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356
BORNHOLM.
Chap. LUI.
on the old-fashioned useless obelisk, for you can here
mount to the summit and enjoy the view over the
bright sparkling sea as far as your eye can gaze.
On our return we found the horse-fair in full force:
competition for a prize of one hundred dollars. The
mares were arranged all in a line for inspection down
by the Koldekilde, a once-celebrated spring, whose
waters, if quaffed on St. John’s Eve, cured all sorts
of maladies that flesh is heir to, and the taste is
said in old books to be at all times equal to brandy.
Times are changed, and the waters with them. To-day,
for every one farmer who drank of the limpid
fountain, ninety-nine took a swig at the brandy-bottle.
But the exhibition of horses had never been so bad as
this year, all the better cattle having been sold off to
Prussia during the war-fever in Germany. It must be
from these islands of the North that Franconi and the
travelling circuses recruit their studs; for among the
numerous “ café au lait,” dun-coloured, flea-bitten, and
other varieties, stood two geldings, as queer specimens
of the equine race as ever mortals clapped eyes upon:
black as the raven’s wing, with four white legs —
not stockings—white manes, with tails to correspond.
It is said that somebody from the North presented
four of these eccentric animals to Louis XIV., who
was so much pleased with their appearance that he
had them harnessed to his own particular private gilded
caroche.
When we had exhausted the mares and the stallions,
the three-year-olds, and the very small ponies, we
returned to our carriage. Our first halt was at Aakirkeby
—one of Bornholm’s renowned blue marble churches,
luxuriant in whitewash, a tumbledown concern filled
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