layed by working-men in Belgium. In some
places it seems to be quite unknown, but in others it is very popular.
But there are so many rules that it is impossible fully to understand
it without seeing it played, or to explain it without a diagram
showing the positions of the players, who have all different names,
like men fielding at cricket. The _jeu de boule_, which you may hear
mentioned in Belgium, is quite different from the _jeu de balle_, and
is much the same as skittles.

[Illustration: PLAYING "JEU DE BOULE," AT A FLEMISH INN.]

Of the more important games football is the most popular in Belgium.
Great crowds assemble to watch the matches, which are always played
under "Association" rules. Rugby football would be impossible for
Belgians, because they would never keep their tempers when caught
and thrown down. There would be constant rows, and no match would ever
be finished. As it is, there is a great deal of quarrelling, and when
one town plays another the visitors, if they win, are hooted, and
sometimes attacked, when they are leaving the ground. Lately, after a
football match in Flanders, knives were drawn, and some of the players
had to escape in a motor-car.

Cricket has lately been tried, but it has not as yet spread much, and
is not likely to become very popular, as it requires too much patience
and steadiness for Belgian young men and boys. Lawn-tennis and hockey,
however, are quite the fashion, especially lawn-tennis, which many
Belgians, ladies as well as men, play extremely well. Important tennis
tournaments are held every summer at Ostend and other places on the
coast.

In recent years several golf-courses have been made in Belgium. There
is one at a place called Le Coq, near Ostend, where Leopold II., the
present King of the Belgians, founded a club. It is very pretty, and
there is a fine club-house; but good English players do not like it,
because the course is too artificial, with flower-beds and ornamental
shrubs, whereas a golf-course ought to be as natural as possible. Golf
is played also at Brussels, Antwerp, Nieuport, and Ghent.

Another place for golf is Knocke, a seaside village near Bruges, where
the game was introduced by a few Englishmen some years ago. The
golf-course at this place is laid out among the dunes, and is
entirely natural, with "bunkers" of fine sand. A great many players go
there from England and Scotland, as well as from various parts of
Belgium, and the Flemish "cad