CHAPTER XXXI.FINLAND.
AT nine in the morning we were to be on board the steamerWyborg, Captain Nystrom, to go from St. Petersburg to Finland, and thence to Sweden. When we reached the wharf, so great was the crowd of passengers and the crush of luggage and the pressure of freight, that it seemed doubtful if we should be able to get on board. It was summer time, very hot, and the people who had not yet escaped from the city heat, and were able to, were rushing to their rural residences on the sea-coast. They are as much in the habit of this, as our rich people at home are of flying in midsummer to the hills or the sea-shore.
Americans are abroad. Four or five families from the city of New York met on the deck of this steamer, all of whom were making this northern tour, and none of whom were known to each other as away from home. As the boat was to be our hotel for several days, this sudden accession of neighbors was very agreeable, and made the prospect of the excursion more pleasant. And gradually this circle widened, till it embraced Russians and Finns and Swedes and English, with whom our own tongue was more easily a means of communication than it was in Italy or Spain.
We are steaming out of one of the four mouths of the Neva, as it widens into the Gulf of Finland, and for several miles the intricate channel is staked out with care.Cronstadtis the famous port of St. Petersburg, one of thestrongest fortifications in the world, and we had expected to see a frowning precipice, a long and lofty range of rocks, defying attack, a Gibraltar in the north of Europe. There is no rock at all. The fortifications are low, and all the more impregnable for that; but we were taken down by their appearance, the situation being so widely different from our anticipations. Napier came here with the British fleet, at the opening of the war that was afterwards called theCrimean, for the very good reason that when the Admiral hurled the whole power of the navy of England against Cronstadt in vain, the war was prosecuted to its close in the southern part of the Russian empire, the Crimea.
The approach to Cronstadt is difficult, and the channel easily defended by the immense fortifications which successive emperors have constructed, well knowing that this is the northern gate of the empire. The dry docks are on a gigantic scale, to meet the demands of a first-class naval power, which Russia is not, and will never be till she moves her seat of government and field of operations to the Bosphorus. Forests of masts, denser forests of masts than we had seen since leaving New York, stood along the docks of Cronstadt. A steamer crowded with passengers, from stem to stern, passed us as we were lying here; she was bound to Revel, and all the Russian coast of the Gulf of Finland. The people are apparently as given to travel as the Americans.
By this time we had begun to get accustomed to the people around us. The Russian children had fur caps on and the ladies wore woollen cloaks, though the weather was so hot as to make the shade of an awning indispensable. Smoking was strictly forbidden, but the captain and all who chose, smoked in the face of the signs that were posted up to prohibit the practice. The Gulf of Finland, on which we are now, is smooth as a summer lake; the day is lovely, skies bright, the breeze delicious, the airbracing; if we have associated chills and fogs and ice and bitter cold with Finland, we must come in winter to find them, for the Hudson River in summer was never more quiet, nor its banks more brilliant in the noontide, than this region to-day. The day has been one to be remembered, among pleasant memories of travel, and toward sunset we run into the harbor of Wyborg. The ancient city stands on an arm of the gulf that sets up six or eight miles, the lumber station of Tronsund being at the mouth. Near this are saw-mills that cut up 160,000 logs in a year, and ships from all parts of Europe come here for lumber; one vessel, rejoicing in the name of Pius IX., was lying at anchor waiting her turn to get northern pine to carry home to Italy. The channel was obstructed in 1854 to prevent the British under Napier from getting up to Wyborg, and now the trouble is just as great for friends as foes, only that the Russians have put the poles into the water, each pole being made to hold a flag above the waves, to designate the tortuous channel. Two large islands lie in front of the town, and make a safe, snug harbor. An arm of the sea stretches away between the lines of fortification and the old town, and in the midst of the water a mighty rock rises majestically, crowned with a tower of other times, partly in ruins now, for the storms of heaven and the storms of earth and sea have often beaten upon it in peace and war. Its roof is gone, but it is a prison still, and its hollow sides have secrets never to be revealed till the final day. The sun is in the west, as we approach the city, and its domed churches blaze in its setting glory. The old castle, now in ruins, has a history of just six hundred years, a history of courage, endurance, and heroism, while it resisted the might of Russia, until in 1710 it yielded to Peter the Great. Then followed, with an interval of a few years only, the submission of Finland to the yoke of Russia, which it still wears.
