278 Hai'ticultural Tour in the Nelherlands. 



of Adam have most undoubtedly a right to call it, in accord- 

 ance with the fashion of the times. I have scribbled for you 

 ere now, and, as " Malus," &c. &c., have figured, with other 

 immortals, in your list of contributors. One fine day last 

 June, with the aid of steam, I reached Calais, intending to 

 route it through the north of France to Flanders. I searched 

 here for some garden, to give me my first idea of French 

 gardening, but in vain ; for, with the exception of a neat one 

 at the barrier at the Boulogne gate, belonging to one of the 

 gendarmes, where were some fine larkspurs and good roses 

 tied up to stakes to imitate standards, nothing in that way 

 was to be seen. Hence to Dunkirk, by Gravelines, Mardyke, 

 &c., the road is one uninteresting flat, planted in the avenue 

 style ; but the trees, owing to the violence of the sea breezes, 

 presented a singularly distorted appearance, every branch and 

 twig of them receding from the sea. At the entrance to Dun- 

 kirk I observed a new villa residence, the garden and grounds 

 laid out in true formality ; the white-sanded paths and gro- 

 tesque-shaped borders unedged with box, but ill accorded 

 with my green English ideas. 



Dunkirk being a close fortified town, nothing in my way 

 was to be expected ; I therefore kept on my route. As the 

 canal, the usual road for travellers to Flanders, was closed, 

 being under repair ; and as the " diligence," a town waggon 

 with two horses, was uncertain, I shouldered my portmanteau, 

 and walked on to Zudcoote, a small village eight miles on my 

 road, whence the " barque" started in the morning. I was 

 here first struck with the tremendous hoes of the peasantry : 

 they were about a foot deep and 8 in. broad, nearly as large 

 as our spades, and bright as silver. The soil, which all 

 through this district is soft and peaty, allows them to be used 

 with tolerable facility; in fact, they supersede the spade, as 

 the soil is pulled over with them to the depth required for 

 any common crop. Hoeing among thickly planted crops is 

 not usual here, as they are weeded; and perhaps nothing 

 gave me greater distaste to the agriculture here and in Flan- 

 ders than seeing men and women crawling over acres of land 

 pulling out weeds. After being towed at the rate of five 

 miles an hour, along one of the numerous fine canals which 

 abound here, we arrived at Fearns, the quietest dullest town 

 imaginable. No gardens or orchards here greeted my eyes ; 

 nor hence to Nieuport, a strongly fortified but insignificant 

 town. Shortly after, we came into the grand canal from 

 Ostend to Bruges and Ghent, and in the evening we arrived 

 »t Bruges, my resting-place for a short time. 



Having the journal of the tour by the Caledonian Horticul- 



