ROTTERDAM, a city and sea-port town of Hol land, situated on the north bank of the Maese, about 20 miles from its mouth. The town is traversed in a north-west direction by the 'totter, a small river which here falls into the Maese. Rotterdam is built in the shape of a triangle, the longest side of which stretches for about a mile and a half along the banks of the Maese, which has here the appearance of an arm of the sea. The city is encircled with a moat, and has six gates, two of which enter from the water. The streets are long, and generally narrow, 'and the foot pavement consists of a line of bricks. The principal streets are the Boomtjies, which contains the finest buildings in the city; and the Haringvliet. The houses, which are more convenient than elegant, are four, five, and six stories high, and in some places the upper stories project over the lower ones. The windows are unusually large, and the ground floor is generally occupied only by an arched gateway to the back ware houses.
The principal public buildings arc the town house, the exchange, completed in 1736, the East and West India houses, the arsenal, the church of St. Lawrence, and other churches, including an Episcopalian chapel, and a Scotch Presbyterian church. The top of the church of St. Lawrence commands a view of the Hague, Leyden and Dort. There is also here an aca demy, a theatre, and the college of the Lords of the Admiralty. Among the monuments in Rotterdam are the tombs of Admirals Dewit and Von Braakel, and a bronze statue of Erasmus, who was born in that city. Among the literary collections and institutions
are a cabinet of natural history and of antiquities, a public library, and an academy of sciences, instituted in 1771.
Rotterdam has long been celebrated as a commer cial city, and it possesses great advantages in that capacity. Vessels of great burden are able, by means of broad and deep canals which intersect the city, to unload their cargo at the very door of the merchant's warehouse, entering two great inlets from the Maese, the one stretching to the east, and the other to the west, till they meet. The Maese being free from ice, and a single tide being sufficient to carry vessels from the harbour to the German Ocean, this port has been more frequented by British traders than that of Am sterdam, the passage to which is more tedious and difficult.
Rotterdam flourished most in the 17th and i8th centuries; but after the invasion of the French and the war with England, its commerce was nearly de stroyed.
The number of vessels that sailed in 1817 was 1771.
The imports from England arc hardware, cotton, woollen goods, Scc. and are greater than those from any other country. Population about 56,000. East long. 4° 29' 11" North Lat. 51° 55' 22". See Rordanz's European Commerce, p. 417-422.