A DAY'S MARCH THROUGH FINLAND.
"Why don't you go to Imatra?" asks my friend P—— as we lean over the side of the Peterhof steamer and watch the golden domes of St. Petersburg rising slowly from the dull gray level of the Gulf of Finland. "Now that you've seen a bit of Central Russia, that's the next thing for you to do. Go to Imatra, and I'll go too."
"And where on earth is Imatra?" ask I innocently.
"Oh come! you don't mean to say you've never heard of Imatra? Why, everybody knows it. Let's go there next week."
Nevertheless, it so happens that I have not heard of Imatra—an ignorance probably shared by most people out of Russia, and perhaps not a few in it. But I am destined to a speedier acquaintance than I had anticipated with the famous waterfall (or "foss," as the natives call it), which, lying forty miles due north of the Finnish port of Viborg, close to the renowned "Saima Lake," attracts the amateur fishermen of St. Petersburg by scores every summer.
The proposed trip comes at an auspicious moment, for St. Petersburg in July is as thoroughly a "city of the dead" as London in September or Chamouni in January; and the average tourist, having eaten cabbage-soup at Wolff's or Dominique's, promenaded the Nevski Prospect and bought photographs in the Gostinni-Dvor (the Russian Regent street and Burlington Arcade), witnessed a service in the Isaac Church, and perhaps gone on to Moscow to stare at the Kremlin and the Monster Bell, must either await the approach of winter or fall back upon the truly British consolation of being able to "say that he has been there." Then is the time for suburban or rural jaunts; for picnics at Peterhof and drives to Oranienbaum; for wandering through the gardens of Catherine II. at Tsarskoe-Selo ("Czar's Village") and eating curds and cream at Pavlovski; for surveying the monastery of Strelna or the batteries of Cronstadt; or, finally, for taking the advice of my roving friend and going to Imatra.
Accordingly, behold all our preparations made—knapsacks packed, tear-and-wear garments put in requisition, many-colored Russian notes exchanged (at a fearful discount) for dingy Finnish silver[D]—and at half-past ten on a not particularly bright July morning we stand on the deck of the anything but "good ship" Konstantin, bound for Viborg.
Despite her tortoise qualities as a steamer, however (which prolong our voyage to nearly nine hours), the vessel is really luxurious in her accommodations; and were her progress even slower, the motley groups around us (groups such as only Dickens could describe or Leech portray) would sufficiently beguile the time—jaunty boy-officers in brand-new uniforms, gallantly puffing their papirossi (paper cigarettes) in defiance of coming nausea, and discussing the merits of the new opera loud enough to assure every one within earshot that they know nothing whatever about it; squat Finnish peasants, whose round, puffy faces and thick yellow hair are irresistibly suggestive of overboiled apple-dumplings; gray-coated Russian soldiers, with the dogged endurance of their race written in every line of their patient, solid, unyielding faces; a lanky Swede, whose huge cork hat and broad collar give him the look of an exaggerated medicine-bottle; the inevitable tourist in the inevitable plaid suit, struggling with endless convolutions of fishing-tackle and hooking himself in a fresh place at every turn; three or four pale-faced clerks on leave, looking very much as if their "overwork" had been in some way connected with cigars and bad brandy; a German tradesman from Vasili-Ostroff (with the short turnip-colored moustache characteristic of Wilhelm in his normal state), in dutiful attendance on his wife, who is just completing her preparations for being comfortably ill as soon as the vessel starts; and a fine specimen of the real British merchant, talking vehemently (in a miraculous dialect of his own invention) to a Russian official, whose air of studied politeness shows plainly that he does not understand a word of his neighbor's discourse.
