Complaints about this Abo route are so great

We knew before embarking that the voyage to St. Petersburg would occupy at least eight days, and perhaps as many as eighteen. But, even with the chance of delay, we thought it advisable to avoid the more circuitous course now usually adopted — by the steamboat to Abo, and thence by land along the northern shore of the Gulf of Finland. We had no desire to face the annoyances complained of by all who enter Russia at that point. There being no public conveyance from the landing-port, we should have been compelled to take any carriage and any servant that happened to be idle, at the risk of being robbed by the one, or having our necks broke by the other.

The greatest objection to this route, however, lies in the severities of the Russian custom-house, which, troublesome everywhere, are on the Finland line so particularly annoying, that some friends who traversed it the preceding year say they would go five hundred miles about rather than be again exposed to them. Carriage, trunks, pocket-books, and pockets are searched, not once merely on landing, but over and over again at certain stations along the road. One had his box of tooth- powder carefully emptied to see what treason or what contraband might lurk in its dusky shelter. Another had his soap-balls cut in two, with the same purpose ; he next saw his stockings slowly unfolded, pair after pair, and was not sure that some of them did not vanish in the process ; for the searchers have a trick of coming three or four together, and, distracting their victim's attention by opening several packages at the same time, quietly secrete any article that pleases them ; yet, after all, ask a fee for having given so little trouble.

It should be a rule with the traveller in every country not to allow more than one of his trunks to be open at the same moment in such places. But, with the lightfingered Russians, even this precaution will not always save his property. An American gentleman, lately passing this very road, with his wife, while he had his feet on one portmanteau, and was sitting on the other to keep them from being all opened at once, had the satisfaction of seeing a costly shawl walk off before his eyes.

The best of it was, the theft was denied ; the search which he attempted in the adjoining cottage among the goods and chattels of the officer's wife, to whom he supposed it had been handed, was, of course, fruitless. For the sake of future travellers, he afterwards complained to the finance minister, who received him very courteously, and, perhaps, ordered one or two of the parties to be knouted, — then appointed others in their place, to play the same game on the very first opportunity. These are evils in Russia which, although civilization may banish them, neither the knout nor the emperor have yet been able to root out.
In short, the complaints about this Abo route are so great, that, though the country is very pretty, and the roads good, there are few who know its character that would not prefer almost any conveyance by sea all the way to St. Petersburg

Robert Bremner: Excursions in the interior of Russia. v.1. 1840