DRIFTING PEATLANDS AND SUBTERRANEAN FORESTS NICOLAAS WITSEN, THE LANDSCAPE AROUND AMSTERDAM AND THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF MODERN GEOLOGY Jaap EvErt abrahamsE and hEndrik FEikEn* Nicolaas Witsen (1641-1717) is known not only as an in- fluential administrator and diplomat, but also as a re- searcher, collector and author with very wide-ranging interests. His best-known publications are Architectu- ra navalis et regimen nauticum, which soon became a standard work on shipbuilding, and Noord en Oost Tartarye, in which Siberia and the surrounding areas are described from a variety of perspectives. This arti- cle highlights an aspect of Witsen’s work that has remained unstudied so far: his geological and archae- ological observations in Amsterdam and the sur- rounding area of Amstelland, recorded in the manu- script Natuer van de gront rontsom Amsterdam. This is interesting not only because of Witsen’s observations in and around Amsterdam, but also from a scientific- historical perspective in that Witsen’s manuscript contains insights that place its author at the birth of modern geology. 1. Ottomar Elliger II, Design for a frontispiece of a book; Nicolaas Witsen’s portrait in profile and the coat of arms of the family and the fasces (an attribute of higher magistrates) are on the obelisk, with next to it the personification of Amsterdam (Amsterdam City Archives) 2. Portrait of Nicolaas Witsen at the age of 36, engraving from 1677 (Amsterdam City Archives) INTRODUCTION economic and practical interests of Amsterdam: the In Marion Peters’ monumental biography of Witsen, expansion of trade, ship technology and hydraulic en- De wijze koopman, the diverse scientific interests of gineering works. Witsen studied geography, cartogra- Nicolaas Witsen (figs. 1 & 2) are systematically ad- phy, shipping and shipbuilding, but also subjects such 1 PAGES 33-54 dressed. In addition to his many posts in public ad - as ethnography, linguistics, history, botany, zoology ministration – he was, among other things, a ‘burge- and astronomy.2 He lived during the Scientific Revolu- meester’ (mayor) of Amsterdam, ‘bewindvoerder’ tion of the seventeenth century, when the writings of (administrator) of the Dutch East India Company and classical authors and the Bible gradually gave way to ambassador to England – Witsen was a passionate re- views informed by modern scientific methods, which searcher. His choice of subjects was determined not transformed how society viewed nature. New insights 34 only by his varied scientific interests, but also by the rapidly emerged in many fields. This article discusses a document that Peters men- subject of this article is a nine-page document in folio tions in her book but does not go into, simply referring format. The preserved manuscript is not an original; it to it as a work of ‘juvenilia’.3 It concerns a copy of a is a copy in a clearly legible seventeenth-century hand, manuscript entitled: Natuer van de gront rontsom Am- to which Witsen himself has added a title, his signa- sterdam, door mij in de jeugt opgestelt [‘Nature of the ture and a few corrections and notes. Some topics are Soil around Amsterdam, as written by me in my covered in several places in the text. The document is youth’].4 The observations recorded in this manuscript not dated, but its contents suggest that the original reflect an early interest in geology and archaeology, must have been written in the second half of the 1650s knowledge of which would later come in handy in the or early in the 1660s at the latest: Witsen refers to the author’s administrative career: in Witsen’s day it was great breach of the Sint-Anthonis dike on 4-5 March common for public administrators not only to make 1651 (fig. )3 as having taken place a few years previously decisions but also to be proficient in the technical as- (‘for some years’). In any case, we can safely assume pects, financing and management of complex proj- that Witsen wrote it before 1663 when, aged 22, he went ects. to Leiden to study.6 The document can be found in the Manuscript Col- It is not impossible that Witsen saw the dike breach lection of the Amsterdam City Archives. We do not and its consequences as a child, but he does not men- know how and when it ended up there or where it came tion this in the document. In later life Witsen was in- from. Most of Witsen’s archive was lost after his death. volved as an administrator in the repairs and dike re- Until 1823 there were no documents by Witsen in the inforcements aimed at preventing a recurrence of the Amsterdam archive. Only after a public appeal from disaster. On 9 May 1651, two months after the dike city archivist Jacobus