The Alhambra and the Kremlin: The South and the North of Europe

by Samuel Irenæus Prime

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, however savage 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. Her native tongue was Finnish, and her education would have been finished had she known mine.

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. She reads the 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 them loyally, 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 to enjoy what 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 of Sclava, 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 of young 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.