Ruth Kedzie Wood

“ No one that has ever looked over the hedge of a Belgian pasture will ever forget the sight of black and white cows as large as prize bulls in other countries, and of awkwardly cavorting colts, taller and much heavier about the joints than ordinary American farm horses. On the cobbled roads of Belgium one meets these splendid horses, moving ponderously, embraced by the shafts of capacious two-wheeled carts. Equally picturesque are the dogs of burden, hitched single, or in teams of two or three, drawing wagon-loads of milk, bread or fuel. ”

“ Pierre's gloomy moods are not always so quickly dispelled. Often she sulks in a mist for days together, but through the late summer one may be reasonably sure of bright days.
A brusque wind makes sport of hats and petticoats as we cross the broad pavement. Café doors slam shut on drinking sailors; oxen, drawing carts which move on Roman wheels of wood, bend still lower their wool-padded heads; on the landing, an old dame in long cape and muslin bonnet waits shiveringly for the boat to Dog Island. But no one complains of the wind, for it rends the fog, bane of St. Pierre. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From Tignish to Souris, from Rustico to Argyle Shore there is not an impassioned vista, nor one which recalls a stirring episode. But there are many stretches of country that are refreshing and harmonious just as a bit of fertile Ohio might be if uprooted and put adrift on a balmy sea. Throughout the island's length of 150 miles there is no brusque elevation, nor gorge, nor rock, nor any frown on the face of nature. A great part of the million undulating acres which compose the pastoral kingdom are improved. In this regard Prince Edward is more like the Mother Isles than any Canadian province. ”

“ Traveling the roads of Belgium on foot or by steam tram, by slothful barge, or by the very efficient railways of the Belgian Government, we come upon many a picture of odd-fashioned roofs and mirroring water-streets, of city squares and gilded cornices, of farm cots scattered like sheep across the downs, of corpulent windmills busy at their grinding, of canal-boats moving among the flat Flemish fields, of soil-stained men and women tending crops of sugar-beets, flax and grains. ”

“ The road climbs the higher levels of a spreading plateau. Here above the steppes that in spring and fall are frequented by migrating caribou, "the Topsails" spring upward with strange and telling effect. Snow often rests on these pyramidal buttes until the summer is well advanced. The rough-fashioned landscape has its own charm, but from the railway few mellow scenes appear until the Humber is approached. On the way is Grand Lake, the largest of the myriad fresh-water seas that strew the island. ”

“ Vessels running in at the flood are left careening on the ground when the tide slips from their keels. One goes to sleep with the moon shining on the wave, and wakens to a terra cotta waste bared by truant waters to the glare of the sun. Little boys paddle about the glistening bed of bay or river digging for shell-fish; an hour or two later, perched on a pier, they are angling for trout newly arrived from the sea. . . .
A few years after the eviction of the Acadians, the village of Windsor was populated by British officers who had completed their term of service. ”

“ The face of Belgium shows us many moods. Fisher villages and attractive seaside resorts give color to the long ribbon of sand that reaches for forty miles from the French to the Dutch border. To the east is the low-lying country from which Flanders—“the low land”—has its name. Beyond this expanse resembling the dike-protected regions of Holland is a naturally sterile sandy plain that Flemish farmers have by centuries of toil brought to a high state of productivity. ”

“ From this woodland shrine there is a wonderful view of the Gaspé Mountains on the north shore of Bay Chaleur. Caraquet has other visions less material. On nights preceding heavy wind and storm the horizon is blazoned with the shape of a flaming boat. This is the Fire Ship. Every one has seen it at some time, to many it has appeared more than once. And all whose eyes behold are fearful of the morrow. ”

“ BELGIUM
Town Life FIVE
It is befitting that a city more than fourteen hundred years of age should present many dignified aspects—that its buildings should be wreathed in the mists of antiquity, and that its traditions should be hallowed. Brussels—“a manor near the marsh”—is shrined in a niche of the ages, its pre-medieval garments clothe it richly. Yet the manners of the Belgian capital are modern, and the life there, while based on Flemish custom, is compared, with reservations, to the life of Paris. ”

“ Lunenburg has a claim on the tourist's attention by reason of its ancestry, its situation, an its industry born of the sea. The town is fortunate in being placed upon a sloping peninsula that is broached on every side by the waters of the Atlantic. Below the crown of the hill lies the schooner fleet in the main harbour. The bankers, all rigged alike and all painted black, direct their spoon bows in unison as they shift with the tide. The "back harbour" view embraces multitudes of islands afloat on the great Bay of Mahone. ”

“ With the acquisition of a colony eighty times as large as the kingdom itself, Belgium became the dazzled possessor of a treasure land of mines, arable acres and profitable forests. Rail and water transportation were promoted by Belgian and foreign companies, eager to enjoy the rich opportunities of the African colony, and hundreds of trading-houses sprang up to handle the Congo’s yield of palm oils, copal, rubber, cocoa, copper, gold, diamonds and ivory. ”

