I again employ the quiet of Sunday to give you some sign of life, although I do not yet know on what day we shall find an opportunity of reaching the post from this wilderness. For some fifteen miles have I driven into the depths of the woods to reach this place, and before me lie some twenty-five miles ere we shall get to cultivated provinces. There is no town, no village, far or near—only isolated settlers and plank-huts, with a little barley and potatoes, strewn irregularly between dead trees, rocks, and thickets, over a few rods of ploughed land. Think of the wildest region near Viartlum,[42] for some hundred of square miles, tall heather, varied by short grass and moorland, beset with birch, juniper, pines, beech, oaks, and alders, sometimes impassably thick and sometimes very sparse, the whole sown with innumerable stones to the size of houses, smelling of wild rosemary and firs; and between them strangely formed lakes, surrounded by sand and forest—and you will see Smaland; where I now am. Really the land of my dreams, not to be reached by dispatches, colleagues, and N. N., but unhappily also for you; I should like to have a hunting-box on one of these quiet lakes, and people it for a few months with all the dear ones I now fancy are assembled at Reinfeld. It would be impossible to winter it out here, particularly amidst the dirt of the rain. Yesterday we started about five, and hunted in the burning heat, up hill and down dale, through bog and bush, until eleven; but found nothing at all. It is very tiring to walk through moors and impassable thickets of juniper, over great stones and underwood. We slept in a hay barn till two, drank a great deal of milk, and continued the chase till sunset, killing twenty-five woodcocks and two snipes. We then dined at the lodge—a wonderful structure of wood—on a peninsula by the lake. My room, with its three stools, two tables, and bedstead, presents the same uniform tint of rough pine planks, as does the whole house and its walls. The bed is very hard, but after all this exertion one sleeps without rocking. From my window I see a knoll with birch-trees, whose branches rustle in the breeze; between these the mirror of the lake, and beyond it fir forests. Beside the house is a tent for huntsman, driver, servants, and peasants; then the carriage-house and a little dog of a village of some eighteen or twenty huts, on both sides of a little street, and from each of these a tired beater is looking out. I propose to remain in this oasis till Wednesday or Thursday, then leave for another expedition on the shore, and return this day week to Copenhagen, on account of miserable politics. What next, I do not know as yet.
The 17th.—This morning early six wolves have been here and have torn up a poor bullock; we found their fresh traces, but personally we did not see them. From four in the morning till eight in the evening we have been in motion, have shot four woodcocks, slept for two hours on mown heather, and now, dog-tired, to bed.
The 19th.—It is impossible to send a letter to the post from here, without sending a messenger twelve miles; I shall therefore take this to the coast myself to-morrow. Yesterday, when the dog pointed, and I was looking more at him than at the ground I was treading on, I fell and hurt my left shin. Yesterday we had a very tired day’s sport, long and rocky; it produced me a woodcock; but has tamed me so completely, that to-day I am sitting at home with bandages, so that I should be ready to travel to-morrow and shoot the next day. I really am astonished at myself for stopping at home alone in such charming weather, and can scarcely refrain from the abominable wish that the others will shoot nothing. It is a little too late in the year, the birds are shy, or sport would be more plentiful. We shot through a charming place yesterday; great lakes, with islands and shores, mountain torrents, over rocks, plains for miles without houses or plough-land; every thing just as God created it, forest, field, heath, morass, and lake. I shall certainly return hither some day.
Two gentlemen of the Danish Chambers are already back; it was too hot for them, and they have gone to sleep. It is about half-past five; the others will only arrive about eight. I have been amusing myself all day in learning Danish from the doctor who applied the bandages. We brought him with us from Copenhagen, for there are no doctors here. Since a report has been spread of the presence of a physician in the woods, every day some twenty or thirty inhabitants of the huts come streaming in to take his advice. On Sunday evening we gave a very amusing dance to the inhabitants of the five square miles of forest; the music was played and sung by turns. Then they heard of the “wise man,” and now cripples of twenty years’ standing come and hope to be cured by him.
Königsberg, 12th Sept., 1857.
I found to my great joy your four letters at Polangen (which, by-the-by, is not in Prussia but Russia), and find from them that you and the children are well. I got on very well; the Courlanders were all touchingly kind to me, in a way seldom found by a foreigner. Besides several roebucks and stags, I shot five elks, one a very fine stag, measuring roughly six feet eight, without his colossal head. He fell like a hare, but as he was still alive, I mercifully gave him my second barrel; scarcely had I done so ere a second came up, still taller, so close to me that Engel, my loader, had to jump behind a tree to avoid being run over. I was obliged to look at him in a friendly way, as I had no other shot. I can not get rid of this disappointment, and must complain to you about it. I shot at another—no doubt he will be found—but one I missed entirely. I might, therefore, have killed three more. The night before last we left Dondangen, and in twenty-nine hours made forty miles without a road, through the forest and desert to Memel, in an open carriage, over stock and stone; we were obliged to hold on, so that we should not be thrown out. After three hours’ sleep at Memel, we started this morning in the steamboat for this place, whence we leave for Berlin to-night and arrive to-morrow. “We” means Behr and myself. I can not stop in Hohendorf; I ought to have been in Berlin to-morrow, my furlough being up. I should, however, have been obliged to give up my best sport at Dondangen, with the enormous stags, or, as they call them there, bolls; nor should I have seen how the axle of a great wagon broke under the enormous creature. On Monday the Emperor arrives at Berlin, therefore I am obliged to be there “some days” before. I hope to return from Berlin to Hohendorf and Reinfeld; but if the King goes to Frankfurt, this is unlikely.
Frankfurt, 19th December, 1857.
Your true sisterly heart has offered in so friendly a manner to look after Christmas exigencies, that I will not apologize if I now allow you to carry out the seductions of Gerson and other rascals once more, and ask you sans phrase to make the following purchases for Johanna:—