Page:A Picture-book without Pictures and Other Stories (1848).djvu/35

 flocks graze. When the sea rises, these are driven to the garrets for refuge, and the waves roll over this little region, which lies miles distant from any shore. Oland, which we visited, contains a little town; the houses stand closely side by side, as if in their sore need they had huddled together; they are all erected on a platform, and have little windows like the cabin of a ship. There, solitary through half the year, sit the wives and daughters spinning. Yet I found books in all the houses; the people read and work, and the sea rises round the houses, which lie like a wreck on the ocean. The church-yard is half washed away; coffins and corpses are frequently exposed to view. It is an appalling sight, and yet the inhabitants of the Halligs are attached to their little home, and frequently die of home-sickness when removed from it.

“We found only one man upon the island, and he had only lately arisen from a sickbed; the others were out on long voyages. We were received by women and girls; they had erected before the church a triumphal arch with flowers, which they had