THROUGH SAVOLAX IN CARTS
We were in despair!
By the kindness of the Governor of the district everything had been
arranged for a drive of a couple hundred miles through some of the
prettiest parts of the country from _Kuopio_ to _Iisalmi_. We were to
have a carriage with a hood (a rare honour) and two horses, to dawdle as
we liked by the way, and just order our vehicle when and as we wanted
it, so that we might really peep into the homes of the people, as well
as avail ourselves of the Baron's many kind introductions. But late on
the afternoon before that named for leaving, our cicerone Grandpapa
found it was imperative for him to remain a couple of days longer in
_Kuopio_ to receive his sisters who were to join our party, therefore we
found ourselves stranded so far as his escort was concerned.
"How were we two Englishwomen to travel alone through the very centre of
Finland, where no one spoke a word except his own language?" asked the
Governor.
"Perfectly," we replied; "we can travel anywhere, so far as that goes,
by signs and with a map; but, of course, we shall _learn_ nothing
more than what we can see with our eyes, for we shall not know how to
ask for information, and therefore half the pleasure and interest of the
journey will be lost."
[Illustration: BURNING THE FORESTS.
(After Eero Järnefelt.)]
"Were I not compelled to go on an official journey to-morrow," replied
the fine, tall, and charming Governor, "I should come myself--as it is,
will you accept the escort of my son?"
"Willingly, thankfully," we replied.
Baron George spoke French, German, and Swedish, and was a good Finnish
scholar besides. _He_ was to have gone on a bicycle tour that very
afternoon, but kindly altered all his plans to pass a couple of days as
our guide, cicerone, and friend, and a third on his return journey
alone.
Accordingly we started at nine A.M. on the next morning, and drove over
sixty miles through Finland during the two following days, by a route
soon to be followed by railway engines, for it had already been surveyed
for that purpose, and little posts here and there denoted the projected
route.
Seen off by the Governor's family, who had shown us the greatest
hospitality and kindness during our stay in _Kuopio_, we were peeped at
by half the town as we started; for English people, and a hooded vehicle
driving through _Savolax_ was no mean event, especially when these same
visitors had been entertained by the Governor of the district.
After a spin of five kilometres, or about two and a half English miles,
we reached the _lossi_, and our adventures began. A mile and a half of
water had to be crossed; naturally there was no bridge, nor was there
any friendly ice on those hot days, therefore a _lossi_ or boat, rather
like a river barge, conveys passengers--a _rara avis_--horses, and
carriage right over that wide expanse of lake. Our hearts sank when we
saw the boat. It was simply a shell, without seats or even a platform
for the carriage. The old boat was big, but our equipage appeared even
bigger, and we looked on in dismay, wondering how on earth we were ever
to get across unless we took half a dozen journeys, in bits, to and fro.
Afterwards our dismay turned to admiration at the skill with which the
whole thing was accomplished. First, our pair of mustard-coloured
ponies, with long tails, big bodies and small legs--who, by the bye,
went splendidly for two long days--were unharnessed, their primitive
trappings, much mended with string and rope, being thrown into our
carriage; then two planks of wood were laid from the empty boat to the
top step of the landing-stage on which we stood, men, seizing each of
the four wheels, slowly trundled the heavy carriage along those planks
to the barge's side. So far so good; but the boat was in the water, and
the carriage some feet higher up on the pier; more planks being speedily
arranged, however, it was most cleverly slipped down the pier's side on
them, and after others had been placed the right distance apart for the
wheels to stand on, into the boat itself. So there our victoria--if we
may call our vehicle by so grand a name--stood right across the boat,
its pole and bar being reflected in the lake, over which they hung on
the one side, the luggage and hood of the vehicle projecting over the
water on the other.
As though accustomed to such strange feats, those "mustard pots" walked
down the steps of the primitive pier, lifted their feet over the boat's
side most dexterously--as a lady in fine shoes might daintily cross some
muddy road--and stood head and tail next the carriage.
A Finnish pony is a marvel. He has no chest, is so narrow, one almost
wonders, when standing before his head, where his body can really be. He
has fine legs with good hoofs and fetlocks; he looks ill-groomed and
ill-cared for, his tail is long and bushy, and his mane unkempt. Yet he
goes up hill or down dale at a good pace (averaging six miles an hour),
and he will do thirty miles easily in a day and not turn a hair. They
are wonderful little animals these mustard-coloured steeds of Finland,
and as agile and sure-footed as a cat, although not so famous as the
fast trotters of _Suomi_.
