Copyright, Underwood & Underwood
FLAX WORKERS ON THE RIVER LYS
In the country surrounding Courtrai, Ypres, Ghent, flax is extensively grown to supply the demand for linen. Here we see it in the process of “retting” in the river, to rot off the woody bark and stems
The Walloons are like the French in many ways. They have quick wits and a ready command of forceful phrases, they are clever workmen, and they have an immense enthusiasm for one of their kind that displays a gift for art or music. We came one evening to a small manufacturing town near Liège (lee-ayzh), metropolis of the Walloon country, and found the main street dressed with flags and lanterns. The town hall was illuminated, a procession was forming, and there were crowds waiting at the railway station. “Yes,” said the hotel proprietor, “it is a fete day—for the people of Dolhain. We celebrate the return of one of our boys, the son of a cobbler, who has received at the Conservatory of Liège the first prize for violin.”
THE CASTLE OF WALZIN
One of the most romantic chateaus of the Ardennes, erected on a cliff above the River Lesse, in the 13th century
The Rise of Belgian Industry
Belgium’s story, as complex in pattern as the tapestry of Flemish looms, is interwoven with the bright threads of genius, and, no less, with the gold of commerce and the crimson threads of war. Proud mistress of the arts as Belgium can claim to be, she has held her own for centuries past as a vigorous industrial nation. Tribes that came across the Rhine after Caesar’s conquest of the Gauls, 57-52 before Christ, were permitted by the Romans to settle upon the lands that extended from the basin of the Meuse River to the sea. For ten centuries they diligently tilled the soil, and as diligently fought encroachment. About the year one thousand, the Counts of Flanders, whose holdings constituted one of nine Belgian principalities, fortified the towns of Bruges, Ghent, Courtrai and Ypres (broozh, gent[A], koor-tray, eep-r), and protected them with stout walls. The granting of civic charters spurred these Flemish communes to greater activity, and cloth markets were established in each walled town. It seems clear that before any race of northern Europe the Flemish turned from the plow to the counting-house, from the farm to the crafts-shop. Bruges was the most influential financial city north of the Alps, until its leadership was wrested by Antwerp and then by Ghent in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Brussels, the seat of ruling princes and an important trading-station on the route from Bruges to Cologne, boasted a population of fifty thousand persons as long ago as the year 1500. Liège and Mons (monz), even then, were noted for their metal industries.
[A] g and e as in get.