_A_. ORIGINS OF ANTWERP ANTWERP, the seaport of the Schelde estuary, is practically =the youngest= (and the least interesting) of the great Belgian towns. It should therefore be visited _last_ by the historically-minded tourist. A small town, known in Flemish as =Antwerpen= (“at the Wharf”),—a name altered in French and English into Anvers and Antwerp,—existed here, it is true, as early as the 7th century, and suffered heavily in the 9th from the ubiquitous Northmen. But its situation at the open mouth of the great estuary of the Schelde, exposed to every passing piratical invader, rendered it unfit for the purposes of early commerce. The trade of Flanders, in its first beginnings, accordingly concentrated itself in the more protected inland ports like Bruges and Ghent; while that of Brabant, of which province Antwerp itself formed a part, found a safer home in Brussels or Louvain, far up some minor internal river. Hence =the rise of Antwerp= dates no further back than the end of the 15th and beginning of =the 16th century=. Its rise, that is to say, as =a great commercial port=, for from an early period it was the capital of a petty margrave, under the Duke of Brabant. As northern Europe grew gradually quieter during the 11th and 12th centuries, Antwerp rose somewhat in importance; and the magnificence of its cathedral, the earliest part of which dates from 1352, sufficiently shows that the town was increasing in wealth and population during the palmy period when Bruges and Ghent governed the trade of the Continent. But when, in the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th, Bruges began to decline (partly from political causes, but more still from changes in navigation and trade routes), Antwerp rose suddenly to the first position in the Low Countries and perhaps in Europe. Its large, deep, and open port was better adapted to the increasing shipping of the new epoch than were the shallow and narrow canals or rivers of Ghent, Bruges, and Brussels. The discovery of America, and of the route to India by the Cape of Good Hope, had revolutionized both commerce and navigation; vessels were built larger and of deeper draught; and the Schelde became for a time what the Thames, the Clyde, and the Mersey have become in our own period. Antwerp under Charles V. was probably even more prosperous and wealthier than Venice. =The centre of traffic was shifting= from the _Mediterranean_ to the _Atlantic seaboard_. The city reached its highest point of prosperity about 1568, when it is said that thousands of vessels lay at anchor in the Schelde, and that more than a hundred craft sailed and arrived daily. Even allowing for the smaller burden of those days, however, this is probably an exaggeration. The great =fairs= of Antwerp, of which those of Leipzig and Nijni Novgorod are now the only modern representatives, also drew thousands of merchants from all parts of the world.