Zaandam

Zaandam, a town in the province of North Holland, on the Zaan, at its entrance into the Y, 5 miles NW. of Amsterdam by rail. Many of its wooden houses, mostly painted white or green, are separated by canals, and with their gardens round them look like little islands. It has many corn, oil, and saw mills, in whose products an active trade is maintained with the Baltic, Black, and White Seas; and also active manufactures of paper, dyes, starch, tobacco, and glue, and still a little shipbuilding. Most of the sixty wharves it had in the 17th century have disappeared, and its famous whale-fishery is also a thing of the past. Here in 1697 Peter the Great worked in one of the shipbuilding-yards as a carpenter, and the hut in which he lived is carefully preserved. It was visited in 1814 by the Czar Alexander. Pop. (1888) 14,545.