THROUGH TO THE SEA: A PROGRESS IN POST-CARTS,
WITH INTERLUDES OF RIVER-FERRIES
The river Ounasjoki is navigable the larger part of the way from Kittila
down to its outfall in the Gulf of Bothnia; but prices run high for the
hire of canoes, as they have to be poled back tediously up against the
current, not to mention suffering damage from the several spots where
bad rapids compel lengthy portages. Transport down to the coast is done
by wheeled vehicle, and for this purpose a road has been built.
The local vehicle for human transport is the _karre_, which spells
post-cart in Qfinsk. It is a word which covers a multitude of shapes.
The best _karre_ is like the Norwegian _stolkjarre_, and has two bodies
set one behind the other on one pair of shafts, with remarkably little
room for the legs in either. The two wheels are small and sturdy, and
have long projecting hubs which remind one of the ancient British
scythe-chariot. The bodies of the vehicle may be made of wicker, leather
and iron, cane and iron, or eke plain deal board, and it is rare to see
a _karre_ which is not approaching the last stage of decrepitude. The
horse draws from the fore-end of the shafts, to which his collar is made
fast by a six-inch trace and a toggle. The passenger usually drives
himself--always if he will so consent--and the man, or boy, or
top-booted girl in charge, sits on the back seat on the top of the
baggage, and smokes and contemplates.
We set off posting seawards from Kittila on a day which happened to be
set apart for some Lutheran celebration, and the little town was taking
holiday. We took our last look upon the gaudy oleograph of the Czar and
Czarina hung up in the post-house to inculcate loyalty amongst the
lukewarm Finns, and then the _karre_ was brought out, and we drove away
in style. A swarm of bare-footed, tow-headed, mud-complexioned children
saw us off, who would have passed very well for the progeny of
tar-heelers amongst the Alleghany Mountains.
There were few men in evidence, but the women were all out in the street
dressed in their smartest, with white kerchief on head, blue print gown,
and white cotton apron. They were clean, all of them, and not
unpicturesque; but it would have been hard to find a neat figure or a
comely face in the whole of Kittila.
It might be described as a cluster of farms, this trim Arctic town, and
gates are swung across the road every few hundred yards. Between the
houses lay fields of barley, breaking into silky waves beneath the sun,
and fields of rye with stems higher than a Laplander's head. Beside each
house was a pile of sledges with the runners new-tarred, ready for the
winter. Beside the roadway, herds of liver and white cows grazed under
the care of bare-legged urchins.
The road, after what we had been through, seemed delightful to us,
though it was little better than a sandbed in places. At orderly
intervals, sturdy red kilometre posts stood sentinel along its flank,
with black figures on their squared white heads saying how far it was
from the last station, and how far to the next. Red bridges of log and
trestle crossed the streams. Red wooden parapets guarded the awkward
corners when the road climbed round a hillside. The Great White Czar was
taking care for the necks of his subjects, and red was the sign of his
official hand.
It is fashionable to speak of Russia and her dependencies as being the
worst police-ridden lands amongst all the wide acres of earth; and what
they may be in other districts I do not know--I have not been there--but
of Lapland and Northern Finland I can speak with authority. We went into
the country prejudiced against the Government; we left it prejudiced in
its favour. We expected to meet a harassing police; we never even saw a
uniform. We were prepared for official delays, and were ready to give
bribes to get on; there were no officials either to make the one or to
take the other. Our British Foreign Office passports with their
hieroglyphical visés never emerged from the envelopes in which they were
originally packed. We went through the country with as little
interference as we might have met with in a trip through Yorkshire or
Vermont.
But though the Government does not obtrude itself to the passing eye
with a bristle of uniforms and weapons, as it does in luckless countries
like Germany and France, it makes its comforting presence felt through
all the populated parts of the country. Without some one to look after
him, and be competent if necessary to twist his tail, a slack and
slovenly person like the Northern Finn would never have produced a high
road for his traffic, he would never have built substantial bridges, and
most of all he would never have organised the post-cart system.
It is on the usual Russian model, this posting system, but it is a
triumph of quiet routine for all that. The stations vary in distance
from ten to twenty kilometres apart. You drive up, go into the house,
and sign a requisition for as many horses and _karres_ as you want. The
horses are passable on the whole, for the most part roans, chestnuts, or
bright bays, standing about fourteen hands to fourteen-three, and cobby
about the neck. The _karres_ I have described. With wonderfully little
loss of time, the new vehicle with horse and man appears ready in the
courtyard, and you pay off your old one according to the tariff in the
post-book, and start off again on the next stage of your journey. The
pace as a usual thing is tolerable. The horse walks uphill, trots on
level, and gallops on the down-grades as fast as he can put feet to the
ground. You may have your own theories about the advisability of these
paces, but they are the custom of the country, and you cannot change
them. You drive with a loose rein, and when you want increased pace you
make a Zulu-like noise something like _pop-pop_, and if that does not
have the desired effect you cut a stick and use it with vigour. The
horse shrugs his shoulders and quickens; it is all in the day's work.
When you want him to stop, you say _pr-r-r-mph!_ just as you do in
Denmark.