Then we three got in and sat down, in what little space remained,
finding room on planks placed between the wheels. We certainly made a
boat full, and a queer cargo we were.
Two women "ferrymen" found room to row in front, the coachman attended
to his horses, one of which was inclined to be restive, while a man,
whose flaxen hair was so light it looked positively white against his
red burnt neck, stood rowing behind us; and thus in three-quarters of an
hour we reached the other side, in as wonderful a transport as the
trains we had seen put on steamers in Denmark, Sicily, or the States,
but much more exciting and primitive.
Gaily and cheerfully, meantime, we discussed the prospects of our visit
to Lapland; for the Northern part of Finland is the country of reindeer
and Laps, and thither we had made up our minds to go as a fitting finish
to our summer jaunt. From _Uleåborg_ we were to take the steamer to
_Tornea_, and there to commence a drive which promised to be most
interesting, if a little cold and perhaps not quite so pretty as our
long journey through _Savolax_ in _kärra_ or carts.
We drove on through lovely scenery till twelve o'clock, when we arrived
at a post-house for luncheon.
What a scene met our eyes! An enormous kitchen, a wooden-floored,
ceilinged and walled room about thirty feet square, boasting five
windows--large and airy, I was about to say, but it just missed being
airy because no fresh breeze was ever allowed to enter except by the
door. At one end was the usual enormous fireplace, with its large
chimney and small cooking stove, into which wood had continually to be
piled, coal being as unknown to the inland Finn as the sea-serpent
itself. At the other end of the room, opposite the fireplace, was a
large wooden table with benches arranged along two sides, at which the
labourers were feeding, for the one o'clock bell hanging above the roof
had just been rung by the farmer, and they had all come in for their
mid-day meal. It was really a wonderful scene; five men wearing coloured
shirts, and four women, with white handkerchiefs over their heads, were
sitting round the table, and between each couple was a small wooden,
long-handled pail, from which the pair, each duly provided with a wooden
spoon, were helping themselves. Finnish peasants--and until lately even
Finnish town servants--all feed from one pot and drink from one bowl in
truly Eastern fashion. The small wooden receptacle, which really served
as a basin, contained _piimää_ or skimmed milk that had gone sour, a
composition somewhat allied to _skyr_, on which peasants live in
Iceland, only that _skyr_ is sheep's milk often months old, and _piimää_
is cow's milk fairly fresh. This _piimää_ with sour black bread and
salted but uncooked small fish (_suolo-kala_) is the peasant's fare,
yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, almost always the same! These people
never taste meat, unless it be for a treat salted, while fresh
vegetables are unknown, cabbage even being a luxury. Each labourer
pulled his _puukko_ (knife) from its sheath at his waist--alas, too
frequently pulled in anger--and cutting hunks of brown bread, dragged a
fish like a sardine (only it was dry and salt) from another wooden tub,
and cutting off bits ate them together, after the fashion of a sandwich,
helping himself every now and then with a wooden spoon to a lump of the
sour milk, or, when his companion was not doing the same, raising the
pail--the wooden walls of which were half an inch thick--to his lips and
drinking the more watery part of his harmless liquor.
_Haili_ also haunted us in every peasant home. It is another species of
small fish which the peasants eat raw, a little salt being its only
preparation. They seem to buy or catch _haili_ by the ton, and then
keep them for months in the cellar. We were always seeing them eat these
_haili_, which looked something like sprats, and tasted ineffably nasty.
On high days and holidays they partake of them accompanied with baked
potatoes; but potatoes are somewhat rare, and therefore the fish on
black bread alone constitutes the usual meal. Sometimes better-class
folk eat _haili_, but then they have them grilled on charcoal; these are
rich people, for coal is as great a luxury to them even as potatoes to
the poor.
They seemed very happy, those men and women who had been up and hard at
work in the fields since three or four in the morning, and would not
have finished their day's labour till between eight and nine P.M., for
the summer is short, and while it lasts the peasant gets little or no
sleep, his entire livelihood depending upon almost incessant work during
the light warm days. I believe many people only sleep for a couple of
hours during the summer light, and make up for it in the provinces in
winter when it is dark. It was the 10th of July; the hay was cut
everywhere, and thrown up on the wooden palings erected for that
purpose, or the old pine trees stuck here and there, to dry before being
piled up on little sledges that were to convey it to the nearest wooden
shanty, to be stacked for winter use.
Sledges convey the hay crop in the summer along the roadways, where
wheels would be dragged from their axles by the stones and rocks.
