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They took root, but the heather soon overwhelmed the young plants. Not without a fight would this enemy let go its grip upon the land. It had smothered the hardy Scotch pine in days past, and now the spruce was in peril. Searching high and low for something that would grow fast and grow green, Dalgas and his associates planted dwarf pine with the spruce.
The elder Dalgas died while the children were yet little, and the widow went back to Denmark to bring up her boys there. They were poor, and the change from the genial skies of sunny Italy to the bleak North did not make it any easier for them. Enrico's teacher saw it, and gave him his overcoat to be made over.
If he had thoughts of bringing them over by such means, he found out his mistake. Mother and son were made of sterner stuff. Dalgas fought twice for his country, the last time in 1864, as a captain of engineers. It was no ordinary class, the one of 1851 that resumed its studies in the military high school.
For the indefatigable Dalgas has roused the dilatory Danes to such good purpose that soon the marshes and waste lands of Jutland will be no more. "Have you been in Tivoli?" is the first question a Copenhagener would ask you on your arrival in the gay capital. If not, your Danish friend will carry you off to see these beautiful pleasure-gardens.
With this exception, the great change has been, is being, wrought by the people themselves. It was for their good, in the apathy that followed 1864, that it should be so, and Dalgas saw it. The State aids the man who plants ten acres or more, and assumes the obligation to preserve the forest intact; the Heath Society sells him plants at half-price, and helps him with its advice.
Heads that had drooped in discouragement were raised. The cattle keep increased, and with it came the farmer's wealth. Marl changes the character of the heath soil; with manure to fertilize it there was no reason why it should not grow crops none, except the withering blast of the west wind. The time for Dalgas to preach tree planting had come.
In the town of Aarhus, the capital of Jutland, a handsome monument has been raised to the memory of Captain Dalgas, the father of the movement for reclaiming the moors, by his grateful countrymen. Every Danish boy knows he must undergo a period of training as a soldier or sailor when he reaches his twentieth year.
The story of that unique achievement reads like the tale of the Sleeping Beauty who was roused from her hundred years' sleep by the kiss of her lover prince. The prince who awoke the slumbering heath was a captain of engineers, Enrico Dalgas by name. Not altogether fanciful is the conceit.
"Nothing better could have happened," he said in after years, "for it made us turn to the people themselves, and that was the road to success, though we did not know it." In the spring of 1866 a hundred men, little and big landowners most of them, met at his call, and organized the Heath Society with the object of reclaiming the moor. Dalgas became its managing director.
The croaker raised his voice: the black heath had turned green, but it was still heath, of no value to any one, then or ever. He had not reckoned with Dalgas. The captain of engineers could use the axe as well as the spade. He cut the dwarf pine out wherever the spruce had got its grip, and gave it light and air. And it grew big and beautiful.
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