Amsterdam is an important city in the Netherlands, the country in north-western Europe where the Dutch people live. Amsterdam is the capital of the Netherlands, and the biggest and most important city.
It is located on the North Sea Canal. This canal flows into the IJsselmeer (formerly called the Zuider Zee), which was a large, shallow inlet of the North Sea, but has now been dammed and partly filled in to make farmland. Amsterdam is a major seaport, but is more than twenty miles from the IJsselmeer. Some of the largest banks in the world are in Amsterdam.
It is famous for its diamond-cutting industry. Rough diamonds, which look like ordinary pebbles, are brought here to be cut and polished until they become the beautiful jewels we see in rings, bracelets, and other fineornaments. Amsterdam has many famous museums and art exhibitions. In the western part of the city, tourists and visitors go to see Rembrandt House, the home and studio of Rembrandt van Ryn, greatest of the Dutch painters, who lived 350 years ago. Here may also be found the City Museum and Ryks Museum, both of which contain many famous paintings.
The tomb of Admiral de Ruyter, the great naval hero of the Netherlands, who died in 1676, is located in Amsterdam. The city was built on water and thus has a great number of canals on which barges and boats carry freight to and from all parts of the country. More than 350 bridges connect these islands. About 800,000 people live in Amsterdam
Spiders In The Garden
Watching for their prey in the centre of a radiating geometrical snare, we often find the garden spiders. The beauty of their vertical orb-webs and the large size of these strikingly marked creatures always attract our attention during summer strolls.
Jack & Jill The Vulture Twins
Probably this story of Jack and Jill, the Vulture Twins, would never have been written, if Betsy, Farmer Parsons' old brindle cow, had not refused to come up from the woods one night. But she wouldn't come, so Farmer Parsons had to go down after her.
At Home With Mr. Burroughs
Youth still peered out at me in spite of his crowning thatch of silvery hair when I first met John Burroughs in 1904. As we walked together on our way to his rustic little house in the woods called "Slab-sides,"
