494 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Swedish nor Russian, Eatin, Teutonic, 

 nor Anglo-Saxon, and that the language 

 in common use is Finnish. 



As a matter of fact the culture of the 

 country and the political institutions were 

 all derived from Sweden, and Swedish 

 is the language spoken in nearly all of 

 the coast towns and in the country dis- 

 tricts bordering on the coast. Swedish 

 has always been the language of the 

 upper classes, and until recent years 

 Finnish was rarely heard except in the 

 interior of the country and among the 

 peasants. 



The nationalistic wave that has swept 

 over England, bringing in its wake the 

 Welsh revival and in Germany the less 

 creditable anti-Polish movement, pene- 

 trated even to Finland, and many patri- 

 otic Finns are now desirous of abandon- 

 ing the Swedish language and replacing 

 it by Finnish. At present the movement 

 is a very strong one, but how long it will 

 last and whether or not it will be ulti- 

 mately successful are matters open to 

 conjecture. 



The Finnish language at present pos- 

 sesses no literature with the exception 



of the Kalevala, the Finnish national 

 epic, and certain novels and stories that 

 have been written within the present 

 generation. The literary language is in 

 process of formation, and every present- 

 day writer finds it necessary to coin 

 numberless words to designate objects 

 unknown to the simple peasants and 

 shades of meaning which correspond to 

 the subtler feelings of a more complicated 

 and cultured civilization. 



We are not here concerned with the 

 question as to whether or not it is the 

 part of wisdom to foster a language 

 which has 15 cases, bears little relation 

 to any other language except that spoken 

 by the Estish peasants of the Baltic coast, 

 and is a far m.ore difficult language to 

 learn even than Russian. The supporters 

 of the movement have, at any rate, the 

 excellent argument in their favor that it 

 is the native tongue of about 85 per cent 

 of the population, and that any other 

 language must be always, to the great 

 mass of the people, a foreign tongue, and 

 that a people can only attain to the 

 highest forms of poetic and literary ex- 

 pression in their own native language. 

 Baroness AlIvb;tta Kori^f. 



COSTA RICA— VULCAN'S SMITHY 



By H. Pittier, of the U. S. Department of Agriculture 



For 15 Years Director op the Physical Geographical Institute 

 OP San Jos:fe, Costa Rica 



IHE earth's crust underlying Costa 

 Rica and the whole of Central 

 America is one of mother earth's 

 great laboratories. The chemical work 

 that is going on uninterruptedl}^ deep be- 

 low her glorious mountains is made evi- 

 dent to the inhabitants of the country 

 by the numerous volcanoes and warm 

 springs, as well as by the almost cease- 

 less upheaving of the soil, mostly in 

 tremors imperceptible to the senses, but 

 also occasionally in powerful and de- 

 structive commotions. 



The mountains of Costa Rica are di- 

 vided into two main systems. The south- 

 eastern system, which has one peak of 

 12,467 feet elevation, is at present with- 

 out volcanoes, although its skeleton is 

 formed mainly by old eruptive rocks. 

 The peaks of the northwestern system, 

 of less development and elevation, are 

 mostly active or semi-active craters, the 

 base of which is geologically of very re- 

 cent origin. This chain begins with the 

 conical peak of Turrialba, which rises in 

 an uninterrupted slope from the plains 