Finland is a Protestant country, Lutheran being the established religion of the country. The Greek and Roman churches are regarded with equal dislike. All native Finlanders are obliged to have their children baptized in the Lutheran Church. They must also be able to read before they can be married, or take any part in the government of the country.
The public officers are appointed by the Russian government, but the Finns pay no tribute to Russia, except the support of the civil list for their own officers. The Grand Duke of Finland is the Emperor of Russia himself. Under him are four orders, the nobles, clergy, citizens, and peasants. Each of these orders is represented in the legislature of Finland, meeting annually to regulate the domestic affairs of the state, subject to the veto of the Emperor of Russia.
For the last ten years every harvest has failed, being cut off by untimely frosts. Great famines have therefore prevailed, with diseases incident to want, and many have perished. Men on salaries have voluntarily paid fifteen per cent of their incomes to feed the poor, and they will do so for a few years more; but if the same destitution should continue five years, the country will be depopulated. So severe has been the distress, that the inhabitants have eaten the bark of trees, and as little or no nourishment can be found in bark, they are rapidly dying out. The Russian government is preparing to transport all who are willing to go, to some portions of Russia where there is land in abundance, and a population is wanted.
The Emperor is popular among the Finns, who have ceased to regard him as a conqueror, and now look up to him as a protector and friend. He is bound by an oath to preserve the integrity of their constitution, and they trust him. The Finns are not drafted into the Russian army. They enlist in it freely, under the temptation of bounty money. But they have a strong national feeling of theirown, refusing to be called Russian, or to admit that they are part of that empire.
Wages are very low. A skilled mechanic gets only about a rouble (eighty cents) a day, and a farm hand is glad to earn ten cents a day. But with this terrible state of things, poor pay and no food, emigration is not allowed, either by Finnish or Russian law, and there is no prospect before the peasantry but to perish on the ground.
The country is more thoroughly sunken in the water than any other inhabited part of the globe. It seemed to me that the inhabitants might have been called Finlanders, because they ought to be amphibious. But the name comes from the ancientfen, or fennen, which is also an English word for bog or morass. The Laplanders were the original settlers on the southern shore of the Baltic, but they have retired to more northern regions still. The interior of the country is almost filled with lakes, irregularly shaped, and making travelling by land exceedingly tedious, as one must wind his way far around these arms and branches. There is one lake, Saima, two hundred miles wide, in which there are athousandand more of islands. The largest is called Amasara, or mother-island; on this island there areseventy-sevenlakes, and in these lakesfiftyislands. This great lake is connected with Lake Ladoga, in Russia, and, by a canal here at Wyborg, with the Gulf of Finland. Now it will pay you to take a map, and, with this description, see what a stretch of water communication extends through Finland into Russia. If you were to go by this canal to Lake Saima, and so to Lake Ladoga, you would not see much of the people, but you would find it easier and pleasanter getting through than to take the only other conveyance, that of the drosky. This is a low sulky, in which only one person can sit, though a driver, if you must have one, manages to get a seat by the horse’s heels. The horses are small, nervous, and wiry, and have learned fromcolthood to go on the jump all the time, up hill and down hill, and on a level. Ladies who come travelling here must and do adapt themselves to this unsocial mode of travel, and ride all day alone, or with the company of a ragged boy, who speaks no word the traveller understands, and spends his time in walloping the beast, to quicken his rapid canter. Between the lonely post-houses it is rare to meet a human being, or to pass a habitation; but the solemn pine-trees make the gloom more gloomy, and huge boulder stones rise, like towers of giant builders waiting for their masters to return. Some of them have been utilized by the progress of art and science. It was one of these great boulders that was cut into the splendid Alexander column we saw in St. Petersburg, the largest monolith in the world. The enginery required to move it from its place, where, perhaps, the deluge left it, and transport it to the heart of a distant city, fairly rivals the skill of the Egyptian pyramid builders, or the men who set Pompey’s Pillar on its base.
A crowd of five hundred people or more were on the dock at Wyborg waiting for the steamer, when we touched the shores of Finland. At least a hundred droskies and other conveyances, with little horses attached, swelled the concourse. Many of the persons were expecting to receive their friends who were coming by the steamer, and as there are but two arrivals from St. Petersburg in a week, every steamer brings a goodly number. Many were well dressed, “fashionable” ladies and gentlemen, who welcomed their friends with cordial greetings, the kissing being quite as affectionate and common as in Russia. But more of the people on shore were the poor, the toilers, looking for a little something to do; and the drivers of the droskies were as importunate and impudent as the donkey boys in Alexandria or the hackmen in New York, and none in the wide world are worse.
