TAR-BOATS
Tar hardly sounds exciting; but the transport of tar can be thrilling.
We were worn out and weary when we reached _Kajana_, where we were the
only visitors in the hotel, and, as the beds very rapidly proved
impossible, we women-folk confiscated the large--and I suppose
only--sitting-room as our bed-chamber. A horsehair sofa, of a hard
old-fashioned type, formed a downy couch for one; the dining-table,
covered by one of the travelling-rugs, answered as a bed--rather of the
prison plank-bed order--for number two; and the old-fashioned spinet,
standing against the wall, furnished sleeping accommodation for number
three. We had some compunctions on retiring to rest, because, after our
luxurious beds had been _fixed up_, as the Americans would say, we
discovered there was no means whatever for fastening the door,--it was,
as usual, minus bolts and locks; but as _Kajana_ was a quiet sleepy
little town, and no one else was staying in the hotel but our own
men-folk on the other side of the courtyard, weary and worn out with our
jolty drive, and our waterfall bath, we lay down to rest. We were all
half asleep when the door suddenly opened and in marched two men. They
stood transfixed, for of course it was quite light enough for them to
see the strange positions of the three occupants of the sitting-room;
and the sight scared them even more than their appearance surprised us,
for they turned and fled. We could not help laughing, and wondering what
strange tales of our eccentricities would enliven the town that night.
Descending the rapids of the _Uleåborg_ river in a tar-boat is one of
the most exciting experiences imaginable. Ice-boat sailing in Holland,
_skilöbnung_ (snow-shoeing) in Norway, tobogganing in Switzerland,
horse-riding in Morocco--all have their charms and their dangers--but,
even to an old traveller, a tar-boat and a cataract proved new-found
joys. There is a vast district in Finland, about 65° North latitude,
extending from the frontier of Russia right across to _Uleåborg_ on the
Gulf of Bothnia where tar plays a very important rôle; so important, in
fact, that this large stretch of land, as big or bigger than Wales, is
practically given over to its manufacture and transport.
After leaving _Kuopio_, as we had travelled Northwards towards Lapland,
the aspect of the country altered every twenty miles. It became far more
hilly, for Finland, as a whole, is flat. The vegetation had changed
likewise, and we suddenly found ourselves among tracts of dwarf birch so
familiar to travellers in Iceland.
As we had driven on towards _Kajana_ we had repeatedly passed pine-trees
from which part of the bark was cut away, and, not realising we were now
in _tar-land_, wondered at such destruction.
The history of the tar, with which we are so familiar, is very strange,
and not unmixed with dangers. Pine-trees, growing in great forests where
the bear, wolf, and elk are not unknown, are chosen for its production.
The first year the bark is carefully cut away from the ground as high as
a man can reach, except on the northern side of the tree, where a strip
two inches wide is left intact. Now this strip is always the strongest
part of the bark because it faces northwards, and it is, therefore, left
to keep the tree alive and to prevent it from drying. All the rest of
the trunk remains bare, shining white and silvery in the sunlight, and
forms a thick yellow juice, which oozes out of the tree, and smells
strongly of turpentine. This ultimately makes the tar.
The next year the same process is repeated, except that then the bark is
peeled higher up the tree, the strip on the northern side always being
left as before to keep the sap alive. The tenacity of the life of bark
is wonderful, as may be seen at a place like Burnham Beeches, where, in
many cases, all the inside of the tree has practically gone, and yet the
bark lives and the tree produces leaves.
This treatment goes on for four, and sometimes five, years, until most
of the tree is stripped. It was in this naked condition the pines first
attracted our attention, for a barkless tree covered with a thick yellow
sap, to the uninitiated, is an unusual sight. In October, or early in
November, of each year the selected pines are duly cut down, and later,
by the aid of sledges, they are dragged over the snow through the
forests to the nearest _tervahauta_ (kiln), there to be burnt into tar.