Directly we go off the rain comes on, with that singular fatality characteristic of pleasure-trips in general, arising, doubtless, from the mysterious law which ordains that a man shall step into a puddle the instant he has had his boots blacked, and that a piece of bread-and-butter shall fall (how would Sir Isaac Newton have accounted for it?) with the buttered side downward. In a trice the deck is deserted by all save two or three self-devoted martyrs in macintosh, who "pace the plank" with that air of stern resolution worn by an Englishman when dancing a quadrille or discharging any other painful duty. The scenery throughout the entire voyage consists chiefly of fog, relieved by occasional patches of sand-bank; and small wonder if the superior attractions of the well-spread dinner-table detain most of our fellow-sufferers below. What is this first dish that they offer us? Raw salmon, by the shade of Soyer! sliced thin and loaded with pepper. Then follow soup, fried trout, roast beef, boiled ditto, slices of German sausage, neck of veal and bacon, fried potatoes and cabbage. Surely, now, "Hold, enough!" Not a bit of it: enter an enormous plum-pudding, which might do duty for a globe at any provincial school; next, a dish of rice and preserve, followed by some of the strongest conceivable cheese; finally, strawberries, and bilberries, with cream and sugar ad libitum. Involuntarily I recall the famous old American story of the "boss" at a railway refreshment-room who demanded fifty cents extra from a passenger who stuck to the table after all the rest had dined and gone away. "Your board says, 'Dinner, three dollars and fifty cents!'" remonstrated the victim.—"Ah! that's all very well for reasonable human bein's with one stomach apiece," retorted the Inexorable; "but when a feller eats as if there were no hereafter, we've got to pile it on!"
As we pass Cronstadt the fog "lifts" slightly, giving us a momentary glimpse of the huge forts that guard the passage—the locked door which bars out Western Europe. There is nothing showy or pretentious about these squat, round-shouldered, narrow-eyed sentinels of the channel; but they have a grim air of reserved strength, as though they could be terribly effective in time of need. Two huge forts now command the "southern channel," in addition to the four which guarded it at the time of the Baltic expedition during the Crimean war; and the land-batteries (into which no outsider is now admitted without special permission) are being strengthened by movable shields of iron and other appliances of the kind, for which nearly one million roubles (one hundred and fifty thousand pounds) have been set apart. The seaward approaches are commanded by numerous guns of formidable calibre, and far away on the long, level promontory of the North Spit we can just descry a dark excrescence—the battery recently constructed for the defence of the "northern passage." Thus, from the Finnish coast to Oranienbaum a bristling line of unbroken fortification proclaims Russia's aversion to war, and the gaping mouths of innumerable cannon announce to all who approach, with silent eloquence, that "L'empire c'est la paix." It is a fine political parable that the Western traveler's first glimpse of Russian civilization should assume the form of a line of batteries, reminding one of poor Mungo Park's splendid unconscious sarcasm, when, while wandering helplessly in the desert, he came suddenly upon a gibbet with a man hanging in chains upon it; "Whereupon," says he, "I kneeled down and gave hearty thanks to Almighty God, who had been pleased to conduct me once more into a Christian and civilized country."
As the afternoon creeps on the rain seems to fall heavier, the fog to brood thicker, the steamer to go (if possible) slower than before. However, everything earthly has an end except a suit in chancery; and by nightfall (if there be any nightfall in this wonderful region, where it is lighter at midnight than in England at daybreak) we reach Viborg, a neat little town built along the edge of a narrow inlet, with the straight, wide, dusty streets which characterize every Russian town from Archangelsk to Sevastopol. Along the edge of the harbor runs a well laid-out promenade, a favorite resort after sunset, when the cool breeze from the gulf comes freshly in after the long, sultry hours of the afternoon. Behind it cluster, like a heap of colored pebbles, the painted wooden houses of the town; while over all stands, like a veteran sentinel, the gray massive tower of the old castle, frowning upon the bristling masts of the harbor like the Past scowling at the Present.
The rippling sea in front and the dark belt of forest behind give the whole place a very picturesque appearance; but the beauty of the latter is sorely marred by the destroying sweep of a recent hurricane, traces of which are still visible in the long swathes of fallen trees that lie strewn amid the greenwood, like the dead among the living.
In the solemn, subdued light of the northern evening we rattle in a crazy drosky over the uneven stones of the town into the vast desolate square in which stands the solitary hotel, a huge barrack-like building, up and down which we wander for some time, like the prince in the Sleeping Beauty's palace, without meeting any sign of life, till at length in a remote corner we come suddenly upon a chubby little waiter about the size of a well-grown baby, to whom we give our orders. This, however, is his first and last appearance, for every time we ring a different waiter, of the same diminutive size, answers the bell; which oppresses us with an undefined apprehension of having got into a charity-school by mistake.
When I first made the acquaintance of Viborg, a journey thither from St. Petersburg, though the distance by land is only about eighty miles, was no light undertaking. The daring traveler who elected to travel by road had no choice but to provide himself with abundant wrappings and a good stock of food, draw his strong boots up to his knee, fortify his inner man with scalding tea or fiery corn-whisky, and struggle through axle-deep mud or breast-high snow (according to the season), sometimes for two days together. "Mais nous avons changé tout cela." Two trains run daily from St. Petersburg, covering the whole distance in about four hours, and the stations along the line, though bearing marks of hasty construction, are still sufficiently comfortable and well supplied with provisions. Thanks to this direct communication with the capital, Viborg is now completely au fait of the news of the day, and all fashionable topics are canvassed as eagerly on the promenade of this little Finnish seaport as along the pavements of the Nevski Prospect.
