La Panne, for instance, and Adinkerque,
in the west and on the confines of France, are villages inhabited
by fishermen who have built their dwellings in sheltered places
amongst the dunes. The low white cottages of La Panne, with the
strings of dried fish hanging on the walls, nestle in the little
valley from which the place takes its name (for _panne_ in Flemish
means 'a hollow'), surrounded by trees and hedges, gay with wild
roses in the summer-time. Each cottage stands in its small plot
of garden ground, and most of the families own fishing-boats of
their own, and farm a holding which supplies them with potatoes
and other vegetables.
For a long time these cottages were the only houses at La Panne,
which was seldom visited, except by a few artists; but about fifteen
years ago the surveyors and the architects made their appearance,
paths and roads were laid out, and, as if by magic, cottages and
villas and the inevitable _digue de mer_ have sprung up on the
dunes near the sea, and not very far from the original village. The
chief feature of the new La Panne is that the houses are, except
those on the sea-front, built on the natural levels of the ground,
some perched on the tops of the dunes, and others in the hollows
which separate them.
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