From a very early date, perhaps since the time of the Romans, there had stood some nine leagues west of Ghent, on a small, oblong-shaped island, formed by the confluence of the Boterbeke with an elbow of the Roya, and a deep, broad moat which united the two streams, a fortified camp or castle surrounded by a handful of cottages. Hard-by on the mainland, near the spot where the rivers met, stood a small, ancient sanctuary, which tradition said St. Amand had built, and further up stream, on the banks of the Boterbeke, a larger church dedicated to the Saviour, and said to be the handiwork of St. Eloi. This place, perhaps from the _brugge_ or heather which surrounded it, perhaps from the _brigge_ or bridge by which it was approached, was called Brugge or Bruggestock or Bruggeswelle--a lonely, desolate place hemmed in by forest and marsh, and, from the nature of its site, well calculated to form a stronghold against the Danes. Moved by this consideration, hither came Baldwin and Judith when they had made their peace with the irascible King Charles, determined to make Brugge the headquarters of their government and their principal abode. A felicitous choice of residence destined to be fruitful in results. Thanks to it, we shall see the tumbled-down ruins of Bruggestock develop later on into that wondrous conglomeration of picturesque civic splendour--rival, in its heyday, of Venice, alike in commerce and in treasures of art, and in glory of piled-up brick, which later generations called Bruges, the Queen of the North. Before going further, let us linger awhile over the Brugge of Baldwin's day. The old fortress which he found there was built on an oblong-shaped island. The river Roya, which enclosed it on two sides (those facing S.E. and N.E.), still runs in its ancient bed; it flows alongside of that pleasant lime grove, which some old Burgomaster of a hundred years ago planted in front of that unlovely terrace of substantial, comfortable-looking eighteenth-century _bourgeois_ homes which goes by the name of the Dyver. Soon, however, after the bend of the stream, the Roya now burrows underground, vaulted over in the seventeenth century, and wends its subterranean course along the south-west side of the _Place du Bourg_, under Government House, and at the back of the houses which line the east side of the _rue Flamande_, and comes once more into daylight just opposite the old Academy in the _Place des Biscayens_.