The horse of the post-road is not accustomed to atmospheric warmth, and
sweats on small provocation. Under these circumstances he must not be
pressed. On our first stage out of Kittila--it was one of the longest,
by the way, being twenty-two kilometres to the change-house--the sun
above us blazed with true Arctic heat and fervour, and the pace could
not be pushed beyond the steadiest of jogs. When we pulled up in the
grassy courtyard of Rantatalo at the end of this first stage, the man in
attendance drew bucket after bucket of icy water from the well, and
sluiced it over the horse's loins. It seemed a crude sort of proceeding,
but one supposed they knew their business; and, besides, it was their
horse.
In this same courtyard at Rantatalo the score of people who made the
village were collected to amuse themselves with one of their number who
had contrived to get drunk. How he had procured the liquor in this
Prohibition State was a mystery apparently to them as much as it was to
us. But drunk he was, and as specimens in that condition were rare, they
made the most of him before he was sober again.
From out of this jeering crowd round the drunkard there came to us a
battered, shaggy, half-naked, wreck of a man, who spoke "leetle
Anglish." He had been born in Rantatalo, and had tired of it; he had
tramped to the coast, and had worked across the ocean; he had drifted on
to a railroad somewhere in America, though he did not know whether it
was in California or the Carolinas, and had there worked in a line-gang
till home-sickness and body-sickness drove him back to Finland again.
Poor wretch, it did not require much skill to diagnose consumption as
his ailment. He said he was "mighty glad to see us." It evidently gave
him much pleasure to be thoroughly profane in English again.
The Ounas River runs in a tolerably straight course north and south from
Kittila to the sea; but being a river it has some curves, and the road
to cut these off has to make crossings at intervals. We came upon our
first ferry, a flat and shallow boat, just outside this post-house at
Rantatalo, and the wreck from America, and an ugly young woman with a
pipe rowed us and our new horse and _karre_ across.
We were out of the sphere of cultivation again in half a kilometre, and
then the road led through a big burn-out of forest, which made a huge,
unsightly scar across the country. In the first third, some of the trees
were merely charred and left dead and standing; from the next third, the
furnace of fire had mopped them up entirely, and the charred ashes had
been swept away by wind and rain; and over the balance of ground which
the flames had mowed, the stumps of the old trees were left, and young
shoots were beginning to show beside them. A house had stood by the
roadside in the middle of that ruined forest, but only the rubble
foundations were left. The fire had driven the farmers away, and licked
up their crops, and destroyed their woodwork, and they had no heart left
either to rebuild or to recultivate. They had fled before the draught of
the flames, and had returned no more.
The forest closed in again after this gap, and the road brought us once
more in sight of the river, which ran here as a big, strong stream
between high pine-covered rocks. A red-shirted Finn was poling himself
about the rapids, with rods trolling over the stern of his canoe.
There was the post-house of Kakkonaara just beyond this point, and
whilst the new horse and _karre_ were being got ready, we went and
looked at some brick-making in a field beside the house. The work was
primitive. The clay was ground up in a barrel-shaped churn by a
lethargic horse; a besplattered woman worked it with her hands into
wooden moulds; a small tow-headed girl carried the bricks away and laid
them higgledy-piggledy to dry; and a man with ear-rings, and a woman
with a baby strapped up like an Indian papoose, took gentle exercise by
standing still and looking on. A small pile of perhaps half a thousand
bricks lay near, intermingled with wood ready for burning; and a few
specimens, red, soft, twisted and irregular, lay here and there to show
the fashion of the finished article. They use these bricks for stoves,
and the demand is not large. A thousand would last a family a lifetime.
All building and flooring and roofing is, of course, done with wood.
They were bringing new ground into cultivation just beyond this, by
cutting dykes across it and throwing the subsoil of sand and clay over
the vegetation. It was an old river-bed, thickly grown with heather and
juniper, and I cannot say that it gave much promise of being speedily
fertile.
At Lahiniva, the little wayside farm which made the headquarters of the
next stage, we fell in with bad luck. The only available vehicle was a
ramshackle wooden box, horsed by a worn-out chestnut stallion, which was
pathetically incapable of dragging us. The road was deep with sand, and
whacking the poor old horse (after the custom of the country) was sheer
brutality without adequate return. So in the end we had to turn out and
walk; and as the mosquitoes came out for the first time that day in full
vigour, we had a pretty dreary time of it, and we did not get into
Murtola till 1.30 A.M. We had posted eighty-four kilometres from Kittila
that day, and, _tout compris_, it had cost us M. 14.
We could have managed very comfortably with a solid meal after this
drive, but little enough was forthcoming. All the post-houses have a
list put up on the wall, beside the oleographs of the Czar and the
Czarina, on which there is set forth in Russian, Qfinsk, and Svensk, the
lists of viands which are officially procurable, with the official price
of each. But few of these were ever actually on sale, and at Murtola a
little curdled milk, some adamantine rye-cake, and some scraps of fish
so stinking as to be uneatable were all we could collect. So we fared
poorly enough.
* * * * *
We started off from Murtola next morning in an even worse _karre_ than
the one we had driven up in. It did possess springs, it is true, but as
they were venerable, and tender with age, and had been reinforced by a
pine log, the motion of the _karre_ on the road was, to use the Chinese
phrase, "bumpy, bumpy, all-e-same ridy gee-gee."
