Rensselaer Union, Volume 3, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1871 — Heligoland. [ARTICLE]

Heligoland.

A correspondent of the Pall Matt Quiette writes: “ I see that the Heligoland question lias turned up again, ana a few words of description may not be without interest to your readers, for there is no place like it on the faco of the earth. It is a tall, red hill, rising straight ont of tlio waters, with a sana bank on one side. On the sand, and part of the way up the hill, is the town, or rather village. It was inhabit! d in forinct times by pilots and wreckers, but now they have degenerated into lodging-house keepers. Heligoland is the Margate of Hamburg. Thither stream the citizens of that rich city to gambit) at rouge-et-nolr (at least, they did when I was there) and to enjoy sea-bathing. There is a regular season in the summer months, and sometimes many passengers that are brought in the steamer are obliged to sleep on board, and to go back again, the island being fell. Every house probably takes in lodgers, but then there are not very many houses. The bathers resort to a neighboring sandbank, a sister island, which the Governor, it will tie remembered, some time ago stocked with rabbits, which began eating up the grass that held the sand-bank to gether, so that the Heligolanders became furious, and talked of shaking off the English yoke. However, the rabbits were all shot, and the islanders pacified, and nothing more was said of their old Frisian constitution. Their language is German, but they detest that nation more oven than they do ourselves. They are not English, though they are English subjects ; they are not German, though they speak German. They are Heligolanders, the noblest of created beings; all foreigners are tkit, which, in their homely dialect, means dirt. The top of the island hill is flat, and, as well as I can remember, about the size of the Green Park. Them is a well known story of a man from the far West—and therefore accustomed to see land only on a large scale—who paid a visit to England, When asked how he enjoyed himself, he replied very much, only I never went out at night for fear of falling off. In Heligoland there is really a danger of such an accident happening to any one who, from the force of habit, should continue to.walk too long in any one direction.