CHAPTER XIII

"The heat-lark warbles forth his sepulchral melodies."
S. S. BLICHER.

The peninsula of Jutland possesses nothing of the natural beauty
which Zealand and Funen present--splendid beeches and odoriferous
clover-fields in the neighborhood of the salt sea; it possesses at
once a wild and desolate nature, in the heath-covered expanses and
the far-stretching moors. East and west are different; like the
green, sappy leaf, and grayish white sea-weed on the sea shore.
From the Woods of Marselisborg to the woods south of Coldinger
Fjord, is the land rich and blooming; it is the Danish Nature in
her greatness. Here rises the Heaven Mountain, with its wilderness
of coppice and heather; from here you gaze over the rich landscape,
with its woods and lakes, as far down as the roaring Cattegat.

The western coast, on the contrary, lies without a tree, without
bushes, with nothing but white sand-hills stretching along the
roaring ocean, which scourges the melancholy coast with sand-storms
and sharp winds. Between these contrasts, which the east and west
coasts present, the Hesperides and Siberia, lies the vast heath
which stretches itself from the Lyneborg sand to the Skagen's reef.
No hedge shows here the limits of possession. Among the crossing
tracks of carriage wheels must thou seek thy way. Crippled oaks,
with whitish-green moss overgrown to the outermost branches, twist
themselves along the ground, as if fearing storms and the sea-mist.
Here, like a nomadic people, but without flocks, do the so-called
Tartar bands wander up and down, with their peculiar language and