its fame, and altho distant but one hour by boat from the coast, few are the strangers, and still fewer the natives who visit it.  So said the captain as he pointed out the lighthouse of the little island, and added that in his opinion the reason was, that when a stranger arrived at Marken, even if he were a Dutchman, he was followed by a crowd of boys, watched, and commented upon as if he were a man fallen from the moon.  This unusual curiosity is explained by a description of the island.  It is a bit of land about three thousand meters in length and one thousand in width, which was detached from the continent in the thirteenth century, and remains to this day, in the manners, and customs of its inhabitants, exactly as it was six centuries ago.

The surface of the island is but little higher than the sea, and it is surrounded by a small dike which does not suffice to protect it from inundation.  The houses are built upon eight small artificial elevations, and form as many boroughs, one of which—­the one which has the church—­is the capital, and another the cemetery.  When the sea rises above the dike, the spaces between the little hills are changed into canals, and the inhabitants go about in boats.  The houses are built of wood, some painted, some only pitched; one only is of stone, that of the pastor, who also has a small garden shaded by four large trees, the only ones on the island.  Next to this house are the church, the school, and the municipal offices.  The population is about one thousand in number, and lives by fishing.  With the exceptions of the doctor, the pastor, and the school-master, all are native to the island; no islander marries on the continent; no one from the mainland comes to live on the island.