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."