Logo
Prev
Bookmark
Rotate
Print
Next
Contents
All Pages
Related Articles
Browse Issues
Help
Search
Home
'
National Geographic : 1925 May
Contents
THROUGH THE BACK 1OORS OF BELGIUM Photograph by Emil P. Albrecht A MARKET PLACE IN BRUGES In the left foreground is a milkmaid, with her pails suspended from a yoke. Industry, alike in field and factory, is the keynote of this amazingly compact little country. One-third larger than Massachusetts and with nearly twice the population, Belgium, with its 7,500,000 people, is the most densely settled State in Europe. So inconsiderable are distances in Bel gium that you cannot take a longer straightaway jaunt than 175 miles with out spilling over into Holland or falling into the English Channel. Yet the little kingdom's four-acre farms produce per year a total products value of 5,000,000 francs, while the annual value of its manufactures exceeds the billion-franc mark. BRUGES CELEBRATES THE NATIONAL IIOLI1DAY The canal-reflected dream of gabled roofs, carved cornices, fortresslike city gates, and little quay-to-quay bridges, which is Bruges, welcomed us from the Grand' Place with an air-tingling succes sion of early Flemish tunes, flung abroad by 49 bronze tongues in the old, brown Belfry. It was the night of the national holiday. Throngs of sight-seers were packing the hotels, and we were well content to find furnished rooms on the Belfry square. Dinner over, we hurried with all the world through tortuous streets to the Quai Long, where a water festival was in progress. Down the lamp-festooned canal slowly slid a procession of great barges, carpeted. flanked with bay trees, and bearing pag eant groups. Bruges' museums had been ransacked for arms and costumes to make the Middle Ages breathe again. Here was Duke Philip, founding the Order of the Golden Fleece. There were Bruges' city fathers renewing the rights of the Han seatic League. Now, stretched effigylike on a valanced bed, attended by guards and in court costume, lay Mary of Burgundy beside the Duke of Bavaria-proxy bride groom for the Archduke Maximilian with a naked sword dividing them. And now a Flemish wedding feast, with gob let-quaffing guests at table and with flutist and violinist performing 16th-century airs, floated past. 501
Links
Archive
1925 Jun
1925 Apr
Navigation
Previous Page
Next Page