10 THE FOREST LANDS OF FINLAND. 
tree; aud there, an island not much larger, covered with 
trees to the water's edge; and there, larger islands, or the 
mainland, with high rising hills clothed with wood and 
forest beyond. Again and again I felt that day as if I 
were alone with God, or rather with His work, as His work 
is described by Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs: “ When 
there were no depths, I was.brought forth; when there 
were no fountains abounding with water. Before the 
mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought 
forth: while as yet He had not made the earth, nor the 
fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world, 
When He prepared the heavens: when He set « compass 
upon the face of the depth: when He established the 
clouds above: when He strengthened the fountains of 
the deep: when He gave to the sea His decree, that 
the waters would not pass His commandment: when He 
appointed the foundations of the earth.” 
‘The effect was heightened by the general absence of 
animal life, excepting at the towns and villages. Once or 
twice a cow was seen, once or twice a bird on the wing, 
and once a realisation of Kingsley’s picture of the sca-gull 
on the all-alone stone, far out at sea! This was as we 
left the islands, shortly after noon. There were four gulls 
struggling to maintain their footing on a little projecting 
rock far out at sea, washed over by a wave produced 
by our passing vessel. And here and there a solitary 
house — neat, painted, and clean— might be seen; or 
an island, where road there was none but the highway 
of the sea, as if men were only beginning to appear 
upon the earth.’ 
Here, the islands were covered with arborescent vegeta- 
tion. ‘Trees seem to grow as naturally in Finland as 
grass does elsewhere, One Finnish gentleman speaking 
to me of the land, in the neighbourhood of Wyborg, said 
to me, ‘It has been so impoverished by culture that it 
won’t bear trees, and only produces grass.’ I may ciffer 
from him in his reasoning on the phenomena referred to, 
