"If you leave the mouth of the Thames, or the white chalk cliffs at Dover, and sail over the water just where the English Channel meets the North Sea, you will in about three or four hours see before you a long expanse of yellow sand, and rising behind it a low ridge of sandhills, which look in the distance like a range of baby mountains. These sandhills are called "dunes. " Here and there at intervals you will see a number of little towns, each town standing by itself on the shore, and separated from its neighbour by a row of dunes and a stretch of sand. This is your first view of the little country called Belgium, which is bounded on the east by Holland, and on the west by France. It is, from end to end, about half the size of Ireland. "