10 G. F. Sarris — Journey through Russia. 



— of the many banquets held in our honour, of the terrible number 

 of speeches, mostly by self-elected " representative " spokesmen, 

 which frequently commenced shortly after the soup was placed upon 

 the table (so keen was the competition to do justice to our hosts!) : 

 these and many minor incidents, some of a distinctly sensational 

 character, would more fittingly be recorded in the pages of a three- 

 Yolume novel. 



The Committee of Organization had arranged that four excursions 

 should take place in connection with the Congress meeting. Of 

 these, three were to be held before the meeting, auz. : — (1) to the 

 Urals, (2) to Esthonia, (3) to Finland ; and one after, namely (4) 

 to South Russia, by the Volga or alternative routes, over the 

 Caucasus through Tiflis to Baku (variations), thence to Batoum and 

 across the Black Sea, through part of the Crimea to Sebastopol, and 

 on to Odessa. I had the good fortune to be included amongst the 

 participants of journeys 3 and 4 — to Finland and Transcaucasia; 

 and the aim of these articles is to give some account of the geology 

 along the lines of route pursued by those two parties. To begin 

 with the Finland journey ; and I prefer to write in narrative style. 



Starting from St. Petersburg at night-time for Helsingfors, we 

 had no opportunity, then, of learning the character of the scenery 

 through which we passed. The next morning broke dull and grey, 

 and through the rain we could see that although the country was 

 flat it was extremely well wooded, and that the fields adjacent to the 

 railway track were strewn with enormous boulders. The country 

 was saturated with water, and the bracken fern and undergrowth 

 generally were doing their best to hand plenty of peat down to 

 posterity. Here and there was evidence of disastrous forest fires, 

 whilst numerous blackened stumps stood out of the peaty soil and 

 could be counted by hundreds in the clearings. Vegetation was not 

 only abundant, but luxuriant, and this in what is usually called 

 cold, icy Finland ! And so we continued to Helsingfors, meeting 

 with but little else by the way except an occasional outcrop of granite. 



At Helsingfors, Wilhelm Ramsay, of the University of that city, 

 met us. This indefatigable geologist has done much for the geology 

 of the country adopted by his ancestors. His work in the Isle of 

 Hogland ^ and on the Quaternary deposits of Finland^ may be cited 

 as examples, whilst he has written joint memoirs with H. BerghelP 

 and E. T. Nyholm * on the petrography and stratigraphy of the 

 older rocks of Finland. 



Helsingfors stands at the extremity of a small promontory, which 

 is composed of a heterogeneous mass of what, for want of a better 



1 " Om Hoglands geologiska byggnad" : Geol. Foren. Forh. Stockholm, Bd. xii, 

 1890. "Beskrifniug till kartbladen, No. 19 och 20, Hogland och Tytarsaari": 

 Finl. Geol. Und. 1891. 



2 " Ueber den Salpausselka im ostlicbeii Finnland," Fennia 4, No. 2 ; Helsing- 

 fors, 1891. 



3 "Das Gestein von liwaara in Finnland": Geol. Foren. Forh. Stockholm, 

 Bd. xiii, 1891, p. 300. 



* " Cancrinitsyenit und einige verwandte Gesteine aus Kuolajarvi '' : Bull. Comm. 

 Geol. de la Finlande, No. 1, 1S95. 



