These farming establishments were very much alike, generally speaking; embosomed in orchards, which in their turn are surrounded by lofty elms. The dwelling-house is usually of brick, only one floor, a high roof, under which are the dormitories with garret-windows, sometimes two tiers of them. On the ground-floor the windows are large and open in the French style, outside shutters almost invariably _green_. Commonly there are only two rooms on this floor, one on each side of the passage, the door of which opens on the yards, as do the windows. One of these rooms is the kitchen, or ordinary residence of the family, the other is a _salle de cérémonie_. In the first is the usual display of brass pans, kettles, crockery, &c., which, with some common benches and a large table or two, constitute its furniture. As everywhere throughout this country, the most perfect cleanliness prevails, and the metallic lustre of the brass is brought out as much as scrubbing can effect. The _salle_ exhibits a collection of stiff old-fashioned chairs with rush bottoms and high upright carved backs, ponderous oaken tables, snow-white window-curtains, and a series of very common prints, in as common frames, suspended from the walls. These usually represent saints, &c. On the chimney-piece waxen or earthenware figures of animals, fruits, &c.; and frequently affixed to the wall over the centre one sees a kind of deep frame or box with glass front, in which, amongst cut paper, moss, or shell-work, is either a crucifix or a portrait of the Virgin and child. The barns, stables, cow-houses, and other out offices, form the other three sides of a square of which the front of the dwelling is the fourth. A rough pavement of about ten or twelve feet wide runs all round in front of the building; the remainder of the area is one vast dunghill, having a reservoir in the centre to receive its drainings, whilst it receives those of the cow-houses, stables, and dwelling by means of gutters constructed for the purpose. This precious fluid is the great dependence of the Flemish agriculturist, as the principal fertiliser of his fields. When the land is to be manured, it is carted out upon the grounds in a large tub (like a brewing-tub). A boy leads the cart very slowly all over the field, whilst a man, armed with a scoop, keeps scattering it in all directions. It must be confessed that the fields after this aspersion do not exhale the most savoury odours, but then nothing can exceed their fertility. The country about Dendermonde was, generally speaking, laid out in long narrow patches, separated from each other sometimes by a belt of turf, sometimes by a footpath, at others by ditches, along the edge of which might be a growth of alders, but no regular hedges anywhere. Towards the Dender, ditches of water were the common division, and these fields were fertilised by irrigation, not by the scoop, and a more beautiful verdure could not be seen,