riding with the man between the sand-hills. We could not proceed
farther, and were obliged on this account to seek shelter in one of
the huts which the fishermen hail erected among the white sand-hills.
There we remained, and I saw the stranding of a vessel: I shall never
forget it! An American ship lay not a musket-shot from land. They cut
the mast; six or seven men clung fast to it in the waters. O, how
they rocked backward and forward in the dashing spray! The mast took
a direction toward the shore; at length only three men were left
clinging to the mast; it was dashed upon land, but the returning
waves again bore it away; it had crushed the arms and legs of the
clinging wretches--ground them like worms! I dreamed of this for
many nights. The waves flung the hull of the vessel up high on the
shore, and drove it into the sand, where it was afterward found.
Later, as we retraced our steps, were the stem and sternpost gone:
you saw two strong wooden walls, between which the road took its
course. You even still travel through the wreck!"

"Up in your country every poetical mind must become a Byron," said
Wilhelm. "On my parents' estate we have only idyls; the whole of
Funen is a garden. We mutually visit each other upon our different
estates, where we lead most merry lives, dance with the peasant-girls
at the brewing-feast, hunt in the woods, and fish in the lakes. The
only melancholy object which presents itself with us is a funeral,
and the only romantic characters we possess are a little hump-backed
musician, a wise woman, and an honest schoolmaster, who still firmly
believes, as Jeronimus did, that the earth is flat, and that, were it
to turn round, we should fall, the devil knows where!"

"I love nature in Jutland!" exclaimed Otto. "The open sea, the
brown heath, and the bushy moorland. You should see the wild moor