Bones, broken weapons and shattered
breastplates, and all the debris of the fight, were long ago buried
fathoms deep beneath mounds of drifting sand. Old Nieuport--Nieuport
Ville, as they call it now--for which so much blood was shed, is
desolate and dreary with its small industries and meagre commerce;
but a short walk to the north brings us to Nieuport-Bains, and to
the gay summer life which pulsates all along the Flemish coast,
from La Panne on the west to the frontiers of Holland.
[Illustration: NIEUPORT. Church Port (Evensong).]
THE COAST OF FLANDERS
CHAPTER X
THE COAST OF FLANDERS
To walk from Nieuport Ville to the Digue de Mer at Nieuport-Bains
is to pass in a few minutes from the old Flanders, the home of
so much romance, the scene of so many stirring deeds, from the
market-places with the narrow gables heaped up in piles around
them, from the belfries soaring to the sky, from the winding streets
and the narrow lanes, in which the houses almost touch each other
from the tumble-down old hostelries, from the solemn aisles where
the candles glimmer and the dim red light glows before the altar,
from the land of Bras-de-Fer, and Thierry d'Alsace, and Memlinc,
and Van Eyck, and Rubens, the land which was at once the Temple
and the Golgotha of Europe, into the clear, broad light of modern
days.
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