'28 THE FOREST LANDS OF FINLAND. 



I proceeded by railway to St. Petersburg, passing 

 through Wyborg without stopping. In an old edition of 

 Murray's Handbook, written before this railway was 

 constructed, I find it stated, and the statement is equally 

 applicable now as descriptive of the journey from Lovisa, 

 a town some forty miles from Borga, to Frederickshamm, 

 on the road to Wyborg and St. Petersburg : 



1 Lovisa was once a frontier post of the Swedes. One 

 of its streets descends to the very sea-shore, while the 

 others are arranged in a kind of amphitheatre on the side 

 of a hill. Some remains of its former defences are yet to 

 be seen. Two or three massive walls, with their embra- 

 sures even now almost perfect, seem at a distance to 

 command the town. The country beyond this is wild 

 enough : no traces of cultivation can be discerned, and as 

 far as the eye can reach it is one barren heath, with here 

 and there a few boulder-stones and fir trees thinly scattered 

 among the heather. The road, however, is excellent, hard 

 and smooth, and full of picturesque windings, and the 

 traveller will be fairly hurled along at a rapid pace, and 

 referring to the gallop at which all journeys are made in 

 Finland,' the writer goes on to say : ' The traveller will 

 thus speed on his way through Finland, and frequently 

 without meeting a human being from one station to 

 the next; the dark pines and massive boulder-stones 

 (many of a magnitude which will astonish the traveller or 

 any geologist who has not traversed the country), the red 

 verst posts, and a rugged scanty flock are the only objects 

 that meet the eye. In some places partial clearings, prin- 

 cipally made by fire, add one new feature to the landscape; 

 and the charred and blackened trunks of the larger trees, 

 which have resisted the power of the flames, standing like 

 giant sentinels in the blank space around them, contrast 

 strongly with the dark green of the living pines, and the 

 bright lichens of the boulder-stones scattered around 

 them. Many of these huge stones arise from the earth in 

 single masses, and it was from one of these that the 



