344 
LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. 
a sea-monster, while its gilded tail curls aft over the 
head of the steersman. From either flank projects a 
hank of some thirty oars, that look, as they smite the 
ocean with even heat, like the legs on which the reptile 
crawls over its surface. One stately mast of pine serves 
to carry a square sail made of cloth, brilliant with 
stripes of red, white, and blue. 
And who are they who navigate this strange bar¬ 
baric vessel?—why leave they the sheltering fiords of 
their beloved Norway? They are the noblest hearts of 
that noble land—freemen, who value freedom,—who 
have abandoned all rather than call Harald master,— 
and now seek a new home even among the desolate 
crags of Iceland, rather than submit to the tyranny of 
a usurper. 
“ Nord— oder Sud ! wenn nur die Seelen gluten!” 
Another picture, and a sadder story,—but the scene 
is now a wide dun moor, on the slope of a seaward 
hill; the autumn evening is closing in, but a shadow 
darker than that of evening broods over the desolate 
plain,—the shadow of Death . Groups of armed men, 
with stern sorrow in their looks, are standing round a 
