"The land all about here," said Cecil, "is so devastated, that where the open country was wont to be covered with kine and sheep, it is now fuller of wild boars and wolves; whereof many come so nigh the town that the sentinels--three of whom watch every night upon a sand-hill outside the gates--have had them in a dark night upon them ere they were aware." But the garrison of Ostend was quite as dangerous to the peasants and the country squires of Flanders, as were the wolves or wild boars; and many a pacific individual of retired habits, and with a remnant of property worth a ransom, was doomed to see himself whisked from his seclusion by Conway's troopers, and made a compulsory guest at the city.

Prisoners were brought in from a distance of sixty miles; and there was one old gentlemen, "well-languaged," who "confessed merrily to Cecil, that when the soldiers fetched him out of his own mansion-house, sitting safe in his study, he was as little in fear of the garrison of Ostend as he was of the Turk or the devil." [And Doctor Rogers held very similar language: "The most dolorous and heavy sights in this voyage to Ghent, by me weighed," he said; "seeing the countries which, heretofore; by traffic of merchants, as much as any other I have seen flourish, now partly drowned, and, except certain great cities, wholly burned, ruined, and desolate, possessed I say, with wolves, wild boars, and foxes--a great, testimony of the wrath of God," &c.

&c.

Dr.Rogers to the Queen,- April, 1588.

(S.P.Office MS.)] Three days after the departure of Garnier, Dr.Dale and his attendants started upon their expedition from Ostend to Ghent--an hour's journey or so in these modern times .-- The English envoys, in the sixteenth century, found it a more formidable undertaking.