In 1902
11,000 English, 8,000 French, 5,000 Germans, and 2,000 Americans
helped to swell the crowds who walked on the sea-front, frequented
the luxurious and expensive hotels, or left their money on the
gaming-tables at the Kursaal. On one day--August 15, 1902--7,000
persons bathed.[*]
[Footnote *: I give these figures on the authority of M. Paul Otlet,
Advocate, of Brussels, to whom I am indebted for much information
regarding the development of the coast of Flanders. See also an
article by M. Otlet in _Le Cottage_, May 15 to June 15, 1904.]
Blankenberghe, with its 30,000 summer visitors, comes next in importance
to Ostend, while both Heyst and Middelkerke are crowded during
the season. But the life at these towns is not so agreeable as at
the smaller watering-places. The hotels are too full, and have,
as a rule, very little except their cheapness to recommend them.
There is usually a body calling itself the _comite des fetes_,
the members of which devote themselves for two months every summer
to devising amusements, sports, and competitions of various kinds,
instead of leaving people to amuse themselves in their own way,
so that hardly a day passes on which the strains of a second-rate
band are not heard in the local Kursaal, or a night which is not
made hideous by a barrel-organ, to which the crowd is dancing on
the _digue_.
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