[Illustration: Ribe, from the Castle Hill.]
The castle hill was the only high ground about the town. It was
said in some book of travel that one might see twenty-four miles
in any direction from Ribe, lying flat on one's back; but that was
drawing the long bow. Flat the landscape was, undeniably. From the
top of the castle hill we could see the sun setting upon the sea,
and the islands lying high in fine weather, as if floating in the
air, the Nibs winding its silvery way through the green fields.
Not a tree, hardly a house, hindered the view. It was grass, all
grass, for miles, to the sand dunes and the beach. Strangers went
into ecstasy over the little woodland patch down by the Long Bridge,
and very sweet and pretty it was; but to me, who was born there, the
wide view to the sea, the green meadows, with the lonesome flight
of the shore-birds and the curlew's call in the night-watches,
were dearer far, with all their melancholy. More than mountains
in their majesty; more, infinitely more, than the city of teeming
millions with all its wealth and might, they seem to me to typify
human freedom and the struggle for it.
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