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We were now half way between Elsineur and Copenhagen, and rising above a cape of level land on our starboard bow, the high buildings and steeples of Copenhagen could be distinguished.
From the spot where the yacht lay at anchor, the town of Elsineur had an imposing appearance; and, besides the number of fishing-vessels which kept popping out of the harbour, one by one, round the pier-head, at this early time, amidst the shouts and merry laughter of their crews, betokening the light hearts with which they went forth to their daily labour, the wind-mills on the tops of the neighbouring hills, outvying each other in velocity, showed that the inhabitants entertained, at least, habits of industry, and were not, perhaps, unacquainted with the advantages of traffic.
I gave three rix-dollars for my boat, including something to drink. I mention the sum, because they impose on strangers. Adieu! till I arrive at Copenhagen. The distance from Elsineur to Copenhagen is twenty-two miles; the road is very good, over a flat country diversified with wood, mostly beech, and decent mansions.
The visitor who can not spend his time agreeably in such society, surrounded by such institutions as Thorwaldsen's Museum and the National Collection of Scandinavian Antiquities, must be difficult to please indeed. The Tivoli or the Dyrhave, an evening at Fredericksberg, or a trip to "Hamlet's Grave" at Elsineur, would surely fill the measure of his contentment.
Not far from Elsineur is Esrom. Near the Castle of Fredensborg, a boat-house, on Esrom Lake, may be seen by the traveller; and there it was, on this calm summer evening, I lay down upon the grass, looking on hill, wood, dale, and water.
"On the coast of Jutland," says Forchhammer, "wherever a bolt from a wreck or any other fragment of iron is deposited in the beach sand, the particles are cemented together, and form a very solid mass around the iron. A remarkable formation of this sort was observed a few years ago in constructing the sea-wall of the harbor of Elsineur.
When we drew further from the shore, the wind increased, and the gaff-topsail was unbent, and a reef taken in the mainsail. We were soon a second time anchored off Elsineur; and, as the sun declined from the meridian, the wind almost lulled to a calm.
He wrote to me in the year 1776, a letter of sincere thanks, and died a colonel of hussars in the Danish service in 1776. I remained in Copenhagen but a fortnight, and then sailed in a Dutch ship, from Elsineur to Amsterdam.
Elsineur is the Wapping of Denmark, or comparable to the worst parts of Portsmouth. We walked through the town to the Castle of Cronenborg. After wandering over drawbridges, through archways, and dark tunnels, we found ourselves in the middle of a courtyard, surrounded on all sides by the solitary walls of the seemingly deserted castle.
The bottle containing Ole Kamp's lottery-ticket had been picked up on the third of June, about two hundred miles south of Iceland, by the schooner "Christian," of Elsineur, Captain Mosselman, and the wind was blowing strong from the south-east at the time.
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