Then I should inflame the peasants against the armed farm-boys, day-labourers, and poachers, and against the sportsmen from town, who stroll around without permission and crack away where they please.  It only wants a beginning and a little combination, for the peasant, in his heart, is furious at this senseless shooting.

Perhaps some day, when not a single bird is left, my idea of an inspector may come to be honoured and valued.  Would that a godly Storthing [Footnote:  Parliament.] may then succeed in finding a pious and well-recommended man, who can instruct the people in a moral manner as to where the humid Noah accommodated the ostriches in the ark, or what he managed to teach the parrots during the prolonged rainy weather.

We, too, have recently had a deluge.  The lakes and the river have risen to the highest winter-marks.  But the soil of this blessed place is so sandy that roads and fields remain firm and dry, the water running off and disappearing in a moment.

It has also blown from all quarters, with varying force, for three weeks.  We press onward over the plain, and stagger about among the houses, where the gusts of wind rush in quite unexpectedly with loud claps.  The fishing-rod has had to be carried against the wind, and the water of the river has risen in the air like smoke.

And the sea, white with wrath, begins to form great heavy breakers far out in many fathoms of water, rolls them in upon the strand, inundates large tracts, and carries away the young wrack-grass and what we call ‘strandkaal’ [Footnote:  Sea-kale.]—­all that has grown in summer and gathered a little flying sand around it as tiny fortifications; the sea has washed the beach quite bare again, and fixed its old limits high up among the sand-heaps, where they are strong enough to hold out for the winter.

I have now been here four months to a day, and have seen the corn since it was light-green shoots until now, when it is well secured in the barns,—­where there was room.  For the crop has been so heavy—­not in the memory of man has there been such a year on this coast—­that rich stacks of corn are standing on many farms, and the lofts are crammed to the roof-trees.

Inland there is corn yet standing out; it is yellowing on the fields, which are here green and fresh as in the middle of spring.

We have had many fine days; but autumn is the time when Jaederen is seen at its best.

As the landscape nowhere rises to any great height, we always see much sky; and, although we do not really know it, we look quite as much at the magnificent, changeful clouds as at the fine scenery, which recedes far into the distance and is never strikingly prominent.

And all day long, in storm and violent showers, the autumn sky changes, as if in a passionate uproar of wrath and threatenings, alternating with reconciliation and promise, with dark brewing storm-clouds, gleams of sunshine and rainbows, until the evening, when all is gathered together out on the sea to the west.