For the whole of that stage we drove between forests of slim, straight
pines, absolutely without undergrowth higher than six-inch grass. All
the big trees had been cut from near the roads, and only the second
growth was left. Heavy timber for exportation has to be sought now on
the more distant hills, sent down log by log by a specially dammed
stream to the main rivers, and there chained and lashed and spiked
together in long, sinuous rafts to float down to the winches of the
shipping on the coast. Acres of these rafts did we see new-cut in the
rivers, huge bristles of logs did we come across stranded in angles of
dried-up tributary streams; and yet so small a part did they make of the
whole growth of the country that one could look from across a valley at
the hillside from which they had come, and never find the spots which
the axes had weeded. A fire of a day can do more in the way of forest
destruction than the work of a dozen logging camps in a year.
Water is the one and only means of transport on which the woodcutter has
to depend upon for bringing his wares to the rim of those seas which
carry them to the markets of the outer world. And at one time he only
cut trees which would fall directly into deep rivers, which would carry
them without further ado; but as the harvest of the river-banks and the
accessible parts got reaped, he had to go with his axe farther back
amongst the fastnesses of the mountains, and amplify his methods of
transport. The logs have to be floated somehow, and as he has no river
ready-made to his hand, he manufactures one. He picks upon some gully
in the wilderness of the hills with a streamlet trickling through its
mosses, and throws a dam of logs and turf and stones across its lower
end, with a broad gate of logs in its middle. Axe in hand he goes down
the hill-flank beyond, notes the direction which a sudden gush of water
would take on its journey to the nearest stream, and clears the way of
all the larger obstructions. And in the meanwhile the trickling
streamlet above is with infinite slowness beginning to fill his dam.
When these preparations have been made, he goes back to his gully in the
wilderness, and starts felling in real earnest. The great pines crash
before his axe; their heads are lopped of; and they are rolled down the
slopes into the tediously-filling dam. For the whole summer this work
goes on, till all the trees which can be rolled or dragged there are
jostling one another in this artificial lake, and the water of the
streamlet no longer collects, but squanders itself over the top of the
log sluice-gate. And then comes the moment for the realisation of his
labours, and the moment to see whether the engineering of the work has
been true. The sluice-gate of logs is knocked away; the water gushes out
with a solid flood, carrying with it a prancing, lancing, dancing
bristle of trunks, and roaring along with them at galloping speed down
the slopes of mountain. It is no little thing which will cause a jam
then. Obstructions are sheared away with infinite violence; the ends of
the logs splinter themselves into paint-brushes; great trees crack off
like reeds; and when the torrent, with its convoy of timber, ends its
mad gallop in the river for which it has been aiming, there is a swathe
ploughed across the green face of the country unsightly as the new
cutting of a railroad.
But if there has been a jam, tedious pains must be expended before the
logs can be sent along their journey again; another and a greater
artificial freshet has to be created; and it is very often more
remunerative to leave one of these knotted tangles of trunks to rot
where they have stuck, and to start work again _ab initio_. So that, on
the whole, the tapping of one of these mountain dams, and the subsequent
half-hour's voyage of the logs, is a matter of pretty vivid excitement
to all those concerned.
* * * * *
Again we had to cross the Ounasjoki, this time in a square ferry-boat
rowed by a woman and a man, and steered by a solemn, small boy. Our
progress was not swift. One of the wheel tyres of the _karre_ was loose,
and every few hundred yards some one had to get down to hammer it into
place again with a stone. A gray-backed crow showed interest in the
proceeding, and followed us for a couple of miles to find out what it
was all about. But we came upon a hen capercailzie and her family
dusting themselves in the road, and the gray-backed crow forebore to
follow us farther. Still I do not think there was much in his line to be
got out of them. Eggs of course were his speciality, but the egg season
was long past, and the capercailzie chicks were as big as partridges.
At Juopperi, the next post-house, the only available horse had thrown a
shoe, and as we had to wait till it was re-shod, we joined the community
in the big farm-kitchen and watched them at work. It was a room twenty
feet square with a big white stove that had cooking niches and drying
racks and a ladder to reach its top. Strings of rye cakes hung from the
rafters. Two pairs of antlers were nailed on the walls for hooks. A
woman worked at a clacking hand-loom; a travelling cobbler was putting
the finishing touches to a pair of yellow top-boots with a bone
pattern-punch; and a couple of men carpentered at a table in the window.
These were the workers: there were a dozen drones, flabby women and
slack, corn-stalky men, who did nothing, without intelligence, and
wearied themselves in the process.
Take the average Finn farmer of the North, and you will find a man who
never works if he can help it, a man with an inferior liver and a
chronic grievance. He hates his country, hates himself, hates his
unobtrusive Government. If he were ruled by a committee of archangels,
he would hate them equally. He will never create an insurrection; he
could never summon up the energy. He will never make a Nihilist: he has
not sufficient brain to be a plotter. It is only in the days of youth
that his discontent ever simmers over. Then it is that he sometimes gets
so sick of everything that he scrapes a few marks together, puts them in
his high boots, and tramps down to Torneo-Haparanda, and takes steamer
for the States or Canada. As a rule, unless he dies, he does not stay
there long. In North America they do not appreciate men with a distaste
for work, and they are quite willing to let any one starve who does not
choose to toil. They are a very practical people over there, and, unlike
the English, have no taste for collecting useless human lumber. So
unless the Finn manages to die there, which he not infrequently does,
his great object from the moment he sets foot in the Land of the Free,
is to get away from it again as soon as he can collect a steamer-fare.