"We must breakfast early to-morrow, mind," says P—— as we settle into our respective beds, "for a march in the sun here is no joke, you bet!"
"Worse than in Arabia or South America?" ask I with calm scorn.
"You'll find the north of Russia a pretty fair match for both at this season. Do you happen to know that one of the hottest places in the world is Archangelsk on the White Sea? In summer the pitch melts off the vessels like butter, and the mosquitoes are so thick that the men on board the grain-ships fairly burrow into the corn for shelter.[E] Good-night! Sharp six to-morrow, mind!"
Accordingly, the early daylight finds us tramping along the edge of the picturesque little creek (dappled here and there with wood-crowned islets) in order to get well into our work before the sun is high in the sky, for a forty-mile march, knapsack on shoulder, across a difficult country, in the heat of a real Russian summer, is not a thing to be trifled with, even by men who have seen Turkey and Syria. A sudden turn of the road soon blots out the sea, and we plunge at once into the green silent depths of the northern forest.
It is characteristic of the country that, barely out of sight of one of the principal ports of Finland, we are in the midst of a loneliness as utter as if it had never been broken by man. The only tokens of his presence are the narrow swathe of road running between the dim, unending files of the shadowy pine trees, and the tall wooden posts, striped black and white like a zebra, which mark the distance in versts from Viborg, the verst being two-thirds of a mile.
To an unpractised eye the marvelous smoothness and hardness of this forest highway (unsurpassed by any macadamized road in England) might suggest a better opinion of the local civilization than it deserves; for in this case it is the soil, not the administration, that merits all the credit. In granite-paved Finland, as in limestone-paved Barbados, Nature has already laid down your road in a way that no human engineering can rival, and all you have to do is to smooth it to your own liking.
And now the great panorama of the far North—a noble change from the flat unending monotony of the Russian steppes—begins in all its splendor. At one moment we are buried in a dark depth of forest, shadowy and spectral as those which haunt us in the weird outlines of Retzsch; the next minute we burst upon an open valley, bright with fresh grass, and with a still, shining lake slumbering in the centre, the whole picture framed in a background of sombre woods. Here rise giant boulders of granite, crested with spreading pines—own brothers, perhaps, of the block dragged hence eighty years ago from which the greatest of Russian rulers still looks down upon the city that bears his name;[F] there, bluffs of wooded hill rear themselves above the surrounding sea of foliage, and at times the roadside is dotted with the little wooden huts of the natives, whence wooden-faced women, turbaned with colored handkerchiefs, and white-headed children, in nothing but a short night-gown with a warm lining of dirt, stare wonderingly at us as we go striding past. And over all hangs the clear, pearly-gray northern sky.
One hour is past, and still the air keeps moderately fresh, although the increasing glare warns us that it will be what I once heard a British tourist call "more hotterer" by and by. So far, however, we have not turned a hair, and the second hour's work matches the first to an inch. As we pass through the little hamlet which marks the first quarter of our allotted distance we instinctively pull out our watches: "Ten miles in two hours! Not so bad, but we must keep it up."
So we set ourselves to the third hour, and out comes the sun—bright and beautiful and destroying as Homer's Achilles:
Bright are his rays, but evil fate they send,
And to sad man destroying heat portend.
Hitherto, despite the severity of our pace, we have contrived to keep up a kind of flying conversation, but now grim silence settles on our way. There is a point in every match against time when the innate ferocity of man, called forth by the exercises which civilization has borrowed from the brute creation, comes to the front in earnest—when your best friend becomes your deadly enemy, and the fact of his being one stride in advance of you is an injury only to be atoned by blood. Such is the precise point that we have reached now; and when we turn from exchanging malignant looks with each other, it is only to watch with ominous eagerness for the coming in sight of the painted verst-posts, which somehow appear to succeed one another far more slowly than they did an hour ago.
