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710 A STORY FROM THE SAND-DUNES
between Scotland and Jutland, and the wind increased just as in the old song of ' The King's Son of England '.
And it blew a storm, and the clouds were dark, And they found neither land nor shelter, Then forth they threw their anchor so true, But the wind blew them east towards Denmark.
This all happened a long, long while ago. King Christian VII then sat on the Danish throne, and he was still a young man. Much has happened since that time, much has changed or has been changed. Sea and moorland have been converted into green meadows, heath has become arable land, and in the shelter of the West Jute huts grow apple trees and rose bushes, though they certainly require to be sought for, as they bend beneath the sharp west wind. In Western Jutland one may go back in thought to the old times, farther back than the days when Christian VII bore rule. As it did then, in Jutland, the brown heath now also extends for miles, with its ' Grave-mounds ', its mirages, and its crossing, sandy, uneven roads ; westward, where large rivulets run into the bays, extend marshes and meadow land, girdled with lofty sand-hills, which, like a row of Alps raise their peaked summits towards the ocean, only broken by the high clayey ridges, from which the waves year by year bite out huge mouthfuls, so that the impending snores fall down as if by the shock of an earthquake. Thus it is there to-day, and thus it was many, many years ago, when the happy pair were sailing in the gorgeous ship.
It was in the last days of September, a Sunday, and sunny weather ; the chiming of the church bells in the Bay of Nissum was wafted along like a chain of sounds. The churches there are erected almost entirely of hewn boulder stones, each like a piece of rock ; the North Sea might foam over them, and they would not be overthrown. Most of them are without steeples, and the bells are hung between two beams in the open air. The service was over, and the congregation thronged out into the churchyard, where then, as now, not a tree nor a bush was to be seen ; not a single flower had been planted there, nor had a wreath been laid upon the graves. Rough mounds show where the dead have been buried, and rank grass, tossed |
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