So cold is it in this part of the world during winter that the
thermometer often drops to 30° or 40° Fahr. below freezing-point, and
then the hard-worked little horses look like balls of snow, the heat
from their bodies forming drops at the end of their manes, tails, and
even their long coats, for their hair grows to an even greater length
than the Shetland ponies. At last their coats become so stiff they are
not able to move, so they often have to be taken indoors and thawed by
the oven's friendly warmth.
These sturdy little beasts gallop over the hardened forest track,
dragging their wood behind them--for without the aid of snow to level
the roads, or ice to enable the peasants to make short cuts across the
lakes, little trade could be done. The winter comes as a boon and a
blessing to man in those Northern realms; all transport is performed by
its aid, sledges travel over snow more easily than wheels over roadless
ways, and _sukset_ or ski and snowshoes traverse snow or ice more
rapidly than the ordinary summer pedestrian.
Suffocated with heat and dust, we were ourselves bumping along in a
springless _kärra_, when our attention was first arrested by--what? let
us say a huge basin built on piles. This was a _tervahauta_ or tar-kiln,
which looked like an enormous mushroom turned upside down, standing on a
thick stem of wooden piles, only in this case the mushroom was ninety or
a hundred feet in circumference, and the stem at least fifteen feet
wide.
As we have nothing at all like it in England, it is difficult to
describe its appearance. Think of a flattened basin or soup-plate made
of pine-trees and covered over with cement, so that an enormous fire
may burn for days upon it. In the middle, which slopes downwards like a
wine funnel, is a hole for the tar to run through into a wooden pipe,
which carries it to the base of the kiln; passing along to the outside,
the wooden pipe is arranged in such a way that a barrel can be put at
the end to receive the tar. This vast basin has to be very solidly built
in order to withstand the weight of wood--sometimes over a hundred trees
at a time--and also the ravages of fire, therefore it is securely
fastened and supported at the edges by whole trunks of trees bound
together with cement. Once built, however, it lasts for years, and,
therefore, most tar-farmers have a _tervahauta_ of their own.
The felled timber, having been sawn into pieces about a yard long in
order that they may be conveniently packed on the sledges, arrive at the
kiln before spring, so that by June all is ready for the actual
manufacture of the tar itself. The _tervahauta_ basin is then packed as
full as it is possible to stack the wood, which is always laid round the
middle in order to leave a hole in the centre free to receive the tar.
By the time the mass is ready it looks like a small hillock, and is made
even more so in appearance by being thickly covered over with turf, that
it may be quite air-tight, and that a sort of dry distillation may go
on. Fires are then lighted at different points round the edge, to the
end that the interior may catch fire, the process being aided by a train
of old tar which runs from the burning point to the centre, as dynamite
is laid prior to an explosion. By this means the whole huge bonfire
shortly begins to smoulder.
The fire burns for ten days and nights, during which time it is never
left, a man always staying beside the _tervahauta_ to see no accident
disastrous to the tar happens. As the heat inside increases, the tar
gradually begins to drop through the wooden pipe into barrels below, and
from sixty to two hundred of them may be extracted from one kiln load.
Needless to say, one man cannot move the filled barrel and replace it
with an empty one, so, whenever such a change becomes necessary, by
means of a shrill whistle he summons a companion to his aid; at other
times he sits alone and watches for hours together the smouldering
flames.
Making the barrels is another Finnish trade, and the peasants, who
manufacture them in winter, get from eightpence to tenpence each, for
they have to be very strong. It is, indeed, much more difficult to make
a tar-barrel than a water-cask.
Here ingenuity has to come to the peasant's aid; each barrel, when
filled, weighs about four hundred pounds, and has to be conveyed from
the forest country to the nearest waterway or town. Finns rise to the
occasion, however. They take thick pieces of wood, on to which a kind of
axle is securely attached, and adjusting them by means of ingenious pegs
fixed at both ends of the barrel, where the side pieces of wood project
beyond the actual top and bottom, the cask itself practically becomes
its own wheels. Wooden shafts are fixed from the axle to the horse's
collar, and though, with his queer load, the little ponies are not
beauties to look at, they are marvels to go, trotting along over tree
trunks and stony boulders to the nearest waterway, the barrels
following--carriage and wheels in one.
