From Furnes To Ypres It Is A Pleasant Journey Across Country By
One Of Those Strange Steam-Trams Along The
Road, so common in
Belgium and Holland, and not unknown in France, that wind at
frequent intervals through village streets
So narrow, that you
have only to put out your hand in passing to touch the walls of
houses. This is a very leisurely mode of travelling, and the halts
are quite interminable in their frequency and length; but the
passenger is allowed to stand on the open platform at the end of
the carriage - though sometimes nearly smothered with thick, black
smoke - and certainly no better method exists of exploring the
short stretches of open country that lie between town and town.
Belgian towns, remember, lie mostly thick on the ground - you are
hardly out of Brussels before you come to Malines, and hardly out
of Malines ere you sight the spire of Antwerp. In no part of
Europe, perhaps, save in parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, do you
find so many big towns in so limited a space; yet the strips of
country that lie between, though often intolerably dull, are
(unlike the strips in Yorkshire) intensely rural in character.
Belgian towns do not sprawl in endless, untidy suburbs, as
Sheffield sprawls out towards Rotherham, and Bradford towards
Leeds. Belgian towns, moreover - again unlike our own big cities in
England - are mostly extremely handsome, and generally contrive,
however big, to retain, at any rate in their heart, as at Antwerp,
or in the Grande Place at Brussels, a striking air of antiquity;
whilst some fairly big towns, such as Malines and Bruges, are
mediaeval from end to end.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 10 of 44
Words from 2551 to 2830
of 12374
