Many trees were bald
at the top and looked sickly. If a forest like that were to journey down
to Kolmarden and see a real forest, how inferior it would feel!
The gardens which he now saw had some pretty bushes, but no fruit trees
or lindens or chestnut trees--only mountain ash and birch. There were
some vegetable beds, but they were not as yet hoed or planted.
"If such an apology for a garden were to come trailing into Soermland,
the province of gardens, wouldn't it think itself a poor wilderness by
comparison?"
Imagine an immense plain like the one now gliding beneath him, coming
under the very eyes of the poor Smaland peasants! They would hurry away
from their meagre garden plots and stony fields, to begin plowing and
sowing.
There was one thing, however, of which this Northland had more than
other lands, and that was light. Night must have set in, for the cranes
stood sleeping on the morass; but it was as light as day. The sun had
not travelled southward, like every other thing. Instead, it had gone so
far north that it shone in the boy's face. To all appearance, it had no
notion of setting that night.
If this light and this sun were only shining on West Vemmenhoeg! It would
suit the boy's father and mother to a dot to have a working day that
lasted twenty-four hours.
_Sunday, June nineteenth_.
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