tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">Bruges: Maison du Pélican (Almshouse)

14.  Bruges: Vegetable Market 15.  The Flemish Plain 16.  Duinhoek: Interior of a Farmhouse 17.  Adinkerque: At the Kermesse 18.  A Farmsteading 19.  Ypres: Place du Musée (showing Top Part of the Belfry) 20.  Ypres: Arcade under the Nieuwerk 21.  Furnes: Grand' Place and Belfry 22.  Furnes: Peristyle of Town Hall and Palais de Justice 24.  Furnes: Tower of St. Nicholas 25.  Furnes: In Ste. Walburge's Church 26.  Nieuport: A Fair Parishioner 27.  Nieuport: Hall and Vicarage 28.  Nieuport: The Quay, with Eel-boats and Landing-stages 29.  Nieuport: The Town Hall 30.  Nieuport: Church Porch (Evensong) 31.  The Dunes: A Stormy Evening 32.  An Old Farmer 33.  La Panne: Interior of a Flemish Inn 34.  La Panne: A Flemish Inn—Playing Skittles 35.  Coxyde: A Shrimper on Horseback 36.  Coxyde: A Shrimper 37.  Adinkerque: Village and Canal

THE MARKET-PLACE AND BELFRY—EARLY HISTORY OF BRUGES

BRUGES AND WEST FLANDERS

CHAPTER I

THE MARKET-PLACE AND BELFRY—EARLY HISTORY OF BRUGES

Every visitor to 'the quaint old Flemish city' goes first to the Market-Place. On Saturday mornings the wide space beneath the mighty Belfry is full of stalls, with white canvas awnings, and heaped up with a curious assortment of goods. Clothing of every description, sabots and leathern shoes and boots, huge earthenware jars, pots and pans, kettles, cups and saucers, baskets, tawdry-coloured prints—chiefly of a religious character—lamps and candlesticks, the cheaper kinds of Flemish pottery, knives and forks, carpenters' tools, and such small articles as reels of thread, hatpins, tape, and even bottles of coarse scent, are piled on the stalls or spread out on the rough stones wherever there is a vacant space. Round the stalls, in the narrow spaces between them, the people move about, talking, laughing, and bargaining. Their native Flemish is the tongue they use amongst themselves; but many of them speak what passes for French at Bruges, or even a few words of broken English, if some unwary stranger from across the Channel is rash enough to venture on doing business with these sharp-witted, plausible folk.

At first sight this Market-Place, so famed in song, is a disappointment. The north side is occupied by a row of seventeenth-century houses turned into shops and third-rate cafés. On the east is a modern post-office, dirty and badly ventilated, and some half-finished Government buildings. On the west are two houses which were once of some note—the Cranenburg, from the windows of which, in olden times, the Counts of Flanders, with the lords and ladies of their Court, used to watch the tournaments and pageants for which Bruges was celebrated, and in which Maximilian