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The effect is extremely picturesque, and the example of the builders of La Panne is being followed at other places, notably at Duinbergen, one of the very latest bathing stations, which has risen during the last three years about a mile to the east of Heyst. Another very interesting place is the Plage de Westende, the present terminus of the electric railway from Ostend.
From Westende it will be continued to Nieuport-Bains, crossing the Yser by movable bridges, and thence to La Panne, and so onwards, winding through the dunes, over the French borders, and perhaps as far as Paris!
Large portions of this magnificent roadway, which is to be known as the 'Route Royale, have already been completed between Blankenberghe and Ostend, and from Ostend to Plage de Westende.
A few miles inland, to the southwest, in the middle of the plain of Flanders, were the houses of Furnes, grouped round the church tower of St. Nicholas. Nearer, on the landward side of the dunes to the east, and within less than a mile of each other, were the villages of Westende and Lombaerdzyde.
Though the Court at Brussels had been taken by surprise, the Dutch army was in a position of great danger. Part of it lay on the west side of the Yser, and part to the east, amongst the dunes near Lombaerdzyde and Westende, with a bridge of boats thrown across the river as their only connection.
Again the belligerents came to a hand-to-hand conflict, and so well directed was the allied counterattack that no advantage to the Germans was obtained. For three days this severe fighting continued. The struggle was most sharp between Dixmude and the coast at Westende, where the Germans hoped to break through the allied lines, and thus crumple up their entire front, making a free passage.
They repeatedly bombarded the position of the kaiser's men at Westende, east of Nieuport. The Germans had trained one of their mammoth pieces of artillery against that town presumably because it held the sluices and locks which regulated the overflowing of the Yser territory. If the means of flooding the land could not be seized, the next best thing to do was to wreck them.
Nearer were the populous villages of Westende and Lombaerd-Zyde, connected with Nieuport by numerous small lakes and canals derived from the channel of the Yser river, which flowed past the town on its way to the sea. The history of Nieuport, from the terrible days of the Spanish invasion down to these days of even worse fate, has been pitiable.
The old village of Westende lies a mile inland on the highway between Nieuport and Ostend, close to the scene of the Battle of the Dunes. This Plage is, indeed, a model seaside resort, with a digue which looks down upon a shore of the finest sand, and from which, of an evening, one sees the lights of Ostend in the east, and the revolving beacon at Dunkirk shining far away to the west.
As an instance of the speed and energy with which these works for the convenience of the public are carried out, when once they have been decided upon, it may be mentioned that the contract for the portion of the electric line between Middelkerke and Plage de Westende, a distance of about a mile and a half, was signed on May 9, that five days later 200 workmen began to cut through the dunes, embank and lay the permanent way, and that on June 25, in spite of several interruptions owing to drifting sand and heavy rains, the first train of the regular service arrived at Plage de Westende.
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