But we linger, not unnaturally perhaps, but somewhat long for our narrative, in the city of Berlin. The passports are again _viséd_, however, and stowed away in our safest pocket, the trumpet sounds anew, and we are off to Stettin. Through flats and sands and moors as before, and occasional patches of pine forest, we pass for the most part of the way. Here and there a stretch of poor corn-land breaks upon the monotony, and occasional undulations of the surface confine the view. But no home-like fences divide the land, nor signs of comfort make up for the natural nakedness and repulsive aspect of the bleak-looking country. This character of the land and landscape prevails both east and west along the southern shores of the Baltic Sea, not only in Prussia, but in the Danish appendages of Holstein and Sleswick, and across to the mouth of the Elbe. Yet there are some so little experienced in the features of a fair landscape, or so patriotically blind, or so poetically disposed by nature, as to see beauties even in these unpromising countries, and to derive a pleasure from passing through them which the majority of travellers can scarcely appreciate. Madame Pfeiffer crossed this tract of country on her way from Hamburg through Holstein to Kiel, in which route we also remember sands and heaths somewhat less forbidding than those which intervene between Ungernsunde and Stettin. This matter-of-fact old lady, who was already beyond the age of poetry, thus speaks of what she saw and heard as she glided along— “The whole distance of seventy miles was passed in three hours; a rapid journey, but agreeable only by its rapidity. The whole neighbourhood presents only widely-extended plains, turf bogs, and moorlands, sandy places and heaths, interspersed with a little meadow and arable land. From the nature of the soil, the water in the ditches and fields looked black as ink.” And then, in the way of reflection, she adds— “The little river Eider would have passed unnoticed by me, had not some of my fellow-passengers made a great feature of it. In the finest countries, I have found the natives far less enthusiastic about what was really grand and beautiful, than they were here in praise of what was neither the one nor the other. My neighbour, a very agreeable lady, was untiring in her laudation of her beautiful native land. In her eyes, the crippled wood was a splendid park, the waste moorland an inexhaustible field for contemplation, and every trifle a matter of real importance. In my heart I wished her joy of her fervid imagination; but, unfortunately, my colder nature would not catch the infection.”[33]