A gentleman of Wyborg, with whom we had formed a speaking and very agreeable acquaintance on board, proposed an excursion through the town into the country, as the steamer was to lie at the wharf till after midnight.It was now only nineo’clock atnight, and there was plenty of timebefore sunsetto take a ride of a few miles into the interior! A long line of droskies was therefore engaged, and in single file we set off, at a break-neck pace, but according to the custom of the horses and the country.
The town of Wyborg has about six thousand inhabitants,—Swedes, Russians, Germans, and Finlanders. The churches are numerous, the Lutherans being more in number than all the rest, which are chiefly Greek for the Russians. The town is ancient and uninviting in its appearance, with nothing to indicate enterprise or progress.
Through it we were carried, all flying, by the tower or castle or prison of the year 1300, and out into the country where villas were here and there planted, and some little culture was displayed. Our destination was the summer residence of Baron Nicolai, a wealthy Russian, who has made himself the possessor of a peninsula, and here has laid out a park and grounds with the novel and beautiful idea of makinga miniature Finland,—a little representation, with the aid of nature and art, of the lakes and islands, the rocks and hills, of the very country of which this princely domain is an insignificant part. At the gate we were very properly required to pay an entrance fee, which goes to the relief of the poor of the neighborhood, and the visitor is not forbidden to enlarge his fee to any amount more agreeable to himself. The villa we soon pass has nothing imposing in its aspect, but in the midst of a park of ancient shade trees has an air of quiet contentment that justifies the name its first owner gave it, “Mon Repos”—My Rest. Passing it we pursue the shaded walks, by the borders of little lakes and along running streams, till we come to awooded islet, reached by a foot-bridge and crowned with a monumental tomb, and this is the family sepulchre. Fittingly did the master of all these grounds call the spot to which he had retired “My Rest;” for he who spent such vast sums of money to convert these rocks and wilds into a garden of Eden now sleeps in the tomb, and his son reigns in his stead, rarely, however, coming here, and only for a few days in summer.
Such had been our associations with Finland, that we were more than surprised to find so much culture and taste, elegance indeed, within an hour of landing on its coasts. And as we emerged from the woods in our walks we came suddenly upon the shore of the bay, and the glorious sun was sinking to his “repose” atteno’clock! It seemed very late for the sun to be going to bed; he keeps earlier hours in our country, and it is odd to be out sight-seeing at this time of day!
Yet in the midst of this Finnish paradise there was a pest as bad as the serpent in Eden. We were nearly devoured by mosquitoes! They beset us behind and before and bit us horribly. With handkerchiefs over our faces, and with bushes to drive them away, we were pursued as if they were starving like the other inhabitants, and they sent in their bills with no more mercy than landlords in Spain. I would not take the place, with all its splendor and natural attractions, for a gift, if it were encumbered with the condition of being obliged to live in it through the summer season. But some people get used to these little plagues. Nature is fond of setting off one thing against another, and it may be that the inhabitants of mosquito regions have some compensating advantages that make these evils a luxury rather than otherwise. They do prevail in the cold climates of the north, as well as in malarious southerly regions, and there is good reason to believe that they are not very troublesome to the settled inhabitants, howeversavage they are upon strangers. For I have observed in the United States, and within a very few miles of New York, if a man purchases a home, a “Mon Repos” like this we are now visiting, and says to himself, “this is my rest,” he is able to say, in answer to the inquiries of friends as to mosquitoes, “We are not troubled with them at all.” And if the fever and ague has been there through all generations, he is free to declare, “There is nothing of it around us.” From which we infer that mosquitoes and other plagues like them, and the chills, respect the manorial rights of the owners of the soil, and only draw the blood and shake the bones of strangers, who in all ages and countries have been considered as lawful prey.
We stood on the shore and saw the sun go down in clouds of glory, and then returned, in the same style in which we came, to our ship. A great amount of freight was to be left and more taken in, and this kept the vessel in such confusion that sleep was quite out of the question. At two o’clock I was sitting at my cabin window writing without a candle, and a carriage came to the wharf with a gentleman and lady to come on board. No one would have thought of its being night to see the arrival. It was difficult to adjust one’s mind to the fact that we had come into such a latitude, that night could be told from day only by looking at your watch.
