Alost — Chambers's Encyclopaedia

A detailed botanical illustration of an Aloe socotrina plant. The plant features a thick, upright stem with a cluster of long, narrow, pointed leaves at its base. A tall, slender flower stalk rises from the center of the plant, topped with a small, dense cluster of flowers. — Aloe socotrina.

Alost, or AALST, a town in Belgium, the old capital of the province of East Flanders, on the Dender, a navigable tributary of the Scheldt, 19 miles NW. of Brussels by rail. It has trade in hops, corn, besides silk, linen, and woollen manufactures, breweries, distilleries, copper and iron foundries. The church of St Martin, an unfinished edifice, is one of the grandest in Belgium, with a famous painting by Rubens—'St Roche beseeching our Saviour to stay the Plague of Alost,' and the mausoleum of Marten, Belgium's first printer (1473). Alost has also a 13th-century town-hall, and a Jesuit college. Pop. (1891) 25,752.