AMSTERDAM, the chief city of Holland, is one of the most commercial places in Eu rope. The dock accommodation is fitted for a large number of merchant ships. The docks front the mouth of the river Y (an arm of the Zuider Zee), and are entered and secured by sluices. In the north-eastern quarter is the Nieuw Oostelijk Dok, the National Dockyard, and the island of Kattenburg, in which are the quays and warehouses of the East and West India Companies, the Arsenal, and the Admiralty buildings. West of the Dam Rack lies the Haring Packerye, or Herring Packery Tower, in the neighbourhood of which all the business connected with the export of herrings used to be transacted. Further west is the Nieuw Westelijk Dok.
The harbour is spacious and the water deep; it has recently been much improved by the construction of the Oostelijk and Westelijk Docks, which are capable of containing 1000 large vessels, and are closed by large sluice gates. Owing to a bank (the Pampus) at the point where the Y joins the Zuider Zee, large vessels going and coming by that sea are obliged to load and unload a part of their car goes in the roads. The navigation of the Zuider Zee also is very difficult and intricate by reason of its numerous shallows. To im prove the avessto_the port, the Helder Canal, capable of admitting the largest class of mer chantmen, was cut from the north side of thy port of Amsterdam to Newdiep, opposite to the Texel, a distance of 50 miles. By this canal the Pampus is avoided, as well as the difficult navigation of the Zuider Zee, where ships were frequently detained for three weeks; and vessels can get to and from Newdiep with out any risk in 18 hours Steam-boats ply from Amsterdam to Campen on the Yssel, from whence other steam-boats ply to the towns on the Yssel and the Rhine.
Amsterdam has some manufactures of wool, cotton, linen, and silk ; its diamond-cutting and jewellery retain a good repute ; but its sugar refineries, soaperies, distilleries, tanne ries, oil works, tobacco manufactories, and ship building, are the most valuable branches of industry. The various handicrafts and ordinary fabrics common to all large towns are also carried on in Amsterdam. It has also some glass works and iron works. The im ports principally consist of sugar, coffee, spices, tobacco, cotton, tea, dye-stuffs, wine and spi rits, wool, grain, hemp, flax, pitch, metals, cotton and woollen stuffs, hardware, rocksalt, coal, 8.m. The exports are cheese, butter, seeds, rape and linseed oils, linen, spices, coffee and sugar from Java, tea, tobacco, in digo, cochineal, cotton, and other eastern and colonial products. About 200 large ships be long to Amsterdam, which are employed in the East and West India trade : 15 small ves sels are engaged in the herring and whale fisheries. Upwards of 4000 vessels enter the Port annually ; and about the same number leave it. The imports in some years have exceeded X 8,000,000 sterling.
By the adoption of the system of free nazi gation by the Dutch government, following the recent example of England, the commerce of Amsterdam will doubtless be greatly in creased. The new Dutch Navigation Acts, which came into operation on the 15th Sep tember, 1850, and will apply to her colonial possessions at the beginning of 1851, will afford absolute freedom of navigation at the Dutch ports, at home and abroad.