A year or two ago, when hay was very scarce in England, quantities were
sent over from Finland, and excellent it was, full of clover and sweet
flowers, for although only grown in patches--sometimes even scraps by
the roadside--the quality of the crop repays the enormous patience and
labour necessary to produce it.
Finland's wild flowers are renowned, and the hay is full of
sweet-scented blossoms.
The peasant farmer at whose _majatalo_ we halted was a rich man, and had
let out some of his farms to people in a smaller way, who in return had
to give him fourteen days' labour in the year whenever he demanded them,
also many bags of rye--in regular old feudal style--for money did not
pass between them. Just as well, perhaps, considering that Finnish money
a couple of hundred years ago weighed several pounds--indeed its
unwieldiness may have been the origin of this exchange of labour for
land. We actually saw an old coin over two feet long and one foot wide
in the _Sordavala_ Museum. It is made of copper about one-eighth of an
inch thick, with uneven edges as though it had been rolled out like a
piece of pastry, and bears the name Kristina 1624-1654, with one coin
stamped in the middle about the size of a florin, and one at each of the
corners. How delightfully easy travelling must have been in those days
with a hundred such useful little coins in one's possession. Paper money
now takes their place.
There were many more coins half that size, the earliest being a Carl
XI.
All through the year the peasant farmer recently referred to employed
six hands, and he told us that the men earned a hundred and twenty marks
a year (£5), and a woman fifty or sixty (£2), with clothes, board, and
lodging. It did not seem to be very grand pay; but then the labourers
had no expenses, and were, judging from their appearance, well cared
for.
Later, when wandering round the homestead, we found a shed full of
sledges, filled with hay and covered by coarse woven sheets, made by the
family (for every decent house spins and weaves for itself), and in
these the hired labourers slept. It was all very primitive, but
wondrously clean.
In truly Finnish fashion the family was varied. First we saw an aged
mother, a delightful old soul, whose husband was dead and whose eldest
son therefore worked the farm. He had a wife and five children, the
latter being all much of an age. He also had a sister with her invalid
husband, and his younger brother and one child--so that there were
several relationships under the same roof, let us hope proving "Union is
Strength," although we hardly think the English temperament would care
for such family gatherings.
In the kitchen-dining-room was a baby in a cradle, and another sort of
crib was hanging from the ceiling by cords, the infant lying in a kind
of linen pocket on a pillow.
We were much amazed to see a patent process by which the infant in the
cradle was being fed. It was a wooden bed, in shape like an old German
one, and at one side of it projected an arm of wood curved round in
such a way that it came up from the side of the cradle and bent almost
over the child's face. Great was our amazement to find that a cow horn
was fixed into this wooden arm, so that the thin part of the horn
reached the baby's mouth, while the thick part stood up three or four
inches above the hole in the wood in which it was resting. Was it a toy,
we marvelled, because, if so, it seemed remarkably dangerous to have
anything so hard in such near proximity to a baby's face, but great was
our surprise on closer examination to find it was a feeding-bottle.
The horn was hollow, and on the thin end was a primitive teat of linen,
through which the baby was drawing the milk poured in at the top of this
novel feeding-bottle.
In a corner of the same room was a wonderful frame on rollers to teach a
child to walk. There was a small round hole through which the infant was
pulled, so that the polished ring supported it under the armpits, from
that rim four wooden pillars slanted outwards, being bound together at
the bottom by other pieces of wood securely fixed to four rolling
castors. In this the child could move; and the little brat rolled about
from side to side of the uneven flooring, securely held up in its wooden
cage. A small child of five was peeling potatoes, specially dug up in
our honour, beside a wooden bucket, while a cat played with a kitten,
and a servant girl--for well-to-do farmers have servants--made black
bread in a huge tub, the dough being so heavy and solid that she could
not turn it over at all, and only managed to knead it by doubling her
fists and regularly plunging them to the bottom with all her strength.
Her sunburnt arms disappeared far above her elbow, and judging by the
way the meal stuck to her she found bread-making very hard work.
Finlanders only bake every few weeks, so the bread is often made with a
hole and hung up in rows from the ceiling, or, if not, is placed on the
kitchen rafters till wanted. This bread is invariably sour--the natives
like it so--and to get it rightly flavoured they always leave a little
in the tub, that it may taste the next batch, as sour cream turns the
new cream for butter. She was not a bad-looking girl; Dame Nature had
been kinder to her than to most of her sex in Finland.
