BOATING ADVENTURES. 33 
He had occasion, in the prosecution of his special work, 
as agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society in the 
North of Russia, to cross the Grand Duchy of Finland, to the 
north of Lake Saima. He proceeded by the Neva from 
St. Petersburg to Lake Ladoga. He visited Konivets, Hex- 
holm, at the mouth of the Wuoksi by which Lake Saima 
discharges its surplus waters into the Ladoga, and Walamo. 
Subsequently disembarking at Sordavala, he had to travel 
by land conveyance to Puhois, a distance of some eighty 
versts, about fifty-three miles. There embarking on a 
lake steamer, of which he found many bobbing up and 
down everywhere on the Finnish lakes, he returned south- 
ward to Nyslot, or Newcastle, as the name may be rendered 
in Khglish, Thence he found his way by steamboat to 
Kuopia and Idensalmi, and thence: with very little land- 
travelling to the lake Ulea Trask, upon which steam- 
boats again were found plying. Above this a good deal 
of tar is manufactured. Everywhere had dark pine woods 
been seen, sometimes scraggy. The country was undu- 
lating, not unlike the district of Buchan, in Aberdeenshire, 
but rocky, seedlings and saplings appeared to be spreading 
out towards the lakes wherever they could obtain a foot- 
hold. In collecting the tar or turpentine on this side of 
the watershed, the bark is ringed half round the tree; 
an incision is made in the trunk, and the material is 
collected as it ovzes thence ; and the tar-boats supply a 
means of transit down the rapids of the Ulea-elf, where 
steamboat conveyance fails. 
The tar-boat is very long, and built of two broad planks 
joined boat-shape. ‘I'wo rows of tar barrels are laid along 
the greater part of the boat, and two more barrels are 
placed across the boat at each end. A second narrow 
deal is nailed along the gunwale on each side to turn off 
the bulk of any wave. <A long oar projects astern. The 
whole structure is elastic, I had almost said as mobile as 
an eel. Government licensed pilots steer the boat, and 
the only place for a passenger is a seat on one of the 
barrels of tar. The rapids recur for many a mile; but the 
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