For a country so damp and low-lying as Belgium, there is probably
nothing to equal a paved road, but it is a pity that the paving was not
made a little wider. Every now and then we met one of the huge,
unwieldy carts which seem to be relics of a prehistoric age--rough
plank affairs of enormous strength and a design so primitive as to be
a constant source of wonder. They could only be pulled along at a
slow walk and with vast effort by a couple of huge horses, and the
load the cart was carrying never seemed to bear any proportion to the
mechanism of its transport. The roads are bad, but they will not
account for those carts. The little front wheels are a stroke of
mechanical ineptitude positively amounting to genius, and when they
are replaced by a single wheel, and the whole affair resembles a
huge tricycle, one instinctively looks round for a Dinosaur. Time after
time we met them stuck in the mud or partially overturned, but the
drivers seemed in no way disconcerted; it was evidently all part of the
regular business of the day. When one thinks of the Brussels
coachwork which adorns our most expensive motors, and of the great
engineering works of Liege, those carts are a really wonderful
example of persistence of type.

We passed through Bruges at a pace positively disrespectful to that
fine old town. There is no town in Belgium so uniform in the
magnificence of its antiquity, and it is good to think that--so far, at
any rate--it has escaped destruction. As we crossed the square, the
clock in the belfry struck the hour, and began to play its chimes. It is a
wonderful old clock, and every quarter of an hour it plays a tune--a
very attractive performance, unless you happen to live opposite. I
remember once thinking very hard things about the maker of that
clock, but perhaps it was not his fault that one of the bells was a
quarter of a tone flat. At the gates our passports were examined, and