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Updated: May 19, 2025
While the canal digger and marl seeker were at work, there had been neighborhood meetings and talks at which Captain Dalgas did the talking. When he spoke the heath boer listened, for he had learned to look upon him as one of them. He wore no gold lace.
Enrico Mylius Dalgas was by the accident of birth an Italian, his father being the Danish consul in Naples; by descent a Frenchman; by choice and training a Dane, typical of the best in that people. He came of the Huguenot stock that left France after the repeal of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and scattered over Europe, to the great good of every land in which it settled.
An innkeeper mistook the dark-skinned little man for a Jew, and set before him a spoiled ham, retorting contemptuously, when protest was made, that it was "good enough for a Sheeny." Without further parley Mr. Dalgas seized the hot ham by its shank and beat the fellow with it till he cried for mercy. The son tells of the first school he attended, when he was but five years old.
Two of the students did not answer roll-call; their names were written among the nation's heroic dead. Some had scars and wore the cross for valor in battle. All were first lieutenants, to be graduated as captains. Dalgas had himself transferred from the artillery to the engineers, and was detailed as road inspector. So the opportunity of his life came to him.
"Make the land furry," Dalgas said, with prophetic eye beholding great forests taking the place of sand and heather, and in his lifetime the change was wrought that is transforming the barren moor into the home-land of a prosperous people. To the most unlikely of places, through the very prison doors, his gospel of hope has made its way.
The little streams that found their way into the heath and lost it there, dire need had taught them to turn to use in their fields; not a drop escaped. But the river that ran between deep banks was beyond their reach. Could he show them how to harness that? Dalgas saw their point.
Roughly speaking, thirty-three hundred square miles of heath confronted Dalgas in 1866. Just about a thousand remain for those who come after to wrestle with; but already voices are raised pleading that some of it be preserved untouched for its natural beauty, while yet it is time.
With his lawyer friend Captain Dalgas tramped the heath far and wide for ten years. Then their talks had matured a plan. Dalgas wrote to the Copenhagen newspapers that the heath could be reclaimed, and suggested that it should be done by the State. They laughed at him.
His Excellency the Minister of the Interior, who is present here, will see from this how much you think of me, and possibly my recommendation that the State make a larger contribution to the Heath Society's treasury may thereby acquire greater weight with him. I drink to an increased appropriation." On the heath Dalgas was prophet, prince, and friend of the people.
There were few railways in those days; the highways were still the great arteries of traffic. Dalgas built roads that crossed the heath, and he learned to know it and the strong and independent, if narrow, people who clung to it with such a tenacious grip.
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