Still, unpleasant as he is in his ways and his personal appearance, he
does at times contrive to make his homestead outwardly picturesque. He
does it by accident, to be sure, but still the result is there. The
architecture of his house is not produced by studying after effect: it
is the only species of architecture which occurs to him. The red dye
with which he colours it is merely daubed on as a preservative. Yet
these dark red houses cuddling down in the green landscape make very
beautiful pictures, and they seem, moreover, to have an emblematic
significance. Red is the official colour. Even the stones at the
roadside are red with some queer lichenous growth as if in deference to
the huge, invisible power which steers the country.
* * * * *
For the last stage of that day's sixteen hours' drive, the _karre_ was
horsed by a young black stallion, which systematically ran away with us
up hill and down ravine, over bridges and through sand-mires. The pace
was exhilarating, but as we were bruised all over with the previous
jolting, we could have put up with a somewhat slower gait.
On this stage we were due to recross that imaginary boundary, the Arctic
Circle, and come once more into that Temperate Zone which was our more
native atmosphere, and we were on the keen look-out for some official
recognition of its whereabouts. I do not quite know what we expected to
see--a cairn or a wooden notice would have satisfied us--but the absence
of any mark whatever jarred upon us. That a country which could mark off
the kilometres on its roads with fine red posts, should ignore a
geographical acquisition like the Arctic Circle, seemed a piece of
unappreciative barbarism.
It was after midnight when the galloping stallion brought us into the
town of Rovaniemi. It was the most considerable place in the North, and
the post-house was almost an hotel. At any rate, after some
dilatoriness, it provided us with a meal, which was an item we were
severely in need of.
The place was quite awake. In fact all through this land of staring
daylight there never seemed to be any hour when some at least of the
population were not awake and doing. When we turned into our beds at 2
A.M. I noticed a ploughman still at work in the field across the road.
It was a curious instrument he was handling--like an overgrown
garden-hoe, with a pair of shafts instead of one. A lean horse was
between the shafts, and the ploughman held the angle of the hoe and
lifted the whole thing bodily round with one hand when he came to the
end of a furrow. For a shallow cut in light soil it was rather
effective.
* * * * *
Under a scorching sun next day we went out to look at the town. There is
one main street of unobtrusive stores in Rovaniemi, with dwelling-houses
lying back on one side, and the river swirling along in rapids at the
other. At one end of the town was a hospital, each little room with its
own white stove; and next it was a curious campanile in the form of a
pagoda of brown, white, and yellow, with roofs of dragon-scale
shingling, and a lofty, slender vane, whilst the Lutheran church, for
which this campanile rang its bells, was a hundred yards away. This
church was rather a fine old building, in cruciform, with its yellow
walls striped with white, and a white cross high above the silver-gray
shingling of its roof. On the church door were posted the private
earmarks of the reindeer owned in the neighbourhood, which, for the sake
of curiosity, we copied.
We went back to the post-house again for a meal--it was fine to be at a
place where one could get food for the mere buying--and we saw there a
woman swinging an infant in a cradle slung from the ceiling. How it did
arouse memories! How often we had seen in a Lapland farm-kitchen a
basket dangling from the rafters at the end of reindeer traces, and a
youngster packed in it, and the fond mother crooning the Lappish
equivalent of "Hush thee, my baby," and launching the small unfortunate
back through fifteen feet of space every time it swung up to her.
A well-dressed cripple hobbled into the room when we were eating, with
his knee-cap half cut off by the jamming of a log-raft. He persisted in
exhibiting the wound, and then rubbed his sleek, round belly to intimate
that he was starving. As he was one of the most prosperous-looking men
we had seen in Rovaniemi, it did not occur to us for some time that he
was soliciting alms, and it was not till he had put the matter still
more forcibly, that we exuded coinage to the extent of three halfpence.
He put it in his pocket and shook hands cordially with each of us, and
intimated in a few simple and carefully-chosen words that we should
receive our reward in due course from on high. In fact he was really so
business-like about his begging, that we quite expected that he would
bring out a book of printed forms and give us a receipt.
We did not get much privacy at Rovaniemi. The landlord regarded us much
in the light of a travelling circus, and brought us in relays of callers
whenever we were on the premises. We were not too shy, however, to make
use of them. We pumped them on every subject on which they could give
information, and amongst other things on how we were to continue our
journey down to the coast, and where we should best find shipping for
England. We had had a sufficiency of the bumpy-bumpy motion of the
Finnish post-cart to prefer other means of transport if it was
available, and so we asked with interest about the river route. There
seemed a good deal of diversity of opinion. Finally the best steersman
in Rovaniemi was brought in, a white-haired old fellow, with a clever,
clean-shaven face, and he offered to take us down as far as a series of
falls twenty kilometres above Kemi, and no farther. He proposed to take
us so far for M.50, a tremendous sum in Northern Finland when one
remembers that the rates for posting, all inclusive, varied between
M.0·14 and M.0·19 per kilometre, the mark being about tenpence English.
There were a good many opinions, too, as to where we ought to go to find
the requisite steamer. Some said Kemi, some insisted on
Torneo-Haparanda, whilst some were equally certain that we ought to
push on down the Finnish coast of the Gulf of Bothnia to Uleaborg.
