182 HINTS ON ANGLING. 



Bergues is worth a short visit, if the angler should happen 

 to be in the vicinity. 



Sbt. Outer. 



This town has long been a favourite place of residence 

 for English families ; and no small number of distinguished 

 Englishmen have, at different periods, received their 

 youthful training and academical instruction in this clean, 

 well-built, and very agreeable town. Burke, Kemble, 

 O'Connell, Moore, all eminent, and perhaps inimitable, in 

 their several departments, spent their youthful years 

 in the English College within the walls of this town; 

 and St. Omer still deservedly retains its old estimation 

 as a place of education. Good schools and first-rate 

 masters are to be obtained on reasonable terms, and many 

 English families, wisely disregarding the expensive frivo- 

 lities of a fashionable London boarding school, make 

 St. Omer a place of temporary residence for educational 

 purposes. 



In a northerly and north-easterly direction from this 

 place, occupying a vast tract of country, lie the extra- 

 ordinary marais, which, extending from the walls of the 

 town to Cassel and Waatten, present to the eye of the 

 stranger many novel and interesting features. These 

 marais consist, for the most part, of a vast assemblage of 

 small islands, surrounded by deep rivers and gullies, and 

 indented in all directions by large lakes and ponds. The 

 islands themselves almost floating islands appear to 

 be crumbling away in the surrounding waters; but the 

 laborious occupiers exceeded by none in the world in 

 habits of patient and persevering industry are con- 

 tinually preserving them by fresh accumulations of loamy 

 fertile soil, which they drag up with incredible toil from 



