Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/243

Rh children and their future, she saw a new world opened to them, richer and happier than that which the mother-country could have offered them, and she would have been glad to have purchased this future for them at the sacrifice of her own life; she would be well contented to go down to the grave, even before her time, and there to have done with her crutch. Their children, four sons and four daughters, the two youngest born here, and still children, were all of them agreeable, and some of them remarkably handsome, in particular the two youngest boys—Knut and Sten. Sten rowed me in a little boat along the shores of the charming lake; he was a beautiful slender youth of seventeen, and as he sat there in his white shirtsleeves, with his blue silk waistcoat, with his clear dark-blue eyes, and a pure, good expression in that lovely, fresh youthful countenance, he was the perfect idea of a shepherd in some beautiful idyll. The sisters, when we were alone, praised Knut and Sten, as sincerely kind and good lads, who would do anything for their sisters and their home.

We rowed along the wooded shores, which, brilliant in their autumnal colouring, were reflected in the mirror-like waters. And here upon a lofty promontory, covered with splendid masses of wood was New Upsala to stand—such was the intention of Uneonius and his friends, when they first came to this wild region, and were enchanted with its beauty. Ah! that wild district will not maintain Upsala's sons. I saw the desolate houses where he, Uneonius, and Schneidan struggled in vain to live. But the place itself was delightful and lovely; characterised by a Swedish beauty, for dark pines towered up among the trees, and the wood grew down to the very edge of the lake, as is the case in our Scandinavian lakes, where the Neck sits in the moonlight, and plays upon the harp, and sings beneath the overarching verdure. The sun set; but even here again all wore a northern aspect;