GEEST-LAND. 355 



" During my stay at Husum, I had the advantage of 

 passing my evenings very agreeably and profitably at 

 the house of M. Hartz, with his own family, and two 

 Danish officers, Major Behmann, commandant at Hu- 

 sum, and Captain Baron de Barackow. The conversa- 

 tion often turned on the objects of my excursions, and 

 particularly on the natural history of the coasts and of 

 the islands ; respecting which, M. Hartz obligingly un- 

 dertook to give me extracts from the chronicles of the 

 country. This led us to speak of the Danish islands ; 

 and those officers giving me such descriptions of them, 

 as were very interesting to my object, I begged their 

 permission to write down, in their presence, the principal 

 circumstances which they communicated to me. These 

 will form the first addition to my own observations ; I 

 shall afterwards proceed to the information which I ob- 

 tained from M . Hartz. 



The two principal islands of the Danish Archipelago, 

 those of Funen and Seeland (or Zeeland), as well as some 

 small islands in the Kattegate, namely, Lenoe, Anholt, 

 and Samsoe, are hilly, and principally composed of 

 geest * ; and in these are found gravel and blocks of gra- 

 nite, and of other stones of that class, exactly in the same 

 manner as in the country which I have lately described, 

 and its islands in the North Sea. On the borders of the 

 two first of these Danish islands, there are also blocks in 

 the sea ; but only in front of abrupt coasts, as is the case 

 with the islands of Poel and Rugen, and along the coasts 



* By geest is understood the alluvial matter which is spread over the 

 surface both of the hilly and low country, and appears, according to 

 De Luc, to have been formed the last time the waters of the ocean stood 

 over the surface of the earth J. 