After many vicissitudes this tar arrives at the end of its land
journey--but if that be on the frontier of Russia, it may still have two
hundred and fifty miles of river, lake, and rapid to traverse before it
reaches _Uleåborg_, where it is transhipped to England, America, and
Germany.
It had been arranged that we were to descend the wonderful rapids from
_Kajana_ to _Uleåborg_, a day and a half's journey; but we wanted to
taste something of the ascent as well,--there is no _down_ without an
_up_, and we thought we should like to try both. The tar-boats that go
down the _Oulunjoki_ river, heavily laden with their wares, take two or
three days, and have to come up again empty; this is the heaviest and
most tiring part of the whole performance to the boatmen, and cannot be
accomplished under two or three weeks. They sometimes bring back five
hundred or six hundred pounds of salt or flour, for although they take
down twenty-five or thirty times as much as this in weight, they cannot
manage more on the return journey, when, to lighten the boat as much as
possible, they even take off the top planks or bulwarks and leave them
behind at _Uleåborg_, putting new bulwarks a foot broad made of
half-inch plank before the next downward voyage.
A tar-boat is a very peculiar craft, and, when one sees it for the
first time, it seems impossible that anything so fragile can travel over
two hundred miles by river, rapid, lake, and cataract. The boats are
generally from thirty-five to forty-five feet long, but never more than
four feet wide, or they could not be steered between the rocks of the
swirling cataracts. They are pointed at both ends like a gondola, but it
is not the narrowness and length that strike terror into the heart of a
stranger, but rather the thinness of the wood of which they are built.
The boat is made of the planks of well-grown trees, which planks, though
over a foot wide, are sawn down to three-quarters of an inch thick, so
that in the strongest part only three-quarters of an inch divides
passengers and crew from the water, that water being full of rocks and
swirling whirlpools. Four planks a foot wide and three-quarters of an
inch thick, as a rule, make the sides of a tar-boat, not nailed, be it
understood, but merely _tied_ together with pieces of thin birch twig!
Holes are bored, the birch threaded through, securely fastened, and
then, to make the whole thing water-tight, the seams are well caulked
with tar. This simple tying process gives the craft great flexibility,
and if she graze a rock, or be buffeted by an extra heavy wave, she
bends instead of breaking.
From all this it will be inferred the boat is extraordinarily light, or
it could never be got home again--but when twenty-four or twenty-eight
barrels, each weighing four to five hundred pounds, are in it, the water
comes right up to the gunwale, so an extra planking of a foot wide is
tied on in the manner aforementioned, to keep the waves out, and that
planking is only half an inch thick. Therefore the barrels are only
divided from the seething water by three-quarters of an inch, and the
waves are kept back by even a slighter barrier.
It is amazing that such a long fragile craft can survive that torrent of
water at all.
When the last boats go down in October, ice has already begun to form,
and they frequently suffer very much from its sharp edges, for which
reason the perils of those late journeys are often hideous. When the
tar-barrels reach _Kajana_ from the forests they are only worth from
twelve to eighteen marks each, and if one considers the labour entailed
to get them there, it seems remarkable that any profit can be made out
of the trade. Very cleverly the heavy tubs are lifted by a crane into
the boat, which is just wide enough to take them in twos and twos
lengthwise--three or four perhaps being placed on the top of all. The
biggest cargo consists of twenty-eight barrels. Before the tubs are
really shipped they are tested, as wine is tested, to see that the
quality is all right, and that they are worth the perilous carriage. So
many of these boats ply backwards and forwards during July, August,
September, and October, that sometimes as many as a hundred will pass
_Kajana_ in one day. This gives some idea of the industry and its
enormous importance to that vast tract of country. Indeed, from 50,000
to 70,000 barrels find their way down the _Uleåborg_ river alone during
these months.
