Ghent

gent, an important city in Belgium. It is situated on the "lazy" Scheldt, and is divided by numerous canals into twenty-six islands or blocks connected by 270 bridges. Ghent is noted for the manufacture of cotton, linen, thread, ribbon, cutlery, paper, pottery, hosiery, engines, leather, ropes, and beer. It is a busy, thriving industrial and commercial city with a population in 1900 of 160,000. Tourists are interested in the old walls and gates; in the nunneries where exquisite lace is made; in the university and a library of handsome old books and hand illumined manuscripts; in a bell tower with a chime of forty bells; and in the old churches with stained windows and paintings by the masters. The church of St. Michael contains a painting of the Crucifixion by the celebrated Van Dyck. There are several hundred hothouses. Bulbs are raised for florists of both Europe and America. Ghent has the most wonderful floral shows in Europe. The treaty of Ghent which closed the War of 1812 was negotiated here.

Ghetto (get'o) The, the Jewish quarter of large cities. The term arose in Italy in connection with the Jewish quarters in the cities of Lombardy and other parts of Italy. In the medieval towns the Jews were compelled to live apart from the Christians. At Cordova the Moslems drove "dogs and Jews" to live outside the city walls. The famous ghetto of Rome was destroyed in 1885 to make room for a new embankment along the Tiber. The largest and most populous ghetto in the world is a down town tenement quarter in New York City. Over a third of a million Hebrew people are packed into houses, many of them unfit for occupancy. They eke out a living largely by working on readymade clothing by the piece.