The ride to “Mon Repos” brought our steamer passengers into pleasant relations. We had come to feel less like strangers, and more like acquaintances, not to say friends. I came on deck early this morning, and had a cup of coffee at the same little table with a lady whose grace and beauty had rendered her somewhat a point of attraction yesterday. Two little children were playing at her feet, and a nurse for each was in waiting. I soon learned from her, as we fell into conversation naturally, that she spoke all the languages of northern Europe, as Russ, German, Swedish, Finnish,and the French besides, but not a word of English, and this she regretted all the more, she said, since so many Americans are now travelling through her country.Hernative tongue was Finnish, and her education would have been finished had she knownmine.
Rarely in any country is a lady to be found with a wider culture and more accomplished manners than this Finland wife and mother has. Shereadsthe English language, but has never attempted to speak it; and the standard authors of our country and of England were her study and delight, as the best French and Italian writers are familiar to educated persons among us.
The company by degrees came on deck, and all nationalities were soon merged into one family. Two or three from the capital are talking in English to an English party on their way to the interior of Finland, going a-fishing. Norway is farmed out to English gentlemen, so that it is hard to find a good stream for salmon and trout that is not the private property of some one in England, who keeps it for his own enjoyment. Finland is now persecuted by these piscatorial parties. One of the English gentlemen was loud in his praises of the fish of Finland, and his own wonderful skill in “killin’ of them.” The streams are very swift, and the true sportsman uses only the fly hook. This gent said, “I kill themloyally, with fly only; sometimes, when they will not rise to it, I take a bait, but in that case I throw them back into the water, even if they weigh twenty or thirty pounds. It’s the pleasure of killin’ of them that I enjoy; it’s not for the fish, it’s the killin’ of them.” The “parties” expect to enjoy two or three months in Finland fishing and shooting. It was an entertainment to note the pleasurable anticipations of these pleasant people, on their way toenjoywhat to me and many must be about as great a bore and punishment as could be endured in the name of sport.
The Gulf of Finland, as we are running along the coast, is full of islands, to the very edge of which our vessel often comes,—romantic, rocky, hilly islands, to the right of us and left of us, without the sight of an inhabitant. The weather is glorious, cool, bracing, breezy, a cloudless sky and a brilliant sun covering the smooth water and these green isles with a blaze of beauty as we plough our way northward. How widely does all this differ from what we had expected when meditating a cruise along the coast of Finland!
We come to Fredericksham by a tortuous channel, among islands and rocks strongly fortified; but, verily, it seems scarcely worth while to make special provision to prevent people from coming up into these regions. The domes and spires of the city tell us that God is worshipped there; and, as the morning sun tips the temples with fire, we send up our matin prayers with the people of the town, whose God is also ours.
We passed the ruined fortress ofSclava, of some importance once, but now only a monument of the times when Russia and Sweden were fighting for the poor bone of Finland, from which all the meat, if it ever had any, was picked before the war was over.
The war is nominally over, and Russia is the master now; but the people keep up the old spirit of patriotic love for the mother land and tongue. The Russ is the language taught in the schools. If a scholar speaks in his own language the teacher flogs him, according to law; and if the scholar speaks in the Russian language, the other boys flog him when the school is out. So that flogging would seem to be the fate of speaking at all.
We chatted freely with the ladies respecting the social customs of Finland. There is much less freedom of social intercourse among unmarried young men and women, in polite circles, than in England, or even France. Parties ofyoung men by themselves are common, and of young ladies by themselves; balls for dancing bring them together, and their parents come with them, but one young lady said archly, “They are not always near enough to hear what we say.” These fashions are common to Russia and Finland, and other countries in the north. I had seen it written, in an English book of travels, that at dinner parties the ladies sit by themselves, apart from the gentlemen, but have met with nothing of the kind, and am assured it is a mistake. Yet it is true that the ladies generally enter the dining-room by themselves, in advance of the gentlemen, and then sit promiscuously. There is more freedom of manner and less stiffness and formality than in the same social rank in England or Germany.
It is not probable that the practice of bringing up children in this exclusion from social intercourse tends to improve their morals or manners. On the contrary, it makes matters worse. In well-ordered households, where the virtues are inculcated in the first lessons that youthful minds receive, and where parental example, more powerful than lessons or discipline, is such as children may safely follow, it will be found that as boys and girls are apt to be mixed up in the family, so they should be in social life.
Helsingfors.
Helsingfors.
Helsingfors.