Owing to the courtesy of _Herr Fabrikor Herman Renfors_, to whom the
Governor of the Province had kindly given us an introduction, we went a
mile and a half up the rapids and through a couple of locks in his
private tar-boat, just for the experience. The heat being tropical, we
did not start till six P.M., when we found _Herr Renfors_ waiting at the
entrance to the first lock, as arranged, in a real tar-boat, which he
was steering himself, for, being an enthusiastic fisherman, he goes out
alone for days at a time, and can steer up or down the rapids as well as
any pilot. No one who has not seen a rapid can realise the nerve this
requires. Seats had been roughly put in for us to sit on, otherwise, as
a rule, except for the oarsmen's bench and the barrels, these boats are
absolutely empty. Our friend, the steersman, sat at the bow, and with a
sort of oar, held in position by a rope of plaited straw fixed a little
on one side, guided the fragile bark. First we had to go into a lock.
Any one acquainted with a nice wide shallow Thames lock may think he
knows all about such matters; but in reality he does nothing of the
kind. For this Finnish lock, and there are two of them close together,
is very long, forty-five feet being required for the boat alone, and
nearly as much for the rush of water at each end to prevent that single
boat being swamped. As the rise of water is over twenty feet, the lock
is some forty feet deep and only six or seven feet wide. The walls are
tarred black, and, although the sun blazed outside, when we entered this
long narrow vault the air struck chill and cold, and it was so dark and
weird that it seemed like going into an underground cellar, or an
elongated coffin. As those massive wooden doors closed behind us, we
felt as though we were about to be buried alive in a well, or were
enacting some gruesome scene fitted for Dante's wondrous pen when dipped
in ink of horror. The gates slammed. The chains grated. The two oarsmen
steadied the boat by means of poles which they held against the sides of
those dark walls, the steersman with another pole kept her off the newly
shut massive wooden door--and then--oh! we gasped, as a volume of water
over ten feet descended a little in front of us, absolutely soaking the
oarsmen, and showering spray over every one.
It was a wonderful sensation; we were walled in, we were deep in the
lock, and as the water poured down in two falls, for there was a
platform half way to break its tremendous force, our boat bobbed up and
down like a cockle-shell. We felt an upset meant death, for no one could
possibly have climbed up those steep black walls, still less swum or
even kept his head above such volumes of water.
Up, up, up, we went until we had risen over twenty feet, which dwindled
to nothing when the door opened at the end of the waterfall and we
glided out into the world of sunshine, to see our friend the old castle
before us again, the pine-trees on the banks, and the funny little
wooden town on our right. Verily a transformation scene--a return to
life and light and air, after water and darkness.
Before us was a small rapid, and, having rowed up under the lee of the
land, it was perfectly marvellous to see how the boat was suddenly
turned right across the bubbling water, and steered like a gliding eel
in and out of waves and spray to the other side, which we reached by
means of hard pulling, without losing more than thirty or forty feet by
the strong current. Here came another lock, and several minutes were
again spent in rising another twenty feet, before we were at a level to
continue our course. Then came a stretch which could be rowed, although,
of course, the stream was always against us; but two stalwart Finns
sitting side by side pulled well, and on we sped until the next rapid
was reached, when out we all had to bundle, and the fragile craft had to
be towed, as the strength of the water made it impossible to row against
it. There was a path of rocky boulders, uneven and somewhat primitive,
such a towing path being always found beside the rapids, as the oarsmen
have to get out and tow at all such places. Therefore, when returning
home from _Uleåborg_, the sailors have to row either against the stream
(one long tract, however, being across a lake where it is possible to
sail), or else they have to walk and pull. No wonder it takes them three
weeks to make the voyage.
Having landed us, the two oarsmen pulled with a rope, but as the boat
would have been torn to pieces on the rocks beside the bubbling water,
the steersman had to keep her off by means of a long pole; and hard work
he evidently found it, bending the whole weight of his body in the
process, straining every nerve at times. It is terrific exertion to get
even such a light thing as a tar-boat over such places, and in a mile
and a half we had to get out four times as well as pass through the two
locks (there are but four on the whole river), and we only reached the
pilot station after working a whole hour and a half, which gave us a
good idea of the weariness of toiling up stream, and the wonders of
coming down, for we retraced the same route in exactly fourteen minutes.
