"Why, sheets of birch bark," answered our friend, "put out to dry in the sun for the peasants to plait baskets and boxes, shoes and satchels, such as you have just seen; they peeled those trees before cutting them down."
On another of our drives we noticed bunches of dried leaves tied at the top of some of the wooden poles which support the strangely tumbledown looking wooden fences which are found everywhere in Finland, and serve not only as boundaries to fields but also to keep up the snow.
"What are those dead leaves?" we asked the lad who drove our kärra.
"They are there to dry in the sun, for the sheep to eat in the winter," was his reply, with which we ought to have rested satisfied; but thinking that was not quite correct, as they were in patches round some fields and not in others, we asked the boy of the second springless vehicle the same question.
"Those," he said, "are put up to dry in the sun round the rye fields, and in the autumn, when the first frost comes and might destroy the whole crop in a single night, they are lighted, and the warmth and the wind from them protect the crops till they can be hastily gathered the next day."
This sounded much more probable, and subsequently proved perfectly correct. These sudden autumn frosts are the farmer's terror, for his crops being left out one day too long may mean ruin, and that he will have to mix birch bark or Iceland moss with his winter's bread to eke it out, poor soul!
The export of timber from Finland is really its chief trade.
| Export of Wood, Cubic Metres (about 36 Cubic Feet). | Wood Pulp. Kilograms. | Paper, chiefly made from Wood Pulp. Kilograms. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1874 | 843,031 | 3,116,139 | 1,317,021 |
| 1884 | 1,229,008 | 9,326,288 | 8,464,841 |
| 1894 | 1,722,322 | 33,802,916 | 17,675,856 |
| 1895 | 2,704,126 | 35,548,000 | .. |
| 1896 | 2,136,888 | 39,096,000 | .. |
In 1909, 5,073,513 cubic metres of wood were exported, and 192,373,500 kilograms of pulp and paper.
From this table it will be seen that a large quantity of pulp is exported, likewise a great deal of paper, and chiefly to our own country.