Somehow that scene did not look real--it had a kind of theatrical
effect. The surroundings were too like a museum; the entry of the
labourers after the chiming of the bell closely resembled a stage
effect--the old grandmother, the children, the bright cotton shirts
and skirts, the wondrous fireplace, the spinning-wheel and
weaving-frame--yes, it all seemed too picturesque, too full of colour,
and too well grouped to be an event in our commonplace every-day life.
Yet this was merely a peep at a Finnish home, in which just such a scene
is enacted every day--a home but little off the beaten tracks, and only
a short distance from steamboats and trains. The way to understand
anything of a land or its people is to leave the tourist route and peep
into its homes for one's self.
In Finland there are always post-stations about every eight or twelve
miles, according to requirements or capabilities of the peasantry, where
horses and beds can be procured. They are called _majatalo_ in Finnish,
or _gästgivferi_ in Swedish. Well-to-do farmers are chosen for the post,
because they can afford better accommodation to strangers, and generally
there are one or two who apply for the honour, more than for the hundred
(or two hundred marks in some instances) subsidy they get for keeping up
the _majatalo_.
The Governor of the Province then has to choose the most suitable
applicant, settles the charge for food and beds, according to the class
of accommodation, and writes them out officially (in three languages) on
cards, to be hung up in the rooms, provides the farmer with a
_Päiväkirja_, or Daybook, in which it says: "Two horses must always be
ready, and two carts, or if an extra turnout be required, double fare
may be charged." Fourteen penni the kilometre (or about twopence
halfpenny a mile) is the ordinary charge for a horse and trap, a room
and a bed are sixty penni, an ordinary meal sixty, coffee ten, and so
on; so that the prices are not ruinous. Indeed, travelling in the
interior of Finland is altogether moderate, when done as the Finns do it
by posting, but a private carriage is an enormous expense, and, on the
whole, it is just as dear to travel in _Suomi_ as in Normandy, Brittany,
or the Tyrol. Of course it is not so expensive as London, Paris, or
Vienna. How could it be, where there are none of the luxuries of these
vast cities? Every one has to sign the _Päiväkirja_, stating from
whence he came, whither he goes, and how many horses he had. Complaints
are also entered, and the book has to go periodically to the Governor
for inspection. So the whole posting arrangement is well looked after.
We fared very well at our first _majatalo_, but of course we had to wait
over an hour before we got anything to eat. One always must in Finland,
and, although a trial to the temper at first, it is a good lesson in
restraint, and by degrees we grew accustomed to it. One can get
accustomed to anything--man is as adaptable as the trees.
We had black bread--nothing else can be got in peasant homes--and any
one who cannot accept its sourness, and one might add hardness, must
provide himself with white bread from the towns. We got excellent butter
of course--the smallest home has good butter and milk in Finland, where
the little native cows can be bought for sixty or a hundred marks. They
live on what they can find in the summer, and dried birch leaves, moss,
or an occasional "delikatess" of hay in the winter. We had also
deliciously cold fresh milk, that and coffee being the only drinks
procurable, as a rule, and a small fish with a pink skin like a mullet,
fresh out of the water, was served nicely fried in butter, the farmer
having sent a man to catch it on our arrival.
There was cold bacon, too poisonous in appearance to touch, and hot
eggs, but no egg-cups, of course. We bumped the round heavy end of the
eggs, and stood them up on our plates, native fashion, and felt we had
learnt a trick that might be useful when egg-cups fell short in England.
In fact, before we left our peasant homes, we had begun to look upon an
egg-cup as a totally unnecessary luxury, and to find ourselves so
capable of managing without one, that the egg no longer ran out at the
wrong end, as it did at first in our inexperienced hands, but behaved as
every well-behaved egg ought to do--that is to say, sit up on its end
and appear as if it liked it.
One terrible-looking dish adorned our table on this and many occasions.
It was pike--caught, cleaned, opened, salted, and kept till wanted; a
piece, being laid flat on a plate to be served, is cut in thin slices
and spread on bread and butter by those who care to eat the luxury. At
the bone it was red, and gradually tapered away to a white
gelatinous-looking stuff. We never dared venture upon this choice raw
dish. It had a particularly distasteful appearance. As there was no
_filbunke_, made of sour unskimmed milk, which we had learnt to enjoy,
we had to content ourselves with _piimää_, the skimmed milk curdled; but
as we were visitors, and not peasants, tumblers of fresh cream had been
poured over it, and with sugar it tasted really excellent. It was a
primitive dinner, but with fresh fish and eggs, milk and cream, no one
need starve, and we only paid fivepence each for our mid-day meal, such
a sum being fixed on the tariff. Our dear comfortable old hostess was
fascinated by our presence, and sat smiling and blinking beside us all
the time, her hands, folded over her portly form below the short
straight cotton jacket she wore, were raised occasionally to
retie her black silk head-covering. Again and again she
murmured--"_Englantilaiset_" (Englishwoman), and nodded approval.