We crossed the famous rapid, described in _Kalevala_ as the scene where
one of the heroes went swirling round and round; we watched women
steering with marvellous agility and skill, and there, on the bank, we
saw a stalwart Finn, with an artistic pink shirt, awaiting our arrival
to pilot us down again, our host preferring to employ a pilot for the
descent when he had any one on board besides himself.
The pilot was a splendidly made young fellow of twenty-four; a very
picture, with his tan trousers, and long brown leather boots doubled
back under the knee like a brigand, but ready to pull up to the thigh
when necessary. On his felt cap he wore a silver badge with the letters
L.M. clearly stamped. "What do they mean?" we asked.
"L.M. is an abbreviation for _laskumies_ or pilot--it means that he is a
certified pilot for this stream," replied _Herr Renfors_, "and as there
are ladies here I am going to get him to take the boat down--ladies are
such a responsibility," he laughed, "I dare not undertake the task."
We soon entered into conversation with this picturesque Finn, and found
his father was also a _laskumies_, and that as a boy he always went with
him, steering the boat down when he was fourteen, although he did not
get his badge till he was eighteen years of age. As soon as he got it he
married, and now had two children. These pilots only receive their
badges after careful examination from the government, and, the pay being
good, and the position considered a post of honour, they are
eagerly-sought-for appointments.
"How wildly exciting it is," we exclaimed, as we whirled round corners,
waves dashing into our boat only to be baled out with a sort of wooden
spoon.
"I make this little journey sometimes twenty times in a day," he
replied; "but I can't say I find it very entertaining."
Sometimes we simply gasped--especially when nearing _Kajana_, and we
knew we had to go under the bridge before us, while the youth was
steering apparently straight for the rocks on the shore. Destruction
seemed imminent, the water was tearing along under the bridge at an
awful rate, but he still steered on for the rocks; we held our
breath--till, at the eleventh and three-quarter hour, so to speak, the
pink-shirted Finn quietly twisted his steering pole, and under the
bridge we shot and out at the other side quite safely.
We breathed again!
Pilots are only necessary for the rapids, and they receive one mark for
the shorter and two marks for the longer stretches, one of which is
thirteen miles in length, so that a boat between _Kajana_ and _Uleåborg_
has to pay ten marks for its pilots, which they are bound by law to
carry. On some of the stretches there are as many as twenty-four pilots
to each rapid.
Our experience of a tar-boat but whetted our appetite, and we looked
forward, all pleasurable anticipation, to our descent to the coast.
The next morning at seven A.M. we left _Kajana_ in a very small
steamboat to cross the great _Oulujärvi_ lake, and arrived about twelve
at _Waala_, where our own tar-boat was awaiting us. We were struck, as
we passed over the lake, to see a veritable flower-garden upon the
surface of the water. The lake is so wide that at times we quite lost
sight of one shore; yet these small flowers, something like primroses,
only white, with their floating roots, were everywhere, looking almost
like snow upon the water! We passed boats sailing down with tar, the
wind being with them, and we passed empty boats rowing up. They never go
home the entire way under three weeks, and even coming down the rapids,
if the wind is against them, they may take several days to reach
_Uleåborg_. Whereas, with wind to help them across the lake, they can go
down laden in a little over two days all the way from Russia. Once
started on the downward route they seldom rest until their journey is
completed, for it is important for each boat to do three voyages from
Russia during the season, if possible, and more, of course, from shorter
distances.
We were horrified to find that a large number of women and children were
employed on the water. Rowing or towing such heavy boats is a serious
matter; and to see a couple of women, or a woman and a child, doing the
work, the husband, brother, or other male relative steering where no
professional pilot is necessary, made us feel sick at heart. Such work
is not fit for them, and in the case of young girls and boys must surely
be most injurious. When returning home the poor creatures often pull
their boat out of the water and, turning her on one side, spend the
night under her sheltering cover.
The tar-boats ply a dangerous trade; but our own experiences must be
described in another chapter.