Farther on, the road and the country improve

Since the peace, however, the whole of Finland has become part of the Russian Empire, and is incorporated with the Government of Wyburg. The distance between St. Petersburg and Abo is about 640 versts, and the road from the capital, as far as Wyburg, sandy, dreary, and uninteresting. Wyburg, the capital of the Government which bears its name, carries on some trade in deals, tar, and timber, but in every other respect is unworthy of notice. Farther on, the road and the country improve; and before we reach the Kymen we have to pass through Friederickshamn, where there is a garrison and a good many inhabitants, but no foreign trade. The road to the west of the Kymen is excellent as far as Abo, and the country fertile and variegated in a great degree. When this tract belonged to Sweden, it furnished Stockholm with large supplies of corn, and was considered one of the richest appendages of the Swedish Crown.

We pass through some pretty little towns, such as Louisa, Borgo, and Helsingfors. The celebrated fortress of Sveaborg lies within a mile of Helsingfors; and now that it is in the possession of the Russians, they will no doubt render it perfectly impregnable.

The accommodation generally all through Finland is very bad; and travellers would do well to have a bed in their carriage to be used in case of need, and to have moreover some cold provisions, tea and sugar.

Abo is a bishopric, and contains about 10,000 inhabi tants. It is a town of great antiquity; and in addition to a fine cathedral, they have an Academy, which was founded by Queen Christina, and formely very much resorted to. Under the Swedish Government, Abo served as a place of security for their galley fleet and sea-stores; and its situation, close to the Gulf of Bothnia, is admirably adapted for that purpose. During my short stay there, I received the kindest attentions from the celebrated Professor Porthan, for whom I had letters of introduction.

Thomas Brown: The reminiscences of an old traveller throughout different parts of Europe. 1843

Better collections of animals and exotic plants than are possessed by the combined cities of New York, Boston, and Chicago

The city of Abo, about five miles from the sea, contains a population of over 20,000 souls. It has good hotels, stores, manufacturing establishments, schools, parks, and fountains; a botanical garden, a theatre, telegraph lines, a daily newspaper, and a fine railroad depot. On either side of the river leading to the sea are numerous fine private residences having their docks, yachts, and bath houses, and surrounded by lawns and flowers, rivaling Long Branch and surpassing the approaches to the American metropolis. A New Yorker, accustomed to viewing with placid satisfaction the beauties of the shores of his city's harbor, and visiting Finland with the expectation of finding a scene of almost Arctic sterility and hyperborean frosts, soon realizes his mistake.

Helsingfors, the Capital of Finland, contains about 50,000 population, and is the principal distributing city of the country. It has many magnificent five-story stores, two theatres, a military academy, a great university, a telegraph school, an astronomical observatory, electriclights, two daily newspapers, an immense sugar refinery, one of the best hotels in Europe, and better collections of animals and exotic plants than are possessed by the combined cities of New York, Boston, and Chicago.

Demas Barnes: In search of summer breezes in northern Europe. 1887

incomprehensible melancholy of the people of the North

On entering these whitened deserts, a poetic terror takes possession of the soul ; you pause, affrighted, on the threshold of the palace of winter. As you advance in these abodes of cold illusions, of visions, brilliant, though with a silvered rather than a golden light, an indefinable kind of sadness takes possession of the heart ; the failing imagination ceases to create, or its feeble conceptions resemble only the undefined forms of the wanly glittering clouds that meet the eye.

When the mind reverts from the scenery to itself, it is to partake of the hitherto incomprehensible melancholy of the people of the North ; and to feel, as they feel, the fascination of their monotonous poetry. This initiation into the pleasures of sadness is pain- ful, while it is pleasing ; you follow with slow steps the chariot of death, chaunting hymns of lamentation, yet of hope ; your sorrowing soul lends itself to the illusions around, and sympathises with the objects that meet the sight ; the air, the mist, the water, all produce a novel impression. There is, whether the impression be made through the organ of smell or of touch, something strange and unusual in the sensa- tion ; it announces to you that you are approaching the confines of the habitable world ; the icy zone is before you, and the polar air pierces even to the heart. This is not agreeable, but it is novel and very strange.

Marquis de Custine's "Empire of the Czar". Curiosities of modern travel; a year-book of adventure. 1844