In the meanwhile two or three merchants had been trying to incite us to
buy peltries. We were not anxious to burden ourselves with the extra
weight, and prices were not very tempting. A good bearskin cost between
M.175 and M.200, and though we had one small gray skin offered for M.70,
it had been shot almost to pieces, and was not well cured. These skins,
of course, are much used in the country for winter wear. Reindeer pelts
were cheaper. A fine skin, thick and gray, could be bought for M.8; but
then it must be remembered that a whole deer, fat for killing, was only
worth between M.25 and M.50.
There was a great store of reindeer antlers in a barn behind one of
these stores at Rovaniemi, which we inspected to the accompaniment of
giggles from the crowd. They could not see what possible interest lay in
a heap of stinking old bone; and when Hayter started to make diagrams of
a few of the more curious shapes, they doubled themselves up with
laughter. It was funnier than any circus they had ever seen before. We
did not mind; it amused them, and the antlers amused us. There must have
been five hundred pairs in that barn, and no two pairs could we find
anywhere approaching the same pattern. It was the brow-tines which
varied most, but the upper branches were also irregular. Some were
palmated almost like an elk's; and one which I saw had complete twists
in every tine like a narwal's horn.
As a final climax to the entertainment, the landlord chose out a few
choice spirits and took them with us down to a hollow on the river-bank
out of sight of the town. He had a bottle in his pocket, and with
considerable mystery (seeing that it was smuggled) he produced it, and
we saw by the label that it was caloric punch. It was half full; and as
it had been on tap some time with the cork out, there was a good two
inches of black sediment at the bottom, consisting of flies. But nobody
stuck at this. It was doled out in a liqueur-glass, and we toasted one
another with effusiveness.
Time and again quaint scraps of English had dropped upon our ears from
Rovaniemi lips, and here on the river-bank the secret came out as to
where they had come from. It seemed that a Britisher had long been
resident in Rovaniemi, and we were told his name, and the town in Wales
where he came from. He was not "merchant," he was "tourist"--that is, he
was not engaged in business. And as his "tour" had apparently lasted ten
years, during which time he had not moved outside Rovaniemi, we wondered
what he had done at home to make so long an absence advisable.
Judging from the few scraps of Anglo-Saxon which he had left behind him,
this Welshman must have been a person of pretty wit, or else a fellow
of most blasphemous habits. Each of the Finns who had been his cronies
possessed a sentence of English, laboriously taught and remembered; and
each, as he tossed off his peg of fly tincture, pridefully repeated his
lesson as a toast to our health. Need one add that the time-honoured
joke had been repeated, and that each Finn's _repertoire_ of English
consisted of a fantastic soul-curdling oath? Still, as the Welshman had
occupied ten years in manufacturing the joke, one cannot do less than
record his complete success.
* * * * *
We made many friends in Rovaniemi, and left the town with real regret,
but we had to be moving on. The courtyard was crowded with people come
to see us off, and I think they were sorry also. Circuses are rare in
Rovaniemi.
We drove out past the church, and the white shutters of its
pagoda-shaped bell-tower were open, and the bells were ringing out and
carrying their message to the scattered farms up and down the valley.
Slowly they dimmed into the distance behind us, and for forty kilometres
we travelled through forests of slender pines peopled apparently by
noisy, quarrelling magpies alone. And then habitations began again, with
fields set before and behind them, though most of these were little
better than half-drained swamps, which would grow nothing richer than
reeds and rushes.
We were getting very bad horses on these stages, and the crudest
possible vehicles. As I have said, the short trace on the horse-collar
is joined to the shaft with a toggle, and the backhand of the saddle is
fastened to the trace, and so if this toggle falls out, down go the
shafts on to the ground, and nothing short of a miracle can save a bad
spill. We saw ten such miracles in one day.
We crossed the river by a wire-rope ferry just below a chain of booms
set across to intercept log-rafts, and fetched up that night at a farm
post-house which was almost luxurious. The sun went below the pines as
we sat down to sup, and the after-glow scattered reds and dull yellows
and crimsons far and wide over the landscape. The great river below the
house looked like a stream of ice, which glittered in its smooth parts,
and lay heaped with drifts and whorls of snow where the currents raised
their mounds of eddies over the hidden rocks below.
And then there dawned our final day for the road. We zigzagged back and
forwards across the river as the road came upon the ferries, and we
passed log-booms, and log-rafts innumerable. The air was sweet with the
scent of hay. Wild raspberry trees grew by the wayside with the fruit
set but not yet ripe.
At one place where the river broke into noisy rapids, we got down to
look at some fish-traps. Great trestles built of trunks straddled out
over the roaring water, their lower ends notched in the rocks, their
tops ballasted by heavy stones. They were fenced in below by whole birch
trees, with here and there gaps in which were placed the wicker traps.
There were trestles on either side built to suit all heights of the
river, and the catching was brisk, for the fish were many.
Silver-bellied salmon jumped by the hundred in the tawny cataracts, and
a bevy of pock-marked Finns gathered the harvest from the traps to pack
in ice and send down to Stockholm to be kippered.
Once and again did we cross the river by ferries, and changed horses and
_karres_ at the post-houses, and then left the Ounasjoki behind us, and
set off across the sandy delta to the other great river on which stand
the twin-towns of Torneo-Haparanda, through masses of harebells which
made the ground as blue as a sky.
