Few fences break up the wide fields that extend round the town to the sea. Cattle are invariably tethered, pasture is valuable, and none of it must be trampled down. Sprinkled about are white farmhouses covered with tiles or with thatch. Many small-holders have purchased their land with money borrowed from the State. Sir Rider Haggard[56] has recently described their condition, and pointed out what England may learn. Denmark is, or rather has been, so progressively indifferent to the past that but few old buildings still adorn her open fields. When it was considered necessary for a self-respecting Scandinavian nation to establish an open-air museum,[57] the needful old farm buildings had to be brought from parts of old Denmark that are now either Swedish or German. Nothing had escaped rebuilding on strictly Danish soil. At first sight Danish farming looks rough, thistles may not seldom be seen growing luxuriantly among the oats. Danish landscapes indeed frequently look rather more American than European with something of that ungroomed appearance and absence of hedges that is so characteristic of a new country. In purely dairy farming, none the less, Danes practically lead the world, and that despite their poor soil and the need for sheltering stock from the rigours of a long winter. Though about a hundred and seventy-four of them live on each square mile, they manage to send away food that they do not need to the value of about twenty millions sterling every year. Age-long the connection between this pleasant land and the British Isles. Roskilde and Winchester were twin capitals of the middle empire of which England formed a part, after the legions of Rome had departed, before the British had built a dominion in the world for themselves. Nor is the impression the Danes left on England by any means worn away. A Danish resident in Middlesbrough, taking a walk with an English friend over the Cleveland Moors, found himself able to understand the dialect of the folk of those wild hills, while their own countryman could not. Political links with Denmark are to-day centred mainly in the relations of kings and queens. But the great smoky cities of the United Kingdom have their chief source of the necessaries of life in this quiet and green countryside. [Illustration] CHAPTER VI COPENHAGEN Dumb was the sea, and if the beech-woods stirred, 'Twas with the nesting of the grey-winged bird Midst its thick leaves.... Great things he suffered, great delights he had, Unto great kings he gave good deeds for bad; He ruled o'er kingdoms where his name no more Is had in memory, and on many a shore He left his sweat and blood to win a name Passing the bounds of earthly creatures' fame. _Ogier the Dane_, by WILLIAM MORRIS.