old Kronborg frowning over the Sound, and
charming Copenhagen, were passed; and, on
the day when the armistice was proclaimed,
the yacht ran swiftly along the coasts of the
pleasant Danish islands of Falster, Lolland,
and Langeland, and approached the harbour of
Harup Hav, on the southern shore of Alsen. A
beautiful sight is such a yacht, with fore and
main sails, gaff topsails, and the great square
foresail all pressing her onwards, and throwing
off the milky foam from her bows, the
blue ensign floating from her peak, and the Danebrog
from her fore-topmast head. A Danish
line-of-battle ship and a frigate kept guard off
Harup Hav, and their crews must have seen in
the approach of that little yacht, with their own
proud ensign at her fore, if not a token of that
help which was due from the English government,
at least a sign of the indignant sympathy
of the English people. A salute of twenty-one
guns, from the yacht's noisy little six-pounders,
was cheerily answered by the line-of-battle ship,
the Frederick the Sixth, as, with a fresh breeze,
we ran under her stern, and bore up for the
anchorage.

The spacious harbour of Harup Hav presented
a busy scene on that first day of the suspension
of hostilities. It is formed by a long
neck of land, which is connected with the island
of Alsen by a narrow sandy isthmus. In ordinary
times we were told that it was rarely visited by
even the smallest craft, and the pretty little
village of thatched houses, surrounded by stately
beech woods, is one of the most secluded places
in Europe. War has changed all this. The
harbour is crowded with steamers and transports.
The pleasant meadows sloping down
from the beech woods to the sea are trodden
down, and occupied by cavalry and artillery
waggons. Crowds of soldiers are to be seen
everywhere; long new jetties run out into the
harbour, with small craft laden with beer,
cheese, and fish, ranged along them in tiers.
Among the vessels of all shapes and sizes in the
harbour, it was interesting to see the old-fashioned
row gunboats, similar in all respects
to those which made a gallant stand against
Nelson, in the attack on Copenhagen. These
gunboats, of which there are about sixty in the
Danish navy, are of two sizes. The largest
have thirty oars, two men to each, and a crew,
therefore, of sixty men. They are armed with
two heavy guns, a sixty-pounder forward, and a
twenty-four-pounder aft. The others are much
smaller, with one heavy gun aft. They seem
well adapted for work in the Baltic, and have
been employed, during the war, in rowing guard
on the Sleswig coast.

The four miles of country intervening between
Harup Hav and Sonderborg is in all respects
like any part of England. There are fields
divided by hedge-rows full of hawthorn, banks
covered with primroses, extensive woods,
comfortable-looking cottages by the roadside, and
substantial farm buildings. The houses are
generally of white brick, with thatched roofs,
usually with a single story, having a long row
of windows, with pots of flowers in them.
Between the road and the door a little gravel walk
is lined with double daisies; and occasionally a
stork may be seen in its great nest of sticks on
a lee gable. Several windmills crown the hill
above Sonderborg, whence the main street
descends by a gentle slope to the shores of the
narrow sound separating Alsen from the mainland
of Sleswig.

Sonderborg is pleasantly situated. The lower
part of the town is built along the shore of
Alsen Sound, and flanked on the north side by a
church on a steep hill, and on the south by the
old slot or castle, a massive brick building close
to the water. In the upper part of the town
many of the houses are battered with shot and
shell, and the town-hall in the centre of the
main street is a picture of ruin. The gable
stands out naked against the sky, and the walls
are shattered and crumbling. But as we
approached the water, we entered upon a scene of
appalling desolation in the lower town. Not a
house had escaped destruction. Shot and shell
had smashed in the roofs, burst in the rooms
and through the ceilings, demolished the furniture,
and broken gaping holes in the outer walls.
All was silence and utter ruin— such a scene as
one would not wish often to see. The doomed
town was abandoned, no one was in the houses.
Except a soldier here and there, not a soul
was to be seen. In one house there had been
deers' heads and antlers ornamenting the hall,
and some china vases, a pretty fire-screen, and
an old carved oak table; a shell had burst in the
midst, shattered this poor family's little household
gods, and buried them in a cloud of plaster from
the ceiling. Still worse was it to see the source
of some poor man's livelihood, the carpenter's
lathe and workshop, and the little stock-in-trade
of draper or grocer, destroyed and desolated by
the bursting of a shell. We afterwards saw a
few families returning in carts to gaze once
more upon their ruined homes. Old men driving,
and women and children crowded behind them.
In one cart there was an aged woman, quite
bedridden, coming to have a last look at the
house she had probably lived in from childhood,
or to which she had been brought, some half
century before, a happy bride, now a shapeless
heap of desolation. Such sights as these filled
us with indignation at the wanton cruelty of the
Prussians. Here, indeed, was devil's work,
instigated by rapacity, carried into execution with
that extreme caution which deprives war of all
its romance, and perpetrated without a single
excuse which could palliate its atrocity.

To the north of Sonderborg a gentle ascent
leads to the church overlooking Alsen Sound,
and here the Danes have constructed a battery
commanding the bridge, which is now destroyed.
The sound is not three hundred yards across at
this point. On the opposite shore of Sleswig,
to the extreme left, are the heights of Broager,
whence Sonderborg was bombarded. Opposite
the town there are a few houses, and a road
leads straight up from the head of the bridge to
the Dybbol windmill, now in ruins. A few