* * * * *
The Torneo River lay before us, broad, solemn, and deep. A great
sailing-ferry lay beside a wooden wharf. The _karre_ was unhorsed, and,
with two other vehicles, was run on board. The horses followed. Then a
mixed company of six nationalities took their places, the sprit-sail was
sheeted home, and we drifted off. The twin-towns lay on the opposite
bank: Swedish Haparanda trim and red to seaward, Finnish Torneo notable
for the minarets of its Russian church farther up-stream, and at the
back, the slim black spire of the Lutheran church. And the sunset
bathed it all with an impartial glow.
Slowly the clumsy ferry-boat drifted across the river, amongst firewood,
carrying schooners, and rafts, and the boats of fishers, and at last she
landed beside a fussy launch which did a passenger traffic with the
villages up-stream. We drove off at speed through sandy streets between
great blocks of wooden houses, and then we left Torneo and turned
inland, circling round the head of a lagoon from which mist wreaths were
rising like rolls of cotton wool.
By the wayside there loomed out a square pillar adorned with a split
crow, elaborately gilt. It was the boundary of Holy Russia, and it stood
there grim and cold and deserted.
Farther on we came upon another pillar bearing the Swedish arms, but
this also was solitary and unguarded. We drove on and came to Haparanda.
Of our own free-will we pulled up at the house of a custom's officer to
report. He was away. His wife heard the tale and shrugged her shoulder.
"Oh, Englanders," said she. "Go on." It was the only piece of official
formality we met with during all our journeying.
There was a hotel in Haparanda, and we went to it and dined _à la
Suède_--that is, mostly off _hors d'oeuvres_, and washed down the meal
with some alleged Roederer, which was more than half liqueur. We felt
that we were indeed getting into civilisation again, and as we were
lucky enough to hear of a steamer leaving for Stockholm in a couple of
days, we were prepared to slack about and enjoy ourselves in the
interval.
As a first luxury we went and bathed. Moored off the shore were half a
dozen little schooners with two large gaff-sails, and the foremast
stepped right up in the bows, and no bowsprit. Their crews live aft in a
little house, and employ themselves with bringing in cargoes of split
birch-logs for fuel from the nearest forests. We swam off to these, and
disported ourselves in the water after the manner of porpoises. And then
we got into our clothes again, lit up mild, bad cigars, and strolled
around without any cares about meal-getting, carrier-engaging,
route-finding, or mosquito-slaying.
The town of Haparanda is rectangular in plan, and pretty when viewed
from a distance. It is well be-telephoned, and possesses two banks and
an ugly church. The town of Torneo, the only piece of Russian territory
west of the Torneo River, is reached by foot-passengers over an
unpainted wooden bridge, which straddles across the mouth of the lagoon
like some monstrous gray-legged centipede. The lagoon divides them, as
the Danube does Buda and Pesth.
Torneo, as a town, is less neat. It is liberally planted with gardens
containing little creeper-covered arbours, in which it is the height of
the Finn's ambition to sit and smoke, and gloat over the fact that
other people are fools enough to work. There is a pretty Lutheran church
in black and white outside Torneo, with a tall, slender spire, and away
from the church is a quaint bell-tower, also in magpie colours. An
enclosure of stone hedges them both in, and inside the enclosure is a
coppice of mountain ashes shadowing the graves. The Russian church in
Torneo is set at a street corner in the middle of the town. It is an
ornate little building in white and two tints of brown, with an
elaborate cupola and coloured windows. It was suggestive of a kiosk in
an exhibition where one might reasonably expect to buy somebody or
other's cocoa from comely young damsels in uniform.
There is a hospital in Torneo, which held two curious patients. One was
a Lapp, the only one in the district. He had come down to Matarangi,
which is fifty miles farther up the Torneo River, to sell his deer at
the annual fair. He was outside Russian territory there and drink was
plentiful, and in that commodity he made heavy investments. During his
subsequent adventures he broke both thighs, nobody seemed to know how,
and his friends brought him down to hospital, and left him there to
return to their eternal deer-herding.
The other patient was a Tartar, and he also was in the accident ward. He
was by no means an uncommon person to find so far out of his native
latitude. Swarthy Tartar tramps, in face almost as dark as a mulatto,
permeate the country as beggars and horsedealers. They wear European
clothes, and are generally accompanied by their women and children. Very
often they have been born in Finland. They are thieves and vagabonds,
the horses they sell are poor, and they occupy much the same position as
the gipsy did a hundred years ago at home. They are hedge-bottom nomads,
and the _Wanderlust_ is too strong in them ever to let them settle for
long. It is on record that at times they have taken farms and tried to
sit down and breed horses; but it is not on record that they have ever
succeeded in staying three years in one place. They are quite without
shame, morals, or common honesty; their most valued roof is a farmer's
outhouse; their one ambition in life is to keep just beyond starvation.
Even the Finns despise them, just as the Swedes despise the Finns.
The Northern Swede is a cheerful, _bourgeois_ creature, all belly and
laugh, who browses on odds and ends of victual, and nips caloric punch
all the day long; and for the short time we were with him in Haparanda,
he amused us. But then we were not with him for long. The educated Swede
of Stockholm is a very different person: he is a gentleman, and one of
the most delightful gentlemen in Europe.
