custom people to listen to their song and
cry, and to take an interest in their life, their nests, eggs, and
young.

Then I should inflame the peasants against the armed farm-boys,
day-labourers, and poachers, and against the sportsmen from town, who
stroll around without permission and crack away where they please. It
only wants a beginning and a little combination, for the peasant, in his
heart, is furious at this senseless shooting.

Perhaps some day, when not a single bird is left, my idea of an
inspector may come to be honoured and valued. Would that a godly
Storthing [Footnote: Parliament.] may then succeed in finding a pious
and well-recommended man, who can instruct the people in a moral manner
as to where the humid Noah accommodated the ostriches in the ark, or
what he managed to teach the parrots during the prolonged rainy weather.

We, too, have recently had a deluge. The lakes and the river have risen
to the highest winter-marks. But the soil of this blessed place is so
sandy that roads and fields remain firm and dry, the water running off
and disappearing in a moment.

It has also blown from all quarters, with varying force, for three
weeks. We press onward over the plain, and stagger about among the
houses, where the gusts of wind rush in quite unexpectedly with loud
claps. The fishing-rod has had to be carried against the wind, and the
water of the river has risen in the air like smoke.

And the sea, white with wrath, begins to form great heavy breakers far
out in many fathoms of water, rolls them in upon the strand, inundates
large tracts, and carries away the young wrack-grass and what we call
'strandkaal' [Footnote: Sea-kale.]--all that has grown in summer and
gathered a little flying sand around it as tiny fortifications; the
sea has washed the beach quite bare again, and fixed its old limits
high up among the sand-heaps, where they are strong enough to hold out
for the winter.

I have now been here four months to a day, and have seen the corn since
it was light-green shoots until now, when it is well secured in the
barns,--where there was room. For the crop has been so heavy--not in the
memory of man has there been such a year on this coast--that rich stacks
of corn are standing on many farms, and the lofts are crammed to the
roof-trees.

Inland there is corn yet standing out; it is yellowing on the fields,
which are here green and fresh as in the middle of spring.

We have had many fine da