22 THE FOREST LANDS OF FINLAND. 
These may be reached now most conveniently by 
steamer from Wyborg to Rattigarvi, one of the stations 
or locks on the Saima Canal, and thence by land con- 
veyance. I have been informed that there is now a 
tramway between Rattigarvi and the Falls. I visited 
them along with a party of friends in 1860, before the 
canal was open for.passenger traffic. We proceeded from 
St. Petersburg by steamer to Wyborg, and in the cool of 
the evening we started in a caleche for Imatra. We 
reached the Falls about three o’clock in the morning. It 
was the last day of July, and being near the summer 
solstice, it was light all night. We had travelled through 
a lovely country; there was hill and dale, woods and 
water; and we had good horses and excellent roads. 
After a hurried look at the Falls, 1 went to bed, and by 
six o'clock J was again at the water side. The forenoon 
was given to botany, to entomology, and to rest, some of 
us gathering flowers, while one, with the occasional aid of 
others, was catching butterflies, and another was taking 
pencil sketches of the scenery around. In the afternoon 
we visited a waterfall about four miles lower down, where 
the river empties itself into a lake. After tea, we drove 
to a ferry some three miles above Imatra, where we crossed 
the stream, caleche and horses and all, and we drove along 
the other side of the river to see the Falls from that side, 
whence only a sight of the whole at once can be obtained. 
The river is like the Niagara, a stream carrying the 
water from an upper to a lower lake, and these are parts 
of a chain of lakes, the level of each of which is lower than 
that of the one immediately above it. Here the upper 
lake is a prolongation of the Saima, which, with its 
ramifications and connected lakelets, may be said to 
divide with the land, and share between them, the whole 
extent of Finland. 
Like the Falls of Niagara, the Falls of Imatra present an 
appearance differing greatly from the conception generally 
formed of a waterfall; but this it does in a different way. 
In the Falls of Niagara the immense stretch of the fall in 