Poor Baron George, our kindly cicerone, had to answer all her questions
about England, our age, size, weight, height, the price of our clothing,
why our hair was so dark--an endless subject of inquiry among the
peasantry--and to ply her with questions from us in return.
It was with real regret we left these folk, they were so honest and
simple, so far removed from civilisation and its corrupting influences
on their thoughts, that they and their life seemed to take us back a
couple of centuries at least.
The family came out and shook hands with us on leaving; but not before
they had one and all sat down in our grand carriage, just to see what it
was like. Individually, we thought it a ramshackle old chaise, but
further acquaintance with the springless native carts made us look back
at that victoria as if it were the Lord Mayor's Coach!
It is no uncommon thing for the roofs of the houses in _Savolax_ to be
thatched with thin strips of wood an inch or so wide, similar to our old
shingle roofs in the west of England. At _Wiborg_ we were shown, among
the curiosities of the town, a red-tiled roof, which Finlanders thought
as wonderful as we thought their wooden thatch. These were quite common
formerly, but are now condemned by the Insurance Companies.
Such is life. What we eat, others despise; what we think beautiful,
others find hideous; what we call virtue, other lands consider vice;
what to us is novel and interesting is to others mere commonplace; the
more we travel, and the more we read, the less we find we know; except
that there may be good and use in all things, and that other men and
women, with whom we have not one idea in common, are quite as clever or
good as ourselves--more so, perhaps.
"Why, what is that? Three stone chimneys without any house," we
exclaimed, seeing three brick erections standing bleak and alone in the
midst of a dreary waste.
"Ah," replied Baron George, "that is one of the sad sides of Finnish
life. Those three stone chimneys are the only remains of what was once a
three-roomed house. All the dwellings, as you know, are entirely built
of wood, except for the brick chimneys. These three great gaunt towers
mean fire, and perhaps starvation. One of those little houses will burn
to the ground in an hour, on a dry windy night, and all the toil of
years, all the wealth of its proprietor, the home of his family, be
reduced to the few ashes you see on the ground, while the clock marks
one short hour."
It seemed horrible. Those three chimneys looked so gaunt and sad. Where
were the folk who had lived beside them, cooked beneath them, and spent
their lives of grief or joy?
Outside every house in Finland stands a large wooden ladder, tall enough
to reach to the top of the roof, for fire is very common, and generally
ends in everything being demolished by the flames. Buckets of water,
passed on by hand, can do little to avert disaster, when the old wooden
home is dry as tinder and often rotten to the core.
Again our attention was arrested as we jogged along by the earth mounds;
those queer green mounds that look like graves in a country
church-yard, which are so common in Iceland, where they grow so close
together, there is often hardly room for a pony's feet to pass between,
but on the origin of which scientists disagree. The grass-grown
sand--sand as beautiful and silvery as the sand of Iona, but here was no
sea, although it had left its deposits in ages long gone by--was
beautifully fresh and green.
Iceland moss, too, grows in profusion--a very useful commodity for the
peasants, who plug out the draughts between the wooden walls of their
houses with it, or make it into a kind of medicinal drink, as the
Buckinghamshire peasant makes her nettle tea from the wondrous stinging
nettles that grow five feet high in some of the lovely lanes of wooded
Bucks.
Iceland moss, indeed, has taken the place of bread in times of famine,
for that or the bark of the pine tree has been ground down many times
into flour and mixed with a little rye for the half-starved peasants'
only sustenance.
With all their sufferings and their hardships, can one be surprised that
they take life seriously?
That evening at ten o'clock--but it might have been seven judging by the
brilliancy of the sunset--we rowed on the lake, accompanied by a
grandson of Finland's greatest poet, _Runeberg_.
It really was a wonderful night; we English have no idea of the
gorgeousness of long July sunsets in Finland, just as we little dream of
the heat of the day, or the length and beauty of the evenings. It is in
these wondrous sunny glows, which spread themselves like a mantle, that
the hundreds of miles of lakes and thousands and thousands of islands
look their best. And there are many such evenings. Evenings when one
feels at peace with all the world, and one's thoughts soar higher than
the busy turmoil of the crowded city.
