It was as if, some great manufacturing enterprise had been set on foot, and the world had suddenly awoke to the hidden capabilities of the situation.
A great dockyard and arsenal suddenly revealed themselves--rising like an exhalation--where ship-builders, armourers, blacksmiths, joiners, carpenters, caulkers, gravers, were hard at work all day long.

The din and hum of what seemed a peaceful industry were unceasing.

From Kalloo, Parma dug a canal twelve miles long to a place called Steeken, hundreds of pioneers being kept constantly at work with pick and spade till it was completed.

Through this artificial channel--so soon as Ghent and Dendermonde had fallen--came floats of timber, fleets of boats laden with provisions of life and munitions of death, building-materials, and every other requisite for the great undertaking, all to be disembarked at Kalloo.

The object was a temporary and destructive one, but it remains a monument of the great general's energy and a useful public improvement.
The amelioration of the fenny and barren soil, called the Waesland, is dated from that epoch; and the spot in Europe which is the most prolific, and which nourishes the largest proportion of inhabitants to the square mile, is precisely the long dreary swamp which the Prince thus drained for military purposes, and converted into a garden.