that bore us; from Skjaergaard to Skjaergaard. The signal-gun is
fired, and the pilot comes from that solitary wooden house. Sometimes
we look upon the open sea, sometimes we glide again in between dark,
stony islands; they lie like gigantic monsters in the water: one has
the form of the tortoise's arched shell, another has the elephant's
back and rough grey colour. Mouldering, light grey rocks indicate that
the wind and weather past centuries has lashed over them.

We now approach larger rocky islands, and the huge, grey, broken rocks
of the main land, where dwarfish pine woods grow in a continual combat
with the blast; the Skjaergaards sometimes become only a narrow canal,
sometimes an extensive lake strewed with small islets, all of stone,
and often only a mere block of stone, to which a single little
fir-tree clings fast: screaming sea-gulls flutter around the
land-marks that are set up; and now we see a single farm-house, whose
red-painted sides shine forth from the dark background. A group of
cows lies basking in the sun on the stony surface, near a little
smiling pasture, which appears to have been cultivated here or cut out
of a meadow in Scania. How solitary must it not be to live on that
little island! Ask the boy who sits there by the cattle, he will be
able to tell us. "It is lively and merry here," says he. "The day is
so long and light, the seal sits out there on the stone and barks in
the early morning hour, and all the steamers from the canal must pass
here. I know them all; and when the sun goes down in the evening, it
is a whole history to look into the clouds over the land: there stand
mountains with palaces, in silver and in gold, in red and in blue;
sailing dragons with golden crowns, or an old giant with a beard down
to his waist--altogether of clouds, and they are always changing.

"The storms come on in the autumn, and then there is often much
anxiety when father is out to help ships in distress; but one becomes,
as it were, a new being.

"In winter the ice is locked fast and firm, and we drive from island
to island and to the main land; and if the bear or the wolf pays us a
visit we take his skin for a winter covering: it is warm in the room
there, and they read and tell stories about old times!"

Yes, old Time, how thou dost unfold thyself with remembrances of these
very Skjaergaards--old Time which belonged to the brave. These waters,
these rocky isles and strands, saw heroes more greatly