168 THE FOREST LANDS OF FINLAND. 
The Finnish School of Forestry is situated, as has been 
stated, at Evois. The following is an account given by 
Dr Hough, Chief of the Forestry Division of the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture at Washington, of a visit paid by him 
to this institution in the summer of 1881 :— 
‘August 9, 1881.—The steamer Aura, in which we had 
embarked for crossing the Baltic from Stockholm to Abo, 
was named after a principal river in Western Finland, and 
at first sight appeared hardly safe for such a passage. The 
forward deck was low, and the whole arrangement seemed 
to fit it for river navigation rather than a sea voyage. She 
proved, however, to be well enough suited for the occasion, 
for her route lay the whole distance among islands, for the 
most part thickly dotted over the surface, and consisting 
of naked gneiss rock, or of low rocky islets, densely covered 
with pine and spruce. They strongly recalled the familiar 
scenery of the “Thousand Islands” of the St. Lawrence, 
whose history and legends we had collected and published 
a year or two befvure, but they differed from these in being 
some hundred times more numerous, and most of them 
appeared to be uninhabited. In a more open part, and 
probably near the national boundary, there was a light- 
house ; but besides this, the only aids to navigation were 
cairns, signal poles, and painted rocks, which were well 
enough suited for clear weather and daylight; but this 
route would be wholly unsafe in a fog, and as for daylight 
it extends through the greater part of night in summer, 
while in winter it is frozen solid throughout. 
‘Many times the way seemed closed on every side, and 
we appeared to be running recklessly against a rock,when by 
a sudden turn a dozen passages at once opened in as many 
directions, with long vistas affording an endless variety of 
scenery of the most beautiful kind. We passed several 
small parties of Russian engineers, engaged in hydrogra- 
phic surveys, and touched at one or two landings. The 
maps show that this archipelago is divided up into parishes, 
and there is probably a considerable population upon the 
