About 1225, a second military order established itself in Livonia, and built four considerable towns, among them Thorn and Koenigsberg, in the depopulated country. Their black cross was borne, along with the red cross of the sword-bearers, and in course of time the two orders became associated, and together imposed a crushing servitude upon the remnants of the Tchudi, who were reduced to a form of serfdom; and though in later times their liberty has been yielded them again, the German nobility retained their lands. The aboriginal Livonian remained ever separate from his conqueror, the Papal German. The Kalevy-Poeg, the epic of the Tchud Esthonians, recites the career of the son of Kalev, the personification of the race, the hero of Titanic force. He swam the Gulf of Finland. His club was the trunk of an oak; with his horse and his immense harrow he plowed all Esthonia; he exterminated the beasts of prey, conquered the magicians of Finland, and the genii of the caves. He descended into hell and had single combat with Sarvig, the horned. He sailed to the ends of the earth, and when the fiery breath of the northern spirits burned his vessel, he built another of silver. When the heavens were lurid with the flames of these spirits, he laughed and said to his pilot: “With their darts of fire they light us on our way, since the sun has gone to rest, and we are passed beyond the daylight.” No fury of the elements could destroy him. He went to the isle of flame, of smoke, and of boiling water, where the mountains throw forth fire (Iceland). There he encountered a giant woman, who, plucking grass for her kine, crushed with it several of his sailors, as if they had been insects. He fought with men whose bodies were those of dogs, possibly the Greenland Esquimaux; and pauses in his onward strides only when told by a magician that the wall of the world’s end is still far away. When he is told of the landing of the sword-bearers, the men whose armor can neither be pierced with the spear nor cleft with the axe, his unconquerable heart is troubled. He seeks the tomb of his father for counsel, but the place is silent; the leaves murmur plaintively, the winds sigh, the dew itself is moved, the eye of the clouds is wet, all Esthonian nature shares in the forebodings of the national hero. He gathers his warriors by the Embach, and raises the battle cry. Bloody is the field, mournful the victory! All the brave are slain, the brothers of Kalevy-Poeg among them. His charger is cut down by the hand of the stranger. He who had overcome the demon Sarvig, who had laughed at the spirits of the north, could not subdue the men of iron, whose strength surpassed that of the gods. Captive to Mana, god of death, his wrist held fast in a cleft of the rock hard by the gate of hell, he comes no more to vindicate the liberties of his sons, his people. Long looked they for his return; but like his kinsman, perhaps his sire, Kolyvan, who lies under the rock whereon is built the