In this essentially agricultural country, boasting not a single manufacturing industry, a people of simple tastes, strongly attached to the fruitful soil which supplied most of their wants, lived a peaceful, sober life, into which, at regular intervals, the village fairs introduced an element of rude and boisterous gaiety. Property here has always been much subdivided, and large farms are quite the exception. So that in Belgium, which as a whole is so rich and thickly-populated, "Veurne-Ambacht" has always been regarded as a district that would afford an army the minimum of billeting facilities and of the various supplies required. Communications, too, are few and far between. Except for the Nieuport-Dixmude railway--which follows the same course as our main positions--and a few very second-rate light railways, there is but one line, that connecting Dixmude and Furnes with Dunkirk; and it is only a single line without depôts or sidings. Roads worthy of the name are rare enough. One of them, which begins at Nieuport and passes through Ramscapelle, Oudecapelle and Loo, runs almost parallel to the front, under the enemy's direct fire. To the west there is only one more, the high-road from Furnes to Ypres. This, also, is of great importance, although, being within range of the German guns, it is constantly subjected to bombardment. Lateral communications towards the front are confined on the one side to the roads which connect Furnes with Nieuport and Pervyse; and on the other to the by-roads which the main Furnes-Ypres highway throws off towards Oudecapelle, Loo and Boesinghe. The remainder of the system is made up of badly-paved or dirt roads, which are rendered useless by the lightest shower. Men and horses get bogged in a deep, sticky mud, from which they can extricate themselves only by the severest exertion. Of a truth the thick, clinging mud of "Veurne-Ambacht" is a persistent and terrible enemy, which one can only curse and fight without respite. We may add that this inhospitable region is entirely exposed to an observer stationed at any of several favourable points east of the Yser. The plain is commanded on the north from the top of the Westende dunes; centrally, from near Keyem; on the south, by the Clercken heights, where the ground rises to Hill 43. Not a movement, not a single work undertaken by the Belgian troops escaped the enemy until the clever but very complex arrangement of artificial screens was evolved which now protects almost the whole of this vast plain from direct observation. The above is a short and imperfect description of the region in which the Belgian Army has made a stand for the last three years, and which it has converted into a practically impregnable fortress. The features emphasised by us will enable readers to understand the very special character of the defence works which it has had to construct, and the amount of patient labour which was and still is imposed on it.