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National Geographic : 1925 May
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TIIROUGH THE BACK DOORS OF BELGIUM Photograph by Melville Cliater WASI DAY ON TIIE CANALS "Cleaning day leaves a Belgian barge as spotless as blanched linen. Everyone has been at it, for nobody aboard is lazy, not even the dog" (see text, page 520). electric-light poles-and many a humble, war-recalling "Cafe Blighty" or "Allies' Bar,"-such were the last impressions we carried away with us up the swiftly flow ing Scheldt. \Ve regained the Rupel River and locked through into the Brussels Maritime Canal. This, an enlargement of a 15th century cut, represents Belgium's latest word in canal construction. With its neat, grassy banks, its parklike vistas of trees and pellucid waters, I am afraid that such interesting facts as its locks' capacity for handling vessels 320 feet long by 43 feet beam, were overlooked in our concurrence that it would be an ideal stretch for shell racing. SUNDAY NIGIIT, BARGIEMAN'S IIOIIDIAY As we neared \Villebroe:k, late one Sunday evening, we glimpsed ahead what looked like the makings of a Venetian fete. The long quay was crammed with huge, illuminated canal boats whose lan terns served to light the mirroring water, a-flicker with reflections of house rows and the holiday makers who danced every where along the canal side and across its low bridges. We heard the brassy clash of merry-go-round music, saw the glare of scores of barrooms, illuminating the endless weave of street waltzers. "No work on the canal to-night!" roared two burly bargees, lifting rather than assisting us out of the canoe. And they fell to waltzing with us in a grizzly bear hug, amid screams of women's laughter. It all meant this: that it was Sunday night and bargeman's holiday. \Villebroeck's upper windows were black and dumb as a midnight church yard, for its 12.000 people were all in the garishly lit streets-the streets of a fac tory town which had poured forth its multitude of mill girls to dance with bargees from all Belgium. In pairs they swung around the car rousel's circle of wooden steeds, human moths flitting about a central flare, or fell into impromptu waltzes to the orches trion's blaring strains, while awaiting their turn among an audience of bargees' wives who jigged their babies to the music's beat. Then a dive into the open booth where 52;
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