348 
STATE AGEICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 
countlesss islands, some smiling with verdure and some rocky and ster¬ 
ile, on my way to Finland. The weather was absolutely perfect—the sky 
beautifully clear and sunny, the air fresh and balmy as the spicey breezes 
that “ blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle-” Almost ere we were out of sight of 
Sweden, a most delicious dreaminess, begotten of the strangeness of my sur¬ 
roundings, the happy combination of all the circumstances of the voyage, and 
the imagined characteristics of the far-off land toward which our prow was set, 
stole over me and thus completed the enchantment. Even now the remem¬ 
brance of that voyage comes to me like the visions and experiences of some 
golden dream. 
At Abo I spent some time in the naval school and observatory, and 
made a trip into the country, to see how the Finns work their farms. 
My second stopping was at Helsingfors, the capital—a beautiful city, on a 
beautiful harbor, with suburbs suggestive of Paris. Here there is also an 
observatory, and a flourishing university, with literary, scientific, law, med¬ 
ical and theological departments, thirty-five professors, a library of 100,000 
volumes,an excellent laboratory, fine collections in natural history,and nearly 
600 students. At Wiburg there is quite a flourishing town with considerable 
commerce, but not much else to interest the traveller. A rough country is 
Finland, interiorly; stony, boggy, and of course barren. Some public im¬ 
provements making. There is already a railroad from Helsingfors northward 
some fifty miles. The season past has been so unproductive, in both Finland 
and the north of Sweden, that thousands of the poor people, remote from the 
coast, are said to be living on bread made from the bark of trees, with the 
certain prospect of starvation unless relieved by. foreign contributions. 
Among my strange experiences in that far off country, washed by the Bal¬ 
tic and Polar seas, none other so impressed me as the absence of anything 
like what we would call night. At Helsingfors, the sun set at 11^ o’clock 
and rose again at 2 o’clock, with so strong a twilight between that the archi¬ 
tectural peculiarities of public buildings a mile distant were distinctly visi¬ 
ble, and I was enabled to write letters in my state-room during the whole in¬ 
terim without the least inconvenience. 
From Wiburg, a day’s sail brought me to Cronstadt, maratime out-post 
of the great capital of the Russian Empire, the grandest city in Europe, the 
glittering of whose golden spires and crosses gave notice of our approach ere 
we had come within fifteen miles of the majestic, palace-lined river that flows 
through its center. Spent nearly a week at St. Petersburg, rejoicing in its 
palaces, its gorgeous cathedrals, its public gardens, and the distant royal seats 
of Peterhofif, Zarska, and Pavloska, and in daily visits to the university, the 
school of mines, the polytechnic and military schools, and the great acade. 
mies of science and art. 
At the date of my visit, our minister, Gen. Cassius M. Clay, to whom T am 
indebted for many courtesies, was felicitating himself on having just consu- 
mated the purchase of Russian America, being firm in the belief that it 
would prove a valuable acquisition. The Czar also felicitates himself on 
