ABSTRACT
On those heavy, sodden summer days, so common there, when the broad-boughed trees droop with the weight of wet chestnut spikes and the fresh shoots of willow herb cover the spoil tips, the Borinage is a green lethargy. It closes about the traveller, instilling a deep unwillingness to leave. Along the canals the fishermen doze at regular intervals. Their rods, unmoving, dip into the black stagnant water. Rows of soot-stained, dull brick houses reflect from blank windows only the fatigue of the past. They are scattered in a pattern whose rationale is wholly industrial, to be understood only by the location of mines and factories now closed. Once, this pattern asserted the unfettered vitality of a new industrial civilization to which church, castle and market square had become unimportant. Streets led to mine entrances and the perspective was closed not by steeples but by winding-gear.
