28 THE FOREST LANDS OF FINLAND. 
I proceeded by railway to St. Petersburg, passing : 
through Wyborg without stopping. In an old edition of 
Murray’s Handbook, written before this railway was 
constructed, I find it stated, and the statement is equally 
applicable now as descriptive of the journey from Lovisa, 
a town some forty miles from Borga, to Frederickshamm, 
on the road to Wyborg and St. Petersburg : 
‘Lovisa was once a frontier post of the Swedes. One 
of its streets descends to the very sea-shore, while the 
others are arranged in a kind of amphitheatre on the side 
of a hill. Some remains of its former defences are yet to 
be seen. Two or three massive walls, with their embra- 
sures even now almost perfect, seem at a distance to 
command the town. The country beyond this is wild 
encugh: no traces of cultivation can be discerned, and as 
far as the eye can reach it is one barren heath, with here 
and there a few boulder-stones and fir trees thinly scattered 
among the heather. The road, however, is excellent, hard 
and smooth, and full of picturesque windings, and the 
traveller will be fairly hurled along at a rapid pace, and 
referring to the gallop at which all journeys are made in 
Finland,’ the writer goes on to say :—‘The traveller will 
thus speed on his way through Finland, and frequently 
without meeting a human being from one station to 
the next; the dark pines and massive boulder-stones 
(many of a magnitude which will astonish the traveller or 
any geologist who has not traversed the country), the red 
verst posts, and a rugged scanty flock are the only objects 
that meet the eye, In some places partial clearings, prin- 
cipally made by fire, add one new feature to the landscape; 
aud the charred and blackened trunks of the larger trees, 
which have resisted the power of the flames, standing like 
giant sentinels in the blank space around them, contrast 
strongly with the dark green of the living pines, and the 
bright lichens of the 'boulder-stones scattered around 
them, Many of these huge stones arise from the earth in 
single masses, and it was from one of these that the 