It is these wonderful nights that impress the stranger most of all in
Finland. There is something to make even the most prosaic feel poetical.
There is a dull dreariness, a sombre sadness in the scene, and at the
same time a rich warmth of colouring, a strength of Nature that makes
even the least artistic feel the wonders of the picture spread out
before them, and, withal, a peacefulness, for these vast tracts of
uninhabited land mean repose. Those numerous pine forests, denoting
quiet, and the wide, wide canopy of Heaven, unbroken by mountain or
hill, give one an idea of vast extent and wild expanse.
Finland is reposeful; and has a charm about it which is particularly its
own.
It was on such an evening as this that we rowed over the wide deep
waters of _Maaninka_, as still as a mirror, to the little white church,
with its tower soaring out of the pines, on the other side. We had been
joined by several new friends, all anxious to show us their church; but,
individually, our happiness was a little spoilt by the fact that the
boat was leaking badly, and we could positively see the water rising in
her bottom. Up--up--up--the water crept.
We had been in many curious boats before, and had become quite
accustomed to folding our petticoats neatly up on our laps, but this
boat filled more rapidly than usual, and we did not run for the bank
till six or eight inches of water actually covered her bottom. It rose
apace, and before we reached the shore our feet and our skirts were well
up on our seats for safety, and, verily, we were well-nigh swamped.
Out we scrambled; the men immediately beached the frail bark, and as
they did so the water all ran away. "What an extraordinary thing," we
thought, and when they pulled her right on to shore we saw the last
drops disappearing from the boat.
"Why, the plug is out," one of them exclaimed, and, sure enough, the
plug was out! In the bottom of every Finnish boat they have a round
hole, and this round hole contains a large cork or plug, so that when
the craft fills with water, as she invariably does from a leak, or
spray, or other causes, they merely pull her up on to the shore, take
out the plug, and let the water run away. But in this particular case
the plug had never been put in, or had somehow got lost, and we actually
rowed across a lake with the water rising at the rate of about half an
inch a minute.
We scrambled up over the slippery pine needles to the crest of the
little eminence on which the church stood, and found ourselves in the
most primitive of churchyards. There was no attempt at law or order, for
the graves had just been put down between the trees wherever there was
room for them. We noticed a painted clock on several of the wooden
tombstones, evidently intended to indicate the exact hour at which the
person lying under the sod had died. For instance, it would stand at
twenty-two minutes to four o'clock, which was the precise moment the
dead man expired, carefully noted by the exactitude of the Finns, who
are very particular about such matters. In the newspapers, for example,
it is stated, "Johanson died, aged 46 years 11 months and 4 days," and
this record of the number of days is by no means uncommon. They are a
most exact nation.
The _Maaninka_ church, like so many others in Finland, has its
important-looking bell-tower standing quite a distance away from the
main building. We climbed to the top after some persuasion, and
certainly our trouble was repaid by a glorious view.
But, alas! every Finlander has a hobby, and that hobby is that at every
point where there is a view of any sort or description, in fact, one
might say where there is no view at all, he erects an _Aussichtsturm_.
These outlook towers are a bane of existence to a stranger. One goes out
to dinner and is taken for a walk round the island. At every conceivable
point is an outlook tower, generally only a summer-house, but, alas,
there are usually some steps leading to the top which one toils up, and
has the fatigue of doing so without any reward, as they are not high
enough to afford any better view at the summit than one has at the base.
To go to the top of St. Peter's in Rome, St. Paul's in London, the Isaak
Church in Petersburg, the Citadel at Quebec, or the Castle of
Chapultepec in Mexico, is worth the fatigue, but to toil up twenty steps
on a hot summer's day and clamber down again, to repeat the operation a
quarter of a mile farther on, and so _ad lib._, becomes somewhat
monotonous, and one begins to wish that every outlook tower in Finland
might be banished from the country. Stop, once we ascended an outlook
tower that more than rewarded our labour. It was at _Kuopio_, which town
we had just left--perhaps the most beautifully situated in all
Finland--and as the night when we arrived chanced to be particularly
brilliant, the view from the top of that outlook tower will be long
treasured in remembrance.
To many of us the recollection of the past is a storehouse of precious
gems; the realisation of the present is often without sparkle; yet the
anticipation of the future is fraught with glitter, and the crown of
happiness is ever before our eyes.