I think we left Haparanda without any keen regret. We drove a couple of
miles past reedy lagoons to Salmis, the port, and there got on board a
coaster, which was waiting. She was going to take us down the waters of
the Bothnia to Stockholm, the capital of Gustavus Adolphus, of
Bernadotte, of Oscar II., the Venice of the North; and afterwards we
would get back to England, which of all countries on this terrestrial
globe is the most desirable.
[Illustration: Reindeer Horns]
* * * * *
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_
* * * * *
[Illustration: LAPLAND
_The route taken by M^r. Cutcliffe Hyne & M^r. Cecil Hayter indicated in
red_ ]
Transcriber's Notes
Page 30: fleased _changed to_ flensed
Inconsistent place naming left as originally printed.
Hyphenation has been standardised.
Artwork has been placed between paragraphs. The page numbers
within the List of Illustrations etc., as a consequence will
not always be correct; they appear as originally printed.
Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.
Text surrounded with = indicates bold print.
Example: Price =3=s. =6=d. net.
The carat character (^) indicates that the following letter
is superscripted (example: M^r.).
a-breve is represented by [)a] in s[)a]p[)a]kkeet.
BOOKS OF TRAVEL
* * * * *
_Demy 8vo, Cloth, 378 pages. Price 15s. Second Edition._
THROUGH FINLAND IN CARTS
CONTAINING MAP AND 18 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration: OUR ISLAND HOME
(Section of one of the Illustrations in the book)]
By MRS. ALEC TWEEDIE
AUTHOR OF 'A WINTER JAUNT TO NORWAY,' 'A GIRL'S RIDE IN ICELAND'
(The book of the week.) "From first to last there is not a dull page in
the volume, which is admirably written, well illustrated, and full of
humour. It is one of the best books of travel we have read for many a
year."--_Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News._
"A most valuable book. It is more than a book of travel, it is the best
study of Finland that has yet appeared."--_Literary World._
_Crown 8vo, Cloth, 334 pages. Price 7s. 6d._
NAPLES IN THE NINETIES
A SEQUEL TO
NAPLES IN 1888
_With 11 full-page Illustrations and 8 inserted in the Text_
[Illustration: REDUCED SPECIMEN ILLUSTRATION]
By E. NEVILLE ROLFE
H.B.M. CONSUL AT NAPLES
"Mr. Neville Rolfe's volume will be welcomed by all visitors to Naples
and Southern Italy."--_The Times._
"People in search of a brightly-written, unconventional holiday
hand-book to Naples past and present could scarcely do better than
procure Mr. Neville Rolfe's fascinating volume."--_Speaker._
_Square Crown 8vo, Cloth. Price 7s. 6d._
THE ROCK VILLAGES OF
THE RIVIERA
CONTAINING 60 ILLUSTRATIONS (MOSTLY FULL-PAGE)
BY THE AUTHOR
[Illustration: SPECIMEN OF ILLUSTRATIONS]
By WILLIAM SCOTT
This book will deal with some of those picturesque and out-of-the-way
hamlets which visitors to the South may have seen perched on hill-tops
or hidden in the valleys, away from the beaten track of tourists. The
district referred to is that part of Liguria which commences at the
French frontier; and a brief historical outline traces the origin and
development of these little "Ville"--as they were called--from the early
days of the Genoese Republic, through the interesting period when some
of them, revolting from the oppression of Ventimiglia, formed the
"Community of the Otto Luoghi," and proceeded to carry out their ideas
of Home Rule. Several of the Villages still possess a number of their
old documents, account-books, and other records, and these are now laid
under contribution for the first time.
_Demy 8vo, Cloth, 436 pages. Price 21s._
IN NORTHERN SPAIN
_Containing Map and 89 Illustrations._
[Illustration: SPECIMEN ILLUSTRATION]
By DR. HANS GADOW, M.A., Ph.D., F.R.S.
"Some years back 'Wild Spain,' one of the best books of its kind, made
you desirous of knowing more of the country. And Hans Gadow has deepened
this feeling in his excellent volume 'In Northern Spain,' and that to an
enormous extent. Dwelling at inn or farm, or in their own tent, they saw
the country as it has been seen but rarely, and they came to know the
inhabitants as they can be known in no other fashion."--_Black and
White._
"Dr. Gadow fills his pages with shrewd and kindly observation of the
people, their habits and ways of living, with vivid records of the
sport he enjoyed in the mountains, and with much incidental
information."--_The Times._
"It is a mine of information on the history, the customs, and the
physical conditions of the country."--_The Bookman._
"To persons visiting the provinces with which the author deals, this
book will be invaluable, and will do more to point their attention to
objects of interest than existing guide-books of Spain, most of which
are out of date."--_The Field._
"A most comprehensive and practical volume."--_Academy._
"An appendix contains valuable etymological notes on geographical names
and surnames and domestic implements. The preface may be studied with
advantage by any lady traveller inclined to wander off the beaten track.
The book is copiously illustrated, and furnished with a good map and
index.--_Daily News._
"About the best book of European travel that has appeared these many
years."--_Literary World._
Recent Books.
* * * * *
A MIDDY'S RECOLLECTIONS
1853 TO 1860
BY REAR-ADMIRAL THE HON. V. A. MONTAGU
_Illustrated with two Photogravures and six Half-tone Blocks._
Square Crown 8vo., Cloth. Price 6s.
