They subsist on the fish left by the refluent waters, and which they catch in nets formed of rushes or seaweed.

Neither tree nor shrub is visible on these shores.
The drink of the people is rain-water, which they preserve with great care; their fuel, a sort of turf, which they gather and form with the hand.

And yet these unfortunate beings dare to complain against their fate, when they fall under the power and are incorporated with the empire of Rome!" The picture of poverty and suffering which this passage presents is heightened when joined to a description of the country.

The coasts consisted only of sand-banks or slime, alternately overflowed or left imperfectly dry.

A little further inland, trees were to be found, but on a soil so marshy that an inundation or a tempest threw down whole forests, such as are still at times discovered at either eight or ten feet depth below the surface.
The sea had no limits; the rivers no beds nor banks; the earth no solidity; for according to an author of the third century of our era, there was not, in the whole of too immense plain, a spot of ground that did not yield under the footsteps of man .-- Eumenius.
It was not the same in the southern parts, which form at present the Walloon country.