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 their own, 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 ancient fen, 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 a thousand and more of islands. The largest is called Amasara, or mother-island; on this island there are seventy-seven lakes, and in these lakes fifty islands. 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 from colthood 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 nine o’clock at night, and there was plenty of time before sunset to 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 making a 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 a wooded 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” at ten o’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!