This was many years ago. King Christian the Seventh occupied the
Danish throne, and was then a young man. Much has happened since that
time, much has changed; lakes and morasses have become fruitful
meadows, wild moors have become cultivated land, and on the lee of the
West Jutlander's house grow apple trees and roses; but they must be
sheltered from the sharp west winds. Up there one can still, however,
fancy one's self back in the period of Christian the Seventh's reign.
As then in Jutland, so even now, stretch for miles and miles the brown
heaths, with their tumuli, their meteors, their knolly, sandy cross
roads. Towards the west, where large streams fall into the fiords, are
to be seen wide plains and bogs, encircled by high hills, which, like
a row of Alpine mountains with pinnacles formed[6] like saws, frown over
the sea, which is separated from them only by high clay banks; and
year after year the sea bites a large mouthful off of these, so that
their edges and summits topple over as if shaken by an earthquake.
Thus they look at this day, and thus they were many years ago, when
the happy young couple sailed from Spain in the magnificent ship.
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