"Well, here is the Aller, Ditto! they lived there, you know; that is pretty far west. And here is Hermannsburg! Oh, I am glad we have found that. And here is Lüneburg—all over here, I suppose. I suppose we couldn't find the stone-houses, Ditto?"
"I suppose not. But here is Verden on the Aller, Maggie, where Charlemagne had those 4500 Saxons hewed to pieces. And here are Osnabrück and Detmold, where the Saxons beat him again, and took the 4000 captives that they slew at the stone-houses."
"Horrid Charlemagne!"
"It was all horrid, what concerned the fighting. But here is Minden, Maggie, from which good Landolf set out in his little boat, and dropped down the Weser to go to the East Saxons."
"And, then, when he got to the Aller he went up that; then he had to row hard, I guess."
"I guess he did a good deal of hard rowing, first and last, Maggie."
"Then to get to the stone-houses he went further up the Aller and turned into the Oerze. Here is the Oerze! Then the stone-houses must be somewhere hereabouts, Ditto; for they are not very far from Hermannsburg."
"There is the little river Wieze, Maggie; and here, where it flows into the Oerze, was that oak wood, sacred to Thor, where the village of Müden now is. And here is the village of Munster where Freija was honoured. All over the land, then, it was wild country, woods and morasses. And now—think what Germany is!"
"What is it, Ditto?"
"It is the land of Thought, and Art, and Learning, and Criticism."