24 THE FOREST LANDS OF FINLAND. 
assurance they gave that we had met in what was really 
a land of strangers. Amongst the most luxuriant were 
wild Canterbury bells, and other species of campanula, 
agrimony, golden rod, shepherd’s rod, willow herbs great 
and small, tormentil, silverweed, milfoil, cranberries, blae- 
berries, goloobnitza, broosnika, and sweinelange, in abun- 
dance. Ferns were not awanting, and mosses there were 
in plenty, and lichens—but such lichens!—in number, 
variety, magnitude, colouring, beauty of form, and height 
of growth, far surpassing everything in that class of plants 
I could previously have imagined. There were rocks— 
and rocks of such magnitude /—-enamelled with them as is 
a field in Britain with buttercups and daisies. I brought 
away a Canina peltidea, 12 inches in diameter. With the 
flowers named, there were very fine knapweeds, St John’s 
worts, chrysanthemums in considerable variety, and ex- 
quisitely formed blue cornflowers, and cow-wheat; but 
the campanulas and lichens were what arrested the eye— 
the campanulas on this side, the lichens on yonder. 
The village in the vicinity of the Falls is a wretched 
ruckle of old houses, inhabited apparently by the poorest 
of the poor; but I have seen more than one peasant— 
apparently, however, peasants from a distance, and Russian 
—not Finnish—enjoying the scenery as much as did I; 
one peasant I still see, now launching trees into the 
torrent, witnessing their sudden disappearance, watching 
for their reappearance, tracing their progress with the 
rapidity of an arrow which told of the velocity with which 
they were carried down the stream, and of the desire of 
the observer to catch yet another sight of the sea-serpent- 
like body rushing on—now standing in silent amaze: I 
sympathised with his feelings, both in the one case and 
in the other. 
Not the least exciting of the adventures of the day was 
the crossing of the ferry, in a smooth reach between two 
rapids, in a large boat with trees for oars—trees cut at 
one end into oar-like blades, and at the other cut so as to 
allow of their being held and plied. There was the rapid 
4 