Scheltema did the archives office breach, which occurred outside the city, the communi- manage to acquire some of Witsen’s writings.5 The ty decided that the foot of the Amsterdam section of 3. Roelant Roghman, Breach of the Diemerdijk, 1651. Visible in the foreground of the upper picture is a pile frame used to insert piles for a new part of the dike. In the picture below, the dike repair has already been partially completed (Amsterdam City Archives) 4. Construction drawing of the Nieuwebrug (‘New Bridge’) over the Damrak canal, part of the flood barrier that was constructed under the leadership of Nicolaas Witsen in the years 1680-1682 (Amsterdam City Archives) the Diemerzeedijk should also be reinforced by build- A FAMOUS DRILLING PROJECT FROM 1605 ing up the earth on the outside of the dike.7 At a later At the end of his text Witsen refers to an appendix (no stage, Witsen would play a leading role in the recon- longer present), detailing the results of a deep drilling struction of the dike and in the construction of the operation in Amsterdam.12 He also discusses this new flood barrier in Amsterdam along the banks of the drilling in Noord en Oost Tartarye (North and East Tar- IJ, the current Prins Hendrikkade (fig. ).4 8 tary). In this book he recounts how his grandfather The manuscript as such has remained unpublished, had been present at the drilling of a deep well in Am- but Witsen must have handed it over to the seven- sterdam. During the drilling they found ‘many thou- teenth-century physician, geographer and historian sands of sea snails and shells’, along with hair and Olfert Dapper, with whom he was very good friends.9 horse manure. The deeper they drilled, the smaller the Dapper paraphrased the text, without mentioning the shells. His grandfather had left him a lot of these source, in his 1663 Historische beschryving der stadt shells, which to his surprise were very similar to shells Amsterdam (Historical Description of the City of Am - from the East Indies and the West Indies.13 sterdam). That book was dedicated to Nicolaas’s father The well in question was drilled in 1605 by Pieter En- Cornelis Witsen (1605-1669), a former mayor of Am- te on the grounds of the Old Men’s and Women’s sterdam and at that time councillor and treasurer of Home, an almshouse for the elderly in the present the city.10 Dapper’s paraphrase of Witsen’s manuscript Oudemanhuispoort. The drilling, the purpose of was later reproduced in Tobias van Domselaer’s Bes- which was to find clean drinking water, took twen- chryvinge van Amsterdam (with reference to Dapper), ty-two days to reach its final depth of around 73 me- which appeared two years later.11 tres. The drilling was famous in its time and was men- The manuscript consists of a series of detailed notes tioned in Varenius’s standard work Geographia of Witsen’s own observations in Amstelland, supple- Generalis from 1650.14 Constantijn Huygens described mented by second-hand observations and his own the tool used to drill the hole in a letter: ‘the excavator, ideas and conclusions. The text is arranged geograph- [was] pointed … at the bottom, and [had] a net on a ically and thematically and includes all kinds of infor- semi-circular cutting iron … that at every turn caught mation of greater or lesser relevance. For the readabil- the loosened soil, which was brought up in very small ity of this article we have therefore not followed the quantities’.15 It has been suggested that Ente worked order of his manuscript. We discuss the various for the Rijnland Water Board.16 In 1602 he had applied BULLETIN KNOB 2019 themes in a set order: we start with Witsen’s observa- for and obtained a patent for this instrument from the tions, after which we discuss his own interpretation States General (fig. ).5 17 During recent archaeological and, finally, the modern interpretation of what Witsen research on the construction site of the North-South observed. At the end of the article we place the manu- Metro Line in Amsterdam, a similar instrument was script in a broader context. excavated (fig. ).6 18 Huygens also describes how the In order to elucidate Witsen’s interest in the subsoil walls of the well were prevented from collapsing by of Amsterdam and Amstelland, we start at the end of constantly filling the well with water.19 • 1 the manuscript, where Witsen refers to an earlier study The sediment that came out of the auger was de- of the composition of the subsoil of Amsterdam. scribed (fig. )7 and from this the stratigraphy to about 36 73 metres below ground level can be deduced. Accord- 5. Pieter Pietersz Ente, Drawing of an auger from a patent application to the States of Holland in 1602 (National Archive) 6.