and streets so narrow that they appear to be mere lanes. Above
these rise, sometimes from trees and gardens, churches, convents,
venerable buildings, the lofty spire of Notre Dame, the tower of
St. Sauveur, the turrets of the Gruthuise, the Hospital of St. John,
famous for its paintings by Memlinc, the Church of Ste. Elizabeth in
the grove of the Béguinage, the pinnacles of the Palais du Franc,
the steep roof of the Hôtel de Ville, the dome of the Couvent des
Dames Anglaises, and beyond that to the east the slender tower which
rises above the Guildhouse of the Archers of St. Sebastian. The walls
which guarded Bruges in troublous times have disappeared, though
five of the old gateways remain; but the town is still contained
within the limits which it had reached at the close of the thirteenth
century.

Behind the large square of the Halles, from which the Belfry rises,
is the Rue du Vieux Bourg, the street of the Ouden Burg, or old
fort; and to this street the student of history must first go if
he wishes to understand what tradition, more or less authentic,
has to say about the earliest phases in the strange, eventful past
of Bruges. The wide plain of Flanders, the northern portion of the
country which we now call Belgium, was in ancient times a dreary
fenland, the haunt of wild beasts and savage men; thick, impenetrable
forests, tracts of barren sand, sodden marshes, covered it; and
sluggish streams, some whose waters never found their way to the
sea, ran through it. One of these rivulets, called the Roya, was
crossed by a bridge, to defend which, according to early tradition,
a fort, or 'burg,' was erected in the fourth century. This fort
stood on an islet formed by the meeting of the Roya with another
stream, called the Boterbeke, and a moat which joined the two. We
may suppose that near the fort, which was probably a small building