Another city of Belgium beginning with a “B” is Bruges. Bruges has many streets of water with bridges crossingthem, and boats instead of carts, although there are paved streets also. See how many things in Belgium begin with a “B:” Belgium Bells Battle-fields Brussels Bruges Bridges Boats

Belgium is hilly on the side near France, but on the opposite side it is very low. On this low side it joins theland of the Dutch people, which is called Holland. Holland means “hollow land,” and it is so named because in many places it is even lower than the sea. Banks or walls called dikes had to be built to hold the water back,and windmills with big sprawling wings had to be built inside the dikes to pump the water out and keep it out. Water won’t run off the ground in Holland, for there is no low place for it to run to; it would have to run uphill.So it has to be pumped off.

The dikes that hold back the sea have to be very big and very strong to stand the pounding of the waves against them,for the slightest break or hole in the dike would soon burst open and the water would flood the country, and cover houses and drown the people, so they have men to watch the dikes all the time to mend any broken places assoon as they are made.

But long, long ago—about seven hundred years ago—there was a terrible storm, and the North Sea did break throughand it drowned thousands upon thousands of people and the villages and houses in which they lived. Ships now sail and fish now swim where these drowned villages lie, and this inland water is called the South Sea, which inDutch is the Zuyder Zee. But the Dutch people are planning to build dikes and shut off the North Sea once again and pump the water out. This will make dry land where the Zuyder Zee now is; so some day, not many years fromnow, there will be no Zuyder Zee, no South Sea, and where fish now swim and ships now sail will be houses and farms.

Where we have roads and streets, in Holland they have canals. In the summer, boats sail on the canals and in thewinter the people skate on them. Children skate to school and men skate to work. What fun!