“ The wagon-road from Annapolis to the Lake passes out the main street to open fields, where great boulders pour down the slopes as if out of a Titan's cornucopia. Grey monoliths mark turns of the highway as the automobile draws near the lakes drained by the Liverpool River. Canoes leaving the sportsmen's colony at Milford descend by a wonderful inter-linking water-way of lakes and rivers to the Atlantic coast, the trip consuming about three days. Long vistas of woodland extend on either side as the road to "Kedgee" rises little by little to the haunts of forest monarchs. ”

“ Even the village dogs know when the funnel shows off the harbour and race down the hills for the tidbits that a kind-hearted cook throws from the galley. Fed on scant doles of dried herring, regarded only for the services they perform and burdened with dreadful yokes to prevent their jumping the bars to rob sheep-pens, these mongrels of the south coast form a pitiable crew. By law, all dogs that run at large must wear suspended about the neck a seven-pound piece of wood eighteen inches long and three inches in diameter. ”

“ In West Flanders
With the names of many places in the province of West Flanders, the despatches of war have acquainted us. Battered Audenarde; proud Ypres, held first by the Germans and then so long and so stubbornly by Haig’s men; Dixmude; the Yser Canal that flowed crimson to the sea; Nieuport, Westende, Middelkerke, leveled like wheat before the mower; Ostend, whose leisurely crowds were scattered before the gray tidal wave that swept across these lowlands, leaving a swath 70,000 acres broad of ruined farms and villages. ”

“ Annapolis is a convenient portal to a wild forest land that rivals Finland in the number and beauty of its lakes. Sportsmen seek them for their pools and tributary streams, for the furred and feathered game in adjacent woods, and for the paddle-ways that stray hither and yon through a virgin wilderness. Kedgemakoogee, or Fairy Lake, has already been referred to as a body of water especially prolific in natural charms. ”

“ The kirmess, which at some time during the summer occupies the principal square of every town in Belgium, is especially dear to the hearts of the natives. Fakirs, magicians, circus performers, freaks, caged animals, merry-go-rounds and their wheezy calliopes are the lure for heavy-footed squires, matrons that resemble the rollicking models of the painters, Jordaens and the younger Teniers, and delighted apple-cheeked children. ”

“ Beyond the green-fringed lake of Quidi Vidi, where summer boating regattas are held, is as characteristic a fishing village as may be found on this crenated coast. A ring of dark-hued rocks girdles an irregular basin graced by drooping sails. In the rough shacks below the clean-swept houses of the Quidi Vidi fishermen the cod are headed, split and boned preparatory to the process of salt curing. The drying flakes are made of cross-laid hemlock boughs. Every one is busy, cheerful and well-mannered. ”

“ The dwellings of warrior tribes and the castles of the mighty Dukes of Brabant are supplanted by the substantial buildings of a center of present-day life. For the well-kept beauty of its streets and open spaces, for its air of solid content and well-contained vivacity, for its handsome store-houses of ancient and modern art, its massive but harmonious architecture, its tempting shops and markets, and the alluring grace of its medieval roofs and towers, Brussels exacts universal admiration. ”

“ The entrance to the harbour from the Bay of Fundy is flanked by rocky arms which narrow toward the outlet of the great river discovered by Champlain and de Monts on the fête day of St. John the Baptist, June, 1604, following their voyage to the Annapolis Basin. Partridge Island frowned upon their intruding sails as it frowns still upon the labouring, steaming, drifting procession that constantly passes beneath its gloomy banks. ”

“ No city has a more affluent history, nor one that contains gloomier chronicles of siege and warfare. Its wharves and its narrow streets, bulked by the over-watching citadel and the flamboyant tower of one of the finest churches in Belgium, are teeming with wharfmongers and brokers, dealers in diamonds and ivory, lace-makers, flower vendors, factory-workers. ”

“ Westport, the chief settlement, depends upon the sea for its livelihood in common with all the villages on the spit that bars St. Mary's from the Bay of Fundy, and affords a thoroughly unconventional environment for vacationists to whom rest, good air and a banquet of sea food spells summer enjoyment. The people of this remote shore from Rossway to Westport are silent, kind and uncurious, like folk the world over who have "kinship with the sea." ”

“ A large proportion of idle workmen have found occupation at wages higher than they received before the War. Nearly all of the one hundred steamship services leaving Antwerp for world ports have resumed sailings. The thousand miles of railway lines destroyed by the invaders are now relaid, and traffic is approaching normal. All this, some of it with the financial aid of America, has been achieved within a few months after the cessation of the most destructive warfare in history. Belgium’s withered acres and ravaged towns are rising like the phoenix, reborn through fire. ”