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Chap. XLII.
THE BLACK PEST.
191
“has Eskil Juel sent to us this Christmas-eve. All
here are dead, and I am dying fast.” Then the man ran
back, and told his fellow-villagers what a bad Christmas
was in store for them. When day dawned a great ship
was seen stranded on the sand-banks; all on board
were lying dead, their faces black, the stranger alone had
reached the shore. None however sickened that day;
but at night the pest began, and spread in a few days
over all the land: it lasted for one year and some
months, destroying more than one-third of the
population of Jutland. It was a terrible year that of 1349—
no sun, but a heavy mist over all the earth. At last,
towards the second spring, the mist dispersed, the sky
again appeared blue, and the pestilence was stayed.
But the villages of the centre of the land, that long
expanse of mose now desolate, called the Ale Mose,
suffered the most; the few inhabitants who escaped
the scourge emigrated to the sea-coast, and from that
time since the country has been uninhabited. So the
prophecy of the wizard came true.
We now turn off at the village of Ulvborg—Wolf
Castle—rather an ominous appellation in these dreary
parts of Jutland; but wolves no more exist here than
in our own provinces of England. Towards the middle
of the last century they were common enough ; they tore
the cattle, and did much damage. The last of the race
was killed, in the year 1811, somewhere by
Estvads-gaard in a forest near Skive. Wild boars too are quite
extinct. In 1694 Christian V. is said to have killed
sixteen in one day’s chace.
Vosborg now appears in the distance, and a
crossroad over the mose leads us towards it. It stands alone,
isolated, surrounded by trees. The North Sea roars in
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