I will not describe the subsequent manoeuvres, which would interest nobody; enough if I say that on January 16, 1679, it had become of the highest moment for Friedrich Wilhelm to get from Carwe (Village near Elbing), on the shore of the _Frische Haf_, where he was, through Koenigsberg, to Gilge on the _Curische Haf_, where the Swedes are, in a minimum of time. Distance, as the crow flies, is about a hundred miles; road, which skirts the two _Hafs_ (wide shallow _Washes_, as we should name them), is of rough quality and naturally circuitous. It is ringing frost to-day, and for days back. Friedrich Wilhelm hastily gathers all the sledges, all the horses of the district; mounts Four thousand men in sledges; starts with speed of light, in that fashion; scours along all day, and after the intervening bit of land, again along, awakening the ice-bound silences. Gloomy _Frische Haf_, wrapped in its Winter cloud-coverlids, with its wastes of tumbled sand, its poor frost-bound fishing-hamlets, pine hillocks--desolate- looking, stern as Greenland, or more so, says Busching, who travelled there in winter-time--hears unexpected human voices, and huge grinding and trampling; the Four thousand, in long fleet of sledges, scouring across it in that manner. All day they rush along--out of the rimy hazes of morning into the olive-colored clouds of evening again--with huge, loud-grinding rumble, and do arrive in time at Gilge. A notable streak of things, shooting across those frozen solitudes in the New Year, 1679; little short of Karl Gustav's feat, which we heard of in the other or Danish end of the Baltic, twenty years ago, when he took islands without ships. This Second Exploit--suggested or not by that prior one of Karl Gustav on the ice--is still a thing to be remembered by Hohenzollerns and Prussians. The Swedes were beaten here on Friedrich Wilhelm's rapid arrival; were driven into disastrous, rapid retreat Northward, which they executed in hunger and cold, fighting continually, like Northern bears, under the grim sky, Friedrich Wilhelm sticking to their skirts, holding by their tail, like an angry bear-ward with steel whip in his hand; a thing which, on the small scale, reminds one of Napoleon's experiences. Not till Napoleon's huge fighting-flight, a Hundred and thirty-four years after, did I read of such a transaction in those parts. The Swedish invasion of Preussen has gone utterly to ruin.