The first night I slept at Bjorsby, which is nothing but a miserable post-house, and early in the morning set off for Helsingfors, a tolerable sea-port town, defended by the fortress of Sveaborg, said to be the strongest in Finland. As dining and sleeping comprised the whole of my operations there, I can only say that I performed them both very commodiously, particularly the former with the assistance of partridges and a cock of the woods, of which there are a prodigious number. On the twenty-sixth I arrived at Louisa, which, as well as I remember, Coxe represents to be a neat town ; on this subject I can only say that his ideas of neatness by no means coincide with mine. The following day I crossed the frontier into Russian Finland, when my baggage was searched at both extremities of a bridge, which divides the territories of the King of Sweden from those of the Emperor ; and after having obtained an order for horses from the officer stationed on the frontier, I found myself in the evening at Frederickshams. As this country formerly belonged to the Swedes, the inhabitants preserve their own customs and religion ; but as I advanced I found every thing getting more and more Russian ; the churches began to be ornamented with gilt domes, and the number of persons wearing beards, continued to increase.
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