This proved to be the case. A true Hollander cannot go long without eating, and the amount of food the voyagers consumed astonished the boys.
“They’ll sink the ship when they get back on board,” prophesied Jack, looking about him with apprehension.
The boys did not see Antwerp again till late, as the returning boat was delayed. They found everything closed up, although it was only eleven, and the streets deserted. Antwerp believes in going to bed early, and the hotels are all locked by midnight. But that didn’t trouble the boys, for they had their floating hotel in which to stay and which they reached without incident.
CHAPTER XIV.
SIGHT-SEEING.
The boys found Antwerp a straggly town full of fine buildings and galleries, but almost like a maze without a plan. Jutting right off even the finest thoroughfares were slums, and they were advised to follow the tram lines and keep off the more squalid of the streets.
Jack, who was quite a student, struck up a friendship with a bookish old man whom the boys met while exploring the great Cathedral. From this mentor, who, fortunately, could speak English,—French being the tongue most heard in the capital of Belgium,—the boys learned much of the history of the town.
Of course, as they already knew, he told them that Antwerp was the sea-port of the Schelde estuary, and one of the youngest of the Belgian great cities.
The name originally meant “At the Wharf,” their old friend told them, and even in antiquity there was a small sea-port here, of which no traces, however, remain. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as Europe quieted down, the city began to rise in importance. The large, deep, open port floated the keels of vessels from all over Europe. Under Charles the Fifth, Antwerp was probably even more prosperous and wealthy than Venice, Queen of medieval sea-ports. The center of traffic was shifting from the Mediterranean to the North Sea. In 1568 more than a hundred craft arrived at, and sailed from, Antwerp daily.