England was at war during practically the whole brief period covered by
this narrative. The Middy had part in not a few of the engagements,
which, helped by illustrations, he describes vividly. The work is of
historical importance as showing the state of the English Navy in an
epoch which is now closed.
A PRISONER OF FRANCE
THE MEMOIRS, DIARY, AND
CORRESPONDENCE OF CHARLES BOOTHBY,
CAPTAIN ROYAL ENGINEERS, DURING HIS
LAST CAMPAIGN.
_Containing Frontispiece Portrait of Captain Boothby._
Square Crown 8vo., Cloth. Price 6s.
This narrative begins with the Battle of Talavera, at which the
chronicler, a young officer in the Royal Engineers, was disabled by a
wound in the leg. It vividly describes the social conditions of France
and Spain during the wars in the early part of the century, and in
particular the chivalrous courtesy with which the French officers
treated any enemies who fell into their hands.
_Fcap. 8vo. Cloth, 280 pages. Price 2s. 6d._
CAIRO OF TO-DAY
A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO CAIRO AND ITS ENVIRONS
BY E. A. REYNOLDS-BALL
AUTHOR OF "MEDITERRANEAN HEALTH RESORTS," ETC.
_Illustrated with specially prepared Maps and Plans of Cairo, its
Environs, and the Nile as far as Dongola_
"An admirable, concise, and eminently practical guide. The book should
score an immediate success."--_Cook's Excursionist._
"The book is throughout written with a peculiar knowledge of the needs
of passing visitors in Cairo."--_Scotsman._
"A handy and dependable guide-book."--_Daily Mail._
"Any one intending to visit Cairo for health or pleasure will find all
that he is likely to require between the two covers. A couple of maps
and a plan of Cairo will be found particularly useful for rambles either
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"It would be hard to find a fault with this little volume."--_New York
Herald_ (Paris.)
_Crown 8vo, Cloth, 680 pages. Price 15s._
O'SHEA'S GUIDE TO SPAIN
AND PORTUGAL
THE ELEVENTH EDITION, COMPLETELY REVISED
AND BROUGHT UP TO DATE
BY JOHN LOMAS
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A GUIDE TO CONSTANTINOPLE
BY DEMETRIUS COUFOPOULOS
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of Constantinople and Pera, also a Chart of the Bosphorus_
"A personal knowledge of the Turkish capital enables us to appreciate
the accuracy of the description of the city and its environs, and the
very useful information with which its pages are filled. Those who
intend visiting Turkey will find the guide indispensable."--_The
Sphinx._
"The author evidently knows the city well ... the handy volume is likely
to prove really serviceable to the majority of visitors, ... the plans
by Bartholomew are excellent."--_Times._
"The book is well supplied with maps and plans, and is on the whole just
such a book as one would wish to have who had a week or so to spend in
seeing the capital of the Ottoman Empire."--_Scotsman._
HANDBOOK TO
CHRISTIAN & ECCLESIASTICAL
ROME
BY H. M. AND M. A. R. T.
Part I.--THE CHRISTIAN MONUMENTS OF ROME, Price 7s. 6d.
Part II.--THE LITURGY IN ROME, Price 5s.
_Now Ready, to be followed by_
MONASTICISM, AND ECCLESIASTICAL ROME
This Handbook gives full information on the Catacombs, Basilicas, Church
Ceremonies, the Hierarchy, and the Papal Household, and so meets a need
felt by English and American travellers. No such guide to Christian Rome
has previously existed.
It is in a portable form, and illustrated with plans and other cuts.
"The compilation of this work is an important event for
English visitors in Rome. Information about the Christian
side of the City, about its churches, ceremonies, and
customs, is just what is difficult to procure accurately and
fully. No existing guide-book covers half what they (the
authors) have done."--_Bookman._
"This should be a most valuable book to tourists abroad. The
information given is well arranged and clearly
put."--_Academy._
"_If you want to know anything about anybody, get a copy of
'Who's Who.'_"--"TRUTH."
AN ANNUAL BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY
Price =3=s. =6=d. net.
WHO'S WHO
EDITED BY DOUGLAS SLADEN
Contains nearly 8000 Biographies--Mostly Autobiographies--of
the Leading Men and Women of the Day
Excerpt from _The Times'_ Notice of 25th March 1897
In spite of the number and variety of the works of reference
published annually nowadays, there is always room for a new
one if it really fills a place hitherto vacant, and brings
together useful information in a handy and acceptable form.
Judged by such a test, the new issue of "Who's Who," of
which the first yearly volume has just appeared under the
editorship of Mr. Douglas Sladen, ought certainly to count
upon a warm welcome. This work has up to the present, since
its birth in 1848, "that year of strife and kingdoms
over-set," been content to serve as a hand-book to the titled
and official classes only. Its aim is now "to include all
the most prominent people in the kingdom, whether their
prominence is inherited, or depending upon office, or the
result of ability which singles them out from their fellows
in occupations open to every educated man and woman." The
field of its operations is thus very wide, and it is greatly
to the credit of Mr. Sladen that it has been covered so well
already.
_In Crown 8vo, over 800 pages, bound in Cloth Gilt, with
Gilt Edges and Rounded Corners._
Price =3=s. =6=d. net.
LONDON: A. & C. BLACK, SOHO SQUARE
End of Project Gutenberg's Through Arctic Lapland, by Cutcliffe Hyne