All the next morning we went through the same kind of country, past innumerable frozen lakelets, and copses of stubby pines and silver birches, till we arrived at Karungi where the railway ends. We made friends with a most delightful man, who was so good in helping us all the way through that we christened him St. Raphael, the patron saint of travellers. He was a fur trader from Finland, and had immense stores of information about the land and the queer beasts that live in it. He was a sociable soul, but lived in such out-of-the-way places that he seldom saw anyone to talk to except the peasants, and it was a great treat, he said, to meet some of his fellow-countrymen, and his satisfaction knew no bounds when he heard that one of us hailed from Lancashire, near his old home.
From Karungi we had to drive to Haparanda. Our carriage was already booked by telegram, but a very irate gentleman from Port Said got into it with his family and declined to get out, using such dreadful language that I wondered the snow did not begin to sizzle. We did not want to have a scene there, so when "St. Raphael" said if we would wait till the evening he would take us over by starlight, we graciously let the dusky gentleman with the bad temper keep our carriage.
We went in the meantime to the little wooden inn and ate largely of strange dishes, dried reindeer flesh, smoked strips of salmon, lax, I think it is called, served with a curious sweet sauce, and drank many glasses of tea. At 9 P. M. behold an open motor-car arrived to take us the thirty miles' drive to Haparanda. It seemed absolutely absurd to see a motor-car up there on the edge of the Arctic Circle, where there was not even a proper road. There were several reindeer sleighs about, and I felt that one of those would have been much more in keeping. The drivers look most attractive, they wear very gay reindeer leggings, big sheep-skin coats and wild-looking wolf-skin caps.
The frozen track was so uneven that we rocked from side to side, and were thrown violently about in the car, like little kernels in a very large nut. But it was a wonderful night all the same, the air was thin and intoxicating like champagne, and the stars up in these northern latitudes more dazzlingly brilliant than anything I have seen before. We had to get out at Haparanda and walk over the long bridge which led to Torneo, where the Finnish Custom House was, and where our luggage and passports had to be examined.
We arrived there very cheerful and well pleased with ourselves, to find all our old travelling companions waiting till the Custom House was open; the bishop and his party; the bad-tempered man and his family; a Russian and a Chinese student who were travelling together, and some others. They had been waiting in the cold for hours, and had not had their papers or luggage examined yet, so we had had the best of it after all.
And we scored yet once more, for "St. Raphael," who spoke fluent Finnish, at once secured the only cart to take our things over the ferry to the railway station about half a mile away.
It was borne in upon me during this journey what an immense country Russia is. From Torneo to Petrograd does not look far on the map, but we left Torneo on Wednesday night, and did not arrive in Petrograd till 12.30 A. M. on Saturday, about fifty-two hours' hard travelling to cover this little track—a narrow thread, almost lost the immensity of this great Empire.
Petrograd is not one of those cities whose charms steal upon you unawares. It is immense, insistent, arresting, almost thrusting itself on your imagination. It is a city for giants to dwell in, everything is on such an enormous scale, dealt out in such careless profusion. The river, first of all, is immense; the palaces grandiose, the very blocks of which they are fashioned seem to have been hewn by Titans. The names are full of romance and mystery. The fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, for instance, how it brings back a certain red and gold book of one's youth, full of innocent prisoners in clanking chains confined in fetid underground dungeons. It seemed incredible to really behold its slender, golden minarets on the other side of the Neva. But this was no time for sight-seeing, we were all very anxious to get to work at once. So my first excursion in Petrograd was to the Central Bureau of the Red Cross.
The director of the Red Cross received me most kindly and promised that we should have work very soon. He suggested that in the meantime we should go and stay in a Russian Community of Sisters, who had a hospital in Petrograd. I was very glad to accept this offer for us all, for we must assimilate Russian methods and ways of thought as soon as possible, if we were to be of real use to them. Still I very much hoped that we should not be kept in Petrograd very long, as we wanted, if possible, to get nearer the front. I told the director that we had been inoculated against cholera and typhoid, and would be quite pleased to be sent to the infectious hospitals if that would be more help, as there are always plenty of people to nurse the wounded, but comparatively few who for one reason or another are able to devote themselves to this other very necessary work.
We betook ourselves without delay to the Community of Russian Sisters, and were installed in dear little cell-like rooms at the top of the house devoted to the Sisters. The other side of the house is a beautiful little hospital with several wards set apart for wounded soldiers. There are a great many similar communities in Russia—all nursing orders. They are called Sisters of Mercy, but are not nuns in any sense, as they take no vows and are free to leave whenever they like. The course of training varies from two to three years and is very complete, comprising courses in dispensing and other useful subjects. The pity of it is that there are comparatively few of these trained Sisters at the front; the vast majority of those working there have only been through a special "War Course" of two months' training, and are apt to think that bandaging is the beginning and the end of the art of nursing.