After spending some days in Uleåborg, it became necessary to make a forward movement—not towards Lapland, as originally intended, for that had been vetoed as impossible in summer. We were still hundreds, we might almost say thousands, of miles from home, when we arranged to leave our pleasant quarters on the following afternoon for Hangö.
What a truly national experience! First of all, the Petersburg steamer, by which we were to travel, though announced to start at three P.M., never left its moorings till 4.40. Only one hour and forty minutes late, but that was a mere trifle to a Finn. The cargo was taken on board up to the very last minute—eighteen enormous barrels of salmon (twice or thrice the size of eighteen-gallon casks of beer), five hundred rolls of leather, which, having come as raw skins from America, had been dressed in Uleåborg, ready for Riga, whither the consignment was bound, also a hundred big baskets, made of the plaited bark so common in Finland, filled with glue, likewise the product of a leather factory.
One thing amazed us immensely; viz. that our steamer was allowed to lie almost alongside of the tar stores we had so lately visited. With the aid of only one single spark from her chimney all those barrels would quickly be ablaze. However, the genial English-speaking captain, as well as the British Consul who had come to see us off, set our minds at rest by explaining that the steamer only burnt coal, no wood-burning boat being allowed near the tar—the coal making few sparks and wood many. Fancy, coal! we had not seen or heard of coal for weeks; all the trains, the houses, and the steamboats, burn wood only, except the large ships that go right out to sea, and they could not burn wood, because of its bulk, unless they dragged a dozen barges behind them to give a continuous supply on the voyage.
Another Finnish scene was being enacted around us. About a dozen emigrants were leaving their native land by way of Hangö, where they were to change steamers for England, and pass thence to America. They had paid seven or eight pounds each for their passage money, and were going off to seek their fortunes in a new world—going to a strange country, speaking another tongue than their own, going away from all they had on earth, from friends, relations, associations, going full of hope, perchance to fail! Some years later, when I was in the States, I learned what excellent emigrants these Finlanders make, and how successful they generally become, but they looked so sad that day that our hearts ached for them as they sat on their little boxes and bundles on the quays, among the sixty or seventy friends who had come to see them off. The bell rang; no one moved. It rang again, when each said to the other Hyvästi (good-bye), and with a jaunty shake of the hand all round, the emigrants marched on board, and our ship steamed away, without a wet eye or a smothered sob.
Will nothing move these people? Is it that they hide their feelings, or is it that they have none to conceal?
The stoicism of the Finn is one of his strongest characteristics.
As we passed out of the harbour our thoughts recurred to heart-breaking farewells on board P. and O. and Orient steamers, where the partings are generally only for a few years, and the voyagers are going to lands speaking their own language and to appointments ready waiting for them. How strange is the emigrant, and how far more enigmatical the Finn.
Our steamer Åbo was delightful, quite the most comfortable we chanced on in Finland; the captain, a charming man, fortunately spoke excellent English, although over the cabin door was written a grand specimen of a Swedish word—Aktersalongspassagerare, meaning first-class passenger saloon.
Although the Åbo plied from Uleåborg to Petersburg, and was a large passenger steamer, she stopped at many places for two or three hours at a time, in order to take in passengers and cargo, while we lay-to at night because of the dangers of the coast, and waited half a day at Wasa, one of the most important towns in Finland. The train journey from Uleåborg to Åbo occupies thirty hours, while the steamer dawdles placidly over the same distance for three days and a half.
Have you ever travelled with a melon? If not, you have lost a delightful experience—please try. At one of the many halting-places on our way to Hangö, we were wandering through the streets on a very hot day, when in a shop window some beautiful melons attracted our attention.