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[Page 50]
Amsterdam
doors &c of massy cast brass together with the marble give a look of real solid grandieur I think superior to any thing I have seen especially in the Burghers hall or great apartment I think the grandest tho by no means the largest room I have seen.
On the Pavement of this have been formerly two hemispheres of the earth & a polar projection of the northern constellations laid down in Brass the latter of which still remains this easily accounts for a saying in voyages where New Zealand a map of new Zeland is said to be laid down upon the floor of the Stadt house at Amsterdam in memory of Tasmans discovery & as a memorial also to the republick that should they by any change in the political constitution of Europe be driven out of Holland they had in the southern world a new country to which they might migrate in a body now the Stadt house being built