By the middle of the fourth hour we are marching with coats off and sleeves rolled up, like amateur butchers; and although our "pace" is as good as ever, the elastic swing of our first start is now replaced by that dogged, "hard-and-heavy" tramp which marks the point where the flesh and the spirit begin to pull in opposite directions. Were either of us alone, the pace would probably slacken at once, and each may safely say in his heart, as Condorcet said of the dying D'Alembert, "Had I not been there he must have flinched!"
But just as the fourth hour comes to an end (during which we have looked at our watches as often as Wellington during the terrible mid-day hours that preceded the distant boom of the Prussian cannon) we come round a sharp bend in the road, and there before us lies the quaint little log-built post-house (the "halfway house" in very truth), with its projecting roof and painted front and striped doorposts; just at which auspicious moment I stumble and twist my foot.
"You were right to reserve that performance to the last," remarks P—— with a grin, helping me to the door; and we order a samovar (tea-urn) to be heated, while we ourselves indulge in a scrambling wash of the rudest kind, but very refreshing nevertheless.
Reader, did you ever walk five miles an hour for four hours together over a hilly country, with the thermometer at eighty-three degrees in the shade? If so, then will you appreciate our satisfaction as we throw aside our heavy boots, plunge our swollen feet into cold water, and, with coats off and collars thrown open, sit over our tea and black bread in that quaint little cross-beamed room, with an appetite never excited by the best plats of the Erz-Herzog Karl or the Trois Frères Provençaux. Two things, at least, one may always be sure of finding in perfection at a Russian post-station: tea is the one; the other I need not particularize, as its presence does not usually become apparent till you "retire to rest" (?).
Our meal being over and my foot still unfit for active service, we order a telyayga (cart) and start anew for Imatra Foss. Our vehicle is simply a wooden tray on wheels, with a bag of hay in it, on which we do our best to recline, while our driver perches himself on the edge of the cart, thereby doubtless realizing vividly the sensation of rowing hard in a pair of thin unmentionables. Thanks to the perpetual gaps in the road formed by the great thaw two months ago (the Finnish winter ending about the beginning of May), during the greater part of the ride we play an animated though involuntary game of cup-and-ball, being thrown up and caught again incessantly. At length a dull roar, growing ever louder and louder, breaks the dreamy stillness of the forest, and before long we come to a little chalet-like inn embosomed in trees, where we alight, for this is the "Imatra Hotel."
Let us cast one glance out of the back window before sitting down to supper (in a long, bare, chilly chamber like a third-class waiting-room), for such a view is not seen every day. We are on the very brink of a deep narrow gorge, the upper part of which is so thickly clad with pines as to resemble the crest of some gigantic helmet, but beneath the naked granite stands out in all its grim barrenness, lashed by the spray of the mighty torrent that roars between its projecting rocks. Just below us, the river, forced back by a huge boulder in the centre of its course, literally piles itself up into a kind of liquid mound, foaming, flashing and trembling incessantly, the ceaseless motion and tremendous din of the rapids having an indescribably bewildering effect.
On quitting our inn the next morning a very picturesque walk of half an hour brings us to a little hut beside the Saima Ferry, where we find a party of "three fishers" from St. Petersburg, comprising a Russian colonel, an ex-chasseur d'Afrique (now an actor at one of the Russian theatres) and an Englishman. The three give us a cordial welcome, and insist upon our joining them; and for the next few days our surroundings are savagely picturesque enough to satisfy Jean-Jacques himself—living in a cabin of rough-hewn logs plastered with mud, sleeping on a bundle of straw, with our knapsacks for a pillow; tramping for miles every day through the sombre pine forest or fishing by moonlight in the shadowy lake, with the silence of a newly-created world all around; and having an "early pull" every morning across the ferry with our host, a squat, yellow-haired, gnome-like creature in sheepskin frock and bark shoes, who manifests unbounded amazement every time he sees us washing our hands.
But the lake itself is, if possible, even more picturesque than the river. It is one of those long, straggling bodies of water so common in the far North, resembling not so much one great lake as an endless series of small ones. Just at the sortie of the river a succession of rapids, scarcely less magnificent than those of the "Foss" itself, rush between the wooded shores, their unresting whirl and fury contrasting gloriously with the vast expanse of glassy water above, crested with leafy islets and mirroring the green boughs that droop over it along the shore. Here did we spend many a night fishing and "spinning yarns," in both of which accomplishments the ex-chasseur was pre-eminent; and strange enough it seemed, lying in the depths of that northern forest, to listen to descriptions of the treeless sands of Egypt and the burning wastes of the Sahara. Our midnight camp, on a little promontory just above the rapids, was a study for Rembrandt—the slender pine-stems reddened by the blaze of our camp-fire; the group of bearded faces coming and going as the light waxed and waned; beyond the circle of light a gloom all the blacker for the contrast; the ghostly white of the foam shimmering through the leaves, and the clear moonlit sky overhanging all.
When a wet day came upon us the inexhaustible ex-chasseur (who, like Frederick the Great, could "do everything but keep still") amused himself and us with various experiments in cookery, of which art he was a perfect master. His versatility in sauces might have aroused the envy of Soyer himself, and the party having brought with them a large stock of provisions, he was never at a loss for materials. Our ordinary dinner consisted of trout sauced with red wine, mutton, veal, duck, cheese, fresh strawberries and coffee; after which every man took his tumbler of tea, with a slice of lemon in it, from the stove, and the evening began.
The sight of the country, however, is undoubtedly the natives themselves. Their tawny skins, rough yellow hair and coarse flat faces would look uninviting enough to those who have never seen a Kalmuck or a Samoyede, but, despite their diet of dried fish and bread mixed with sawdust, both men and women are remarkably healthy and capable of surprising feats of strength and endurance. They make great use of bark for caps, shoes, plates, etc., in the making of which they are very skillful. As to their dress, it baffles description, and the horror of my friend the ex-chasseur at his first glimpse of it was as good as a play. On one occasion he was criticising severely the "rig" of some passing natives: "Voilà un qui porte un pantalon et point de bottes—un autre qui a des bottes et point de pantalon; peut-être que le troisième n'aura ni l'un ni l'autre!" At last came one with a pair of boots almost big enough to go to sea in, and turned up like an Indian canoe. Our critic eyed them in silence for a moment, and then said with a shudder, "Ce sont des bottes impossibles!"
But there needs only a short journey here to show the folly of further annexations on the part of Russia while those already made are so lamentably undeveloped. Finland, which, rightly handled, might be one of the czar's richest possessions, is now, after nearly seventy years' occupation, as unprofitable as ever. Throughout the whole province there are only three hundred and ninety-eight miles of railway.[G] Post-roads, scarce enough in the South, are absolutely wanting in the North. Steam navigation on the Gulf of Bothnia extends only to Uleaborg, and is, so far as I can learn, actually non-existent on the great lakes, except between Tanasthuus and Tammerfors. Such is the state of a land containing boundless water-power, countless acres of fine timber, countless shiploads of splendid granite. But what can be expected of an untaught population under two millions left to themselves in an unreclaimed country nearly as large as France?
Helsingfors can now be reached from St. Petersburg, viâ Viborg, in fourteen and a half hours; but what is one such line to the boundless emptiness of Finland? The fearful lesson of 1869 will not be easily forgotten, when all the horrors of famine were let loose at once upon the unhappy province. Seed-corn was exhausted: bread became dear, dearer still, and then failed altogether. Men, women and children, struggling over snowy moors and frozen lakes toward the distant towns in which lay their only chance of life, dropped one by one on the long march of death, and were devoured ere they were cold by the pursuing wolves. Nor did the survivors fare much better: some reached the haven of refuge only to fall dead in its very streets. Others gorged themselves with unwholesome food, and died with it in their mouths. Fields lying waste; villages dispeopled; private houses turned into hospitals; fever-parched skeletons tottering from the doors of overcrowded asylums; children wandering about in gaunt and squalid nakedness; crowds of men, frenzied by prolonged misery and ripe for any outrage, roaming the streets night and day,—such were the scenes enacted throughout the length of Finland during two months and a half.
But better days are now dawning on the afflicted land. Roads and railways are being pushed forward into the interior, and the ill-judged attempts formerly made to Russianize the population have given place to a more conciliatory policy. A Russian from Helsingfors tells me that lectures are being delivered there, and extracts from native works read, in the aboriginal tongue; that it is being treated with special attention in the great schools of Southern Finland; that there has even been some talk of dramatic representations in Finnish at the Helsingfors theatre. Such a policy is at once prudent and generous, and far better calculated to bind together the heterogeneous races of the empire than that absurd "Panslavism" which is best translated as "making every one a slave."
David Ker.
FOOTNOTES:
[D] Finland still retains its own currency of "marks" and "pennia."
[E] A fact.
[F] The statue of Peter the Great stands at the corner of the Senate-House Square, overlooking the Neva, on a block of Finnish granite twenty feet high.
[G] Since this was written two new lines have been opened.