The Argosy — page 146: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Under Northern Skies. 131 prominent situation explains the mystery, and it has been called the key of the North Sea. A youthful guide piloted us to St. Eric’s Grotto, at the back of the island: a swampy marsh with a great hole in a rock, where the saint was wont to rest, and a group of trees where he walked and meditated. A Druidical looking spot, that, instead of being on a height, like most Druidical remains, was in a hollow. Even the sea which rolled and surged within a few feet of us was hidden by rising, slippery, barren rocks, which could only be climbed by the Irish method of two steps backward for one forward. There was alsoaspring here: a deep well, from which our guide drew for our benefit a supply of clear cold water. In days gone by this spring was dedicated to heathen rites —Druidical or other—possibly all banished and put to flight under the dispensation of St. Eric. But of this there is no record, and here again we are at liberty to dream our dreams and draw our own conclusions. It required, indeed, no vivid imagination to picture the saint as he paced these small groves in holy meditation fancy free, missal in hand ; an aged figure and a long grey beard; a calm eye undimmed by the passions of humanity; a faraway gaze opening to the mysteries of the unseen world. And who shall say that these mystic hermits, with minds prepared by devotion and frames mortified by fasting, were not actually nearer the Unseen than we, who, in al} the hubble-bubble of existence, are taken up with the cares and riches and deceitfulness of life? It was one of our last impressions of Marstrand. Presently the steamer came up that was to bear us away. Everyone seemed to have collected to see it arrive and depart. It came to this remote spot as a breath from the world, and departed as a messenger. ‘The bell rang, gangways were withdrawn, paddles turned, the water splashed and foamed ; we fell away from the landing quay; Marstrand receded. A crowd of pocket handkerchiefs waved: as natural and necessary a token of farewell in these latitudes as a handshake in England. Wherever a, train leaves platform or boat its moorings in Sweden, the air becomes white with handkerchiefs frantically agitated until the last remnant of boat or train has passed out of sight of the starting point. To-day the little crowd was no exception to the rule. White handkerchiefs—and handkerchiefs no longer white—gradually grew faint and indistinct. We passed by the deserted fortress—needed no longer since Marstrand in its decline has ceased to excite the envy of ambitious pirates. Steaming out of the harbour we saw the island no more. Inhabitants and sojourners no doubt went back to their every day life and amusements—one day so like another: and we to Gothenburg returned the way we had come. Hotter, closer, more enervating than ever seemed Gothenburg after Marstrand. Devoutly we wished for the hour when we might leave COnniclboooks (CO) im