BOATING ADVENTURES. 33 



He had occasion, in the prosecution of his special work, 

 as agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society in the 

 North of Russia, to cross the Grand Duchy of Finland, to the 

 north of Lake Saima. He proceeded by the Neva from 

 St. Petersburg to Lake Ladoga. He visited Konivets, Hex- 

 holm, at the mouth of the Wuoksi by which Lake Saima 

 discharges its surplus waters into the Ladoga, and Walamo. 

 Subsequently disembarking at Sordavala, he had to travel 

 by land conveyance to Puhois, a distance of some eighty 

 versts, about fifty-three miles. There embarking on a 

 lake steamer, of which he found many bobbing up and 

 down everywhere on the Finnish lakes, he returned south- 

 ward to Nyslot, or Newcastle, as the name may be rendered 

 in English. Thence he found his way by steamboat to 

 Kuopia and Idensalmi, and thence with very little land- 

 travelling to the lake Ulea Trask, upon which steam- 

 boats again were found pl.ying. Above this a good deal 

 of tar is manufactured. Everywhere had dark pine woods 

 been seen, sometimes scraggy. The country was undu- 

 lating, not unlike the district of Bucban, in Aberdeenshire, 

 but rocky, seedlings and saplings appeared to be spreading 

 out towards the lakes wherever they could obtain a foot- 

 hold. In collecting the tar or turpentine on this side of 

 the watershel, the bark is ringed half round the tree; 

 an incision is made in the trunk, and the material is 

 collected as it oozes thence ; and the tar-boats supply a 

 means of transit dawn the rapids of the Ulea-elf, where 

 steamboat conveyance fails. 



The tar-boat is very long, and built of two broad planks 

 joined boat-shape. Two rows of tar barrels are laid along 

 the greater part of the boat, and two more barrels are 

 placet! across the boat at each end. A second narrow 

 deal is nailed along the gunwale on each side to turn off 

 the bulk of any wave. A long oar projects astern. The 

 whole structure is elastic, I had almost said as mobile as 

 an eel. Government licensed pilots steer the boat, and 

 the only place for a passenger is a seat on one of the 

 barrels of tar. The rapids recur for many a mile j but the 



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