CONTOUR OF THE COUNTRY. 229 
from a Grand Duchy, which, though an integral part of 
the Russian Empire, is a land inhabited by another people, 
speaking another tongue, worshipping after another form, 
and to some extent governed by another code. But near 
the boundary line formed by Lake Ladoga and the Neva, 
it is somewhat otherwise. ‘The first station on the Finnish 
railway from St. Petersburg has scarcely been reached 
before the traveller feels as if he had got into another land, 
and at Shoovalova, eight or ten miles from St. Petersburg, 
he sees lakelets and wooded knolls such as are character- 
istic of the country. 
I am fain to avail myself of the graphic sketches sup- 
plied by Dr. Helms, who says:—‘ With the sea on the 
south and the west, a natural boundary of rocks on the 
north, and desert steppes and lakes on the confines 
between Finland and Russia, the country is marked out 
as a well-defined geographical district. It is not less 
distinguished by its geological formation, its fauna, and 
its flora, and the character, customs, speech, history, and 
marked individuality of its inhabitants.’ 
And, comparing the outstretched and embracing arms 
of the sea—the Gulfof Finland and the Gulf of Bothnia— 
to the arms of a mother outstretched to embrace a lost 
daughter, he speaks of the designation ‘ Last daughter of 
the sea’ as less a poetic fancy than a beautiful representa- 
tion of what have been the facts of the case, borne out by 
what may be considered traditions embodied in names 
preserved from ancientusage, and insuch designations as are 
preserved in the expression Suomen-niemt, Finland’s capes 
and promontories, and Suomi-saari, Finland’s islands. And 
when one travels through this ‘Land of a thousand lakes,’ 
sees these hill and mountain-begirt. lakes and lochs, often 
numbering a hundred, met.with in the course of a single 
day’s journey, and sees valleys now dry,-but with deep 
mosses, or the remains of the lakes which in the olden 
time rolled in waves over the place, and sees the deep 
caverns or hollows which the sea has eaten into the rocks, 
