168 THE FOREST LANDS OF FINLAND. 



The Finnish School of Forestry is situated, as has been 

 stated, at Evois. The following is an account given by 

 Dr Hough, Chief of the Forestry Division of the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture at Washington, of a visit paid by him 

 to this institution in the summer of 1881 : 



'August 9, 1881. The steamer Aura, in which we had 

 embarked for crossing the Baltic from Stockholm to Abo, 

 was named after a principal river in Western Finland, and 

 at first sight appeared hardly safe for such a passage. The 

 forward deck was low, and the whole arrangement seemed 

 to fit it for river navigation rather .than a sea voyage. She 

 proved, however, to be well enough suited for the occasion, 

 for her route lay the whole distance among islands, for the 

 most part thickly dotted over the surface, and consisting 

 of naked gneiss rock, or of low rocky islets, densely covered 

 with pine and spruce. They strongly recalled the familial- 

 scenery of the " Thousand Islands " of the St. Lawrence, 

 whose history and legends we had collected and published 

 a year or two before, but they differed from these in being 

 some hundred times more numerous, and most of them 

 appeared to be uninhabited. In a more open part, and 

 probably near the national boundary, there was a light- 

 house ; but besides this, the only aids to navigation were 

 cairns, signal poles, and painted rocks, which were well 

 enough suited for clear weather and daylight ; but this 

 route would be wholly unsafe in a fog, and as for daylight 

 it extends through the greater part of night in summer, 

 while in winter it is frozen solid throughout. 



'Many times the way seemed closed on every side, and 

 we appeared to be running recklessly against a rock, when by 

 a sudden turn a dozen passages at once opened in as many 

 directions, with long vistas affording an endless variety of 

 scenery of the most beautiful kind. We passed several 

 small parties of Russian engineers, engaged in hydrogra- 

 phic surveys, and touched at one or two landings. The 

 maps show that this archipelago is divided up into parishes, 

 and there is probably a considerable population upon the 



