t we had left behind us the "Cattegat" and
the "Skagerrack," and were driving through the stormy German Ocean. A
high wind, which increased almost to a gale, tumbled our poor ship about
in such a manner, that none but a good dancer could hope to maintain an
upright position. I had unfortunately been from my youth no votary of
Terpsichore, and what was I to do? The naiads of this stormy region
seized me, and bandied me to and fro, until they threw me into the arms
of what was, according to my experience, if not exactly after Schiller's
interpretation, "the horrible of horrors,"--sea-sickness. At first I
took little heed of this, thinking that sea-sickness would soon be
overcome by a traveller like myself, who should be inured to every thing.
But in vain did I bear up; I became worse and worse, till I was at length
obliged to remain in my berth with but one consoling thought, namely,
that we were to-day on the open sea, where there was nothing worthy of
notice. But the following day the Norwegian coast was in sight, and at
all hazards I must see it; so I crawled on deck more dead than alive,
looked at a row of mountains of moderate elevation, their tops at this
early season still sparkling with their snowy covering, and then hurried
back, benumbed by the piercing icy wind, to my good warm feather-bed.
Those who have never experienced it can have no conception of the biting,
penetrating coldness of a gale of wind in the northern seas. The sun
shone high in the heavens; the thermometer (I always calculate according
to Reaumur) stood 3 degrees above zero; I was dressed much more warmly
than I should have thought necessary when, in my fatherland, the
thermometer was 8 or 10 degrees _below_ zero, and yet I felt chilled to
the heart, and could have fancied that I had no clothes on at all.

On the fourth night we sailed safely past the Shetland Islands; and on
the evening of the fifth day we passed so near the majestic rocky group
of the Feroe Islands, that we were at one time apprehensive of being cast
upon the rocks by the unceasing gale. {19}

Already on the seventh day we descried the coast of Iceland. Our passage
had been unprecedentedly quick; the sailors declared that a favourable
gale was to be preferred even to steam, and that on our present voyage we
should certainly have left every steamer in our wake. But I, wretched
being that I was, would gladly have dispensed with the services both of
gale and steam for th