HOMEWARD BOUND 57 



site ! Here all is one low line of bright colour, green 

 fields sloping gently down to the sea ; or else low yellow 

 sandy shore, beyond which stretches the little penin- 

 sula of Skager, 1 that looks like an island, bright with a 

 church, a lighthouse, and a village, to the left of which, 

 beyond a strip of beryl-coloured sea, is the sparkling 

 red-roofed town of Frederikshaven. An insignificant 

 place, however, and not over-wholesome, as one finds on 

 walking about in the hot sun. When I was here, soon 

 after midsummer, after the bleakness of Norway and 

 the barren Swedish coast, the place seemed a marvel of 

 sunshine and fertility, with its apricots all set for fruit, 

 laburnum, guelder-roses, white and pink may, wistaria, 

 gooseberries almost large enough for a pudding, and 

 asparagus, probably home-grown, cut for table. It 

 takes distance to regulate this idea and set the scene 

 in its due perspective. These objects are no marvelr^,t 

 the end of June ; indeed it is late in the season for 

 such things. I had come from a worse climate, that is 

 all. After enjoying the fertility of France, Linnaeus 

 may have shivered at the spectacle. He hastened down 

 through Jutland by the little whitewashed thatched 

 cottages that bestrew the hillocky rather than hilly 

 ground. The beech trees are but small here. Near 

 the seashore it is all reclaimed sandhills, with peat at 

 whiles ; inland, it is a level and not over-rich country, 

 though growing plenty of corn, blue cornflowers, and 

 pink campion, and stocked with poultry, cattle spotted 

 1 The